


All the Rest is Rust and Stardust

by spicedpiano, tahariel



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Anal Sex, Angst, Coming of Age, Depression, Dubious Consent, High School, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, New York City, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Dynamics, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Rape Recovery, Scandal, Secret Relationship, Sexual Identity, Slow Build, Social Media, Stockholm Syndrome, Subspace, This fic is creepy you should know that going in, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:00:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 54
Words: 669,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1950816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spicedpiano/pseuds/spicedpiano, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tahariel/pseuds/tahariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier is the world's preeminent mutant psychologist, called in to consult for the CIA when a raid on a Hellfire Club safehouse discovers a severely abused teenager, Erik Lehnsherr.  Taking Erik in soon leads Charles to struggle between his conflicting responsibilities as Erik's guardian and psychologist, and his desire to give in to the dangerous dynamic that is developing between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> The relationships in this fic are not meant to represent healthy relationships. Just ... keep that in mind, okay? 
> 
> There are content warnings at the end of each chapter, but if you want to know specifics about how graphic anything is, you can PM spicy (spicedpiano.tumblr.com) or tahariel (tahariels.tumblr.com) on tumblr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to **Subtilior** for a swift and excellent beta, and for talking about this verse with us all hours of the day and night.
> 
> See notes at end of chapter for content warnings relevant to this specific chapter.

_Charles_

The kitchen is L-shaped, the doorway to the living room at the far end from the refrigerator where Charles is leaning back against the cool metal, stretching a little to meet Erik's mouth on his own, hands curling in the sides of Erik's shirt to hold him there, Erik’s weight pressing Charles into the fridge magnets and threatening to knock them onto the floor.

Charles sighs into the kiss, lips slanting across Erik's and their tongues stroking together, the warmth of him seeping into Charles' bones; it's been two days since they were last able to snatch a few moments alone.

The thought is like a bucket of cold water. Charles pulls back with a wet sound, opening his eyes to the confused look on Erik's face, cheeks flushed and his brows drawing together in a frown. 

"What...?" Erik asks, half a whisper.

"Peter is out there," Charles whispers back, hands releasing Erik's shirt, though he doesn't push him away. "And he could come in here at any moment. This was a really bad idea."

"You're a telepath," Erik says. His fingers are warm on Charles' face, slipping down his jawline and pressing against his lower lip, easy and proprietary. His gaze follows the movement of his hand. "He won't know anything we don't want him to know."

Charles' lips purse. _You know I love you, and I've missed this, too,_ he says silently, turning into the touch despite himself, feeling Erik's thumb push a dimple into the soft skin. _But I'm not going to edit Peter just because we couldn't keep it PG._

Erik lets out a small breath and Charles can feel his irritation rolling off him in small waves, but he doesn't argue. His fingers drop away from Charles' mouth after a moment.

"Then stay here," Erik says. "Kneel and start counting. You can come back into the living room when you reach fifty."

He steps back, reaching for his bottled water on the counter and takes a small, controlled sip before leaving Charles there, disappearing around the corner back into the living room.

Charles leans against the refrigerator for a moment before going to splash some cold water on his face and sinking down to his knees, trying to forget the feeling of Erik pressed so close against him, to remember that when he goes back into the living room they cannot act in any way other than as guardian and ward.

It would be easier if he didn't want to kneel at Erik's feet.

*

__  
**Four years earlier**  


It's the ass-end of the middle of the night, and, frankly, if Charles could be anywhere else right now, he would be; preferably in bed, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling pretending to himself that he's asleep. As it is, instead he has this dingy CIA hallway to stare at, its walls lined with grungy wallpaper and tacked-up notices. At least the man leading him down it feels just as tired as Charles does: his mind is all sour, exhausted grumblings about overtime pay, thoughts of his wife and of having to get up tomorrow morning to come back here again after an hour of sleep.

Charles' phone had rung around the time he got to sheep number three thousand four hundred and twenty-nine, the outside world suddenly intruding into what is normally the deepest, darkest watch of the night. In the silence of the early hours it had startled him, like finding a stranger in his room with him. And now he is here, dressed and upright and resenting it even as he wipes sleep from the corners of his eyes with the pad of his thumb, and tries to conceal a yawn.

At the far end of the hallway is an office room, and it's in there that Charles finally sees Moira MacTaggert, though he has heard her in his mind ever since he left the car: her rapidly shuffling priorities, statuses, analyses - that, and her sharp internal monologue bitching about her colleagues. Of course, she’s tired, too.

"Moira," Charles calls as soon as he's through the door. He ducks around his escort to go to her side, trying to affect a pleasant smile. "How lovely to hear from you. Though I would have preferred a brunch date."

"I'm so sorry to wake you up like this, Charles," Moira says, turning to look at him, and she does truly feel apologetic, regret all tangled up with exhaustion and satisfaction and worry. "You know I wouldn't have called if there were anyone else." 

She's dressed in a crumpled pantsuit, dark circles forming under her eyes, her hair frayed and ragged in its ponytail; she passes him the stack of files she's holding, each one neatly labeled with blue tape reading 'Sensitive Compartmented Information'. More secret than top-secret, apparently. 

"We've raised your security clearance,” she says. “This is everything we have on the boy, though I'm not sure how much use it'll be. He's not talking."

"Well, who can blame him?" Charles murmurs, flipping open the top file and glancing quickly over the information inside -- it's full of holes and supposition; for his purposes, essentially useless. "And you want me to speak to him, find out what his role is?"

"Homeland would be happy to indict him with the rest of them. I'm not asking you to tell me what I want to hear, but I'd really like to build a case to the contrary." She grimaces, her mind shying away even from her own suspicions, and she folds her arms, hugging her own stomach. "He's either a victim or he's a terrorist. Just tell me which one."

"He's -- what, eleven? Twelve? Surely it wouldn't be legal to try him for this," Charles says, eyes flicking up from the folder, eyebrows rising, too. "Regardless of his involvement, he's a child!"

"He's a mutant," Moira says. "After the Flatiron Building, Homeland wants to make a statement. Apparently capturing six Hellfire Club members during the raid wasn't statement enough. The boy's the one directly responsible, and they'd like to see him fry for it."

Charles' teeth grind together, and he has to force himself to stop, closing his eyes for a moment and rolling his shoulders forward, then back, the fine cotton of his dress shirt shifting over his chest and grounding him in the now, the physical.

“I'll find out for you, one way or the other," he says after a moment, opening his eyes again and closing the folder, setting it aside on the desk beside them with a quiet flap of paper. "But if Homeland thinks I'll just lie down and let them cart a child off to federal prison, they have another think coming, no matter whether he's guilty or not. I'm surprised they let you call me -- I have a bit of a reputation over there already."

"That's why I _did_ call you," Moira says. She gives him a thin, brittle-looking smile and steps past him, leading him back out into the main room and grabbing a mug from the stack next to an ancient-looking coffee pot. Even though it's four in the morning the building is bustling, harried-looking agents rushing around or all but handcuffed to their desks, typing away. The chatter is at a dull roar. 

"Coffee, Charles?" Moira offers, brandishing a mug at him. "You might as well."

He lets out a sharp breath, then smiles at her, tightly, and says, "Go on then. Twist my arm."

The wait feels interminable, even if it's just the length of time it takes her to pour him a mug; Charles takes it when it's offered, holding it gingerly in one hand, because the coffee here is always nuclear hot. "I'll take this in with me," he says, gesturing down the second hallway, towards the interrogation -- also known as interview -- rooms. "I'd like to get started right away, if that's all right."

"More than," Moira says, looking a little relieved. "I'd rather get this over with. But you'll need to leave all your metal here." She taps a plastic bin on the table next to the door, already filled with keys and watches.

Charles' eyebrows rise. “Okay,” he says, and he does as asked, leaving his belt, shoes, and cufflinks on one of the desks in the office, before following Moira out of the room.

This second hall is just as unpleasant as the first, the carpet worn and threadbare underfoot, and Charles stretches out his mind into the cells as they walk, feeling for the thoughts of the occupants, trying to get a sense for the boy. When he opens his mind to the prisoners, however, he almost reels back, only keeping it from showing on him physically by great effort of will. God. The minds in here are _foul._ Full of self-obsession and fear of punishment and anger at imprisonment, each of them trying to figure out how much the CIA knows.

All save one. One mind is more afraid of, and for, the others than it is for itself.

"The boy's name is Erik," Charles says quietly to Moira as they reach the door outside the interview room, where that mind -- younger than the others', and worrying desperately about being separated from them -- is. It's hard to listen to him fretting over people whose minds have just repelled Charles so thoroughly. Erik is frantic for them, and not one of them has given him a single thought. "I'd put his age a little older, actually; he feels around thirteen, fourteen to me."

"Do you have a surname? I can get started running it through missing persons while you're interviewing him."

"He doesn't think of himself with a full name, and digging for it could take a while," Charles says, shrugging. "Easier just to ask him and let it pop up on its own. I'll offer him a drink when we're settled -- could someone please stand by to take the order?" Better to have something to give, to make the boy feel more at ease, soften him a little towards Charles if he can.

"Sure, I'll let them know." Moira pulls her ID card forward on its elastic band clipped to her waist, and buzzes him in. "Just call if you need anything else." She taps her temple with one finger.

"Will do. You owe me one, though," Charles says, with a small smile, and draws in a breath before entering.

The room itself is small and dimly lit, too-cold; the walls are painted what must once have been a soft eggshell blue but is now just as worn as the rest of the building. Surely, Charles thinks, the CIA must be able to afford better than this? If not, then what the hell else are his taxes for?

The boy, Erik, who is dressed in bright red pajamas, stands out in the washed-out room, like a cardinal in a snowfield. He's sat at the table with his hands tied with _rope_ of all things, a long loose loop of it tied through the hook on the table to keep him secure; he's been worrying at the knot with his fingers, trying to get it undone. His wrists, like the rest of him, are emaciated, little more than twigs with a thin covering of flesh. He looks rather like a scarecrow, and Charles feels a great surge of -- something, pity and sympathy and an exhausted sort of care, flooding over him and replacing the dullness with something else, something sharp.

"I wouldn't bother," Charles says quietly, coming further into the room; he tries to keep his step quiet, too, so as not to startle the boy. Erik feels a little like a trapped animal, wild and scared, his shoulders hunching up as soon as the door opened. "It's a minor mutation, but one of the agents can tie a knot that will never come loose for anyone but him. I expect he's the one who bound you."

Erik immediately goes still, but he doesn't look up -- just keeps staring at the rope, silent. His thoughts refocus on the metal suppressor bands around his wrists, a refrain of _get them off -- get them off, I can still feel them, if I can get them off it won't matter --_

"I wouldn't bother with that, either, Erik," Charles says, and he walks over to the table, standing just behind the chair set aside for the interrogating agent -- in this case, him. "I'm afraid I would stop you myself, if I had to."

Anger, then, surging through Erik's mind hot and quick, accompanied by a deluge of increasingly hateful thoughts about the CIA, and humans in general. Underneath that current, though, Erik's still holding onto the questions he can't shake: _how does he know my name?_ and _reading my mind?_ He simultaneously wants to ask Charles, and doesn't dare.

"I'm a telepath," Charles says, answering the unspoken question and finally sitting down at the table, setting down his coffee well out of Erik's reach. "My name is Charles Xavier. My friend Moira asked me to come and see you; I'm not with the CIA, I'm a mutant psychologist."

He takes the opportunity to look a little more closely at Erik's face, now that they're more on a level; gaunt, like the rest of him, with soft hollows in his cheeks where they should be full, and his eyes deep-set, his mouth taut and unhappy.

"I'm here to help, Erik."

Erik picks at the rope with his short nails, not trying to untie it but no longer quite so still, either. Charles can just-barely see his eyes moving beneath his lowered lashes, pale irises shifting from side to side. It takes Charles a second to realize Erik's trying to build up a mental wall to keep him out: a solid steel construction around his thoughts, something learned from Emma Frost, no doubt.

"That won't work on me," Charles says, and he keeps his expression calm and neutral. "I'm rather more powerful than your Miss Frost. Erik, please look at me. I'd like to have a conversation and see what I can do to help you; I'm sure you know that you're in a very dangerous position right now, and I'll be honest with you, I'm the only way for you to get out of it. So. It's up to you."

It's hard, so hard, to keep looking at this boy and not to let pity show on his face; it's clear that Erik is at least a few meals short of healthy, let alone whatever else. How could Homeland think Erik in any way not a victim, if they've seen him like this? Though perhaps he should know better, seeing the kinds of atrocities they endorse in the name of the so-called War on Terror.

He can feel Erik working it over in his mind, the knowledge that Charles is a telepath and can read his thoughts whether he voices them or not, that pragmatism at war with his desire to protect the rest of the Hellfire Club. It's slow and begrudging, when he finally lifts his head.

There's a moment where Charles doesn't quite register what he's seeing; when he thinks, for a few seconds at least, that he's overtired, imagining things. Except he's not.

Erik is -- Erik is wearing a _submissive's collar_ , tight black leather sitting high on his throat, hidden before by the duck of his chin and the collar of his nightshirt. Charles takes a sharp breath in, can't help it, and his fingers tighten on the edge of the table until his knuckles are white and his breath is tight in his chest and he can't --

He forces himself not to say anything by sheer force of will, but inside he's fighting himself for control, because there is no way that a _child_ should be wearing a collar, and it makes too many memories rear up in his hindbrain for him to quash.

Erik's ducked his head again, had flinched away the second Charles reacted, his shoulders hunching further up and his hands curled into sudden, tight fists, that sharp spike of fear and anticipation in his mind fading now but still strong, throbbing through him and staining the surface of his thoughts.

"I'm sorry," Charles says, and his voice somehow comes out even, though a little croaky. "I was just startled by your ... by your collar. You're very young to be wearing one. Whose is it?"

Erik's silent for a long time, fingers slowly, slowly relaxing from their fists, even if his head stays bowed. The tension in his spine is practically visible in the bony vertebrae poking up beneath the thin fabric of his pajama shirt. At last, and almost inaudibly, he whispers, "I'm not supposed to wear it outside the house."

Charles manages a shaky smile, though thankfully Erik doesn't see it. "I'm sure there's some leeway after being dragged out in the middle of the night," he says gently, warmly, making his voice reassuring. "Would you like me to take it off for you?"

 _"No!_ " Erik tries to pull back, the feet of his chair scraping against the concrete floor, but the rope around his wrists catches where it's tied to the table and keeps him there. He's breathing heavily, shallow gasps of air that make his thin shoulders tremble. "No," he says again, after a second, calmer this time. And, a bit begrudgingly: "No, thank you." His voice is lightly accented, but Charles can't place the accent's origin.

Damn Moira, for putting him in this room with Erik -- she damn well knows there is a _reason_ why Charles wouldn't have taken this case if he had known what is now staring him in the face. It's not a matter of compassion, or of being picky -- she knows exactly why, and has put him in here anyway.

"All right," Charles says, keeping his hands exactly where they are -- where Erik can see them without having to lift his head. "I won't touch it, or you, without your permission. Something else, then, maybe -- would you like a drink?" He has to get back on-script. "I think they have soda, water, some coffee, though it comes out of the machine so hot you could roast marshmallows over it." He's sounding a bit more normal now, though he suspects his hands are still trembling, just a little.

Erik shrugs one shoulder and doesn't answer him. He's watching Charles hawkishly from beneath his lashes, like he expects him to go back on his word.

"A simple yes or no would suffice," Charles says, trying his damnedest not to make it sound like an order.

"...Yes?"

"All right," Charles says. "What would you like?"

Erik doesn't say anything, and this time Charles catches something like confusion curling through his mind, although Erik quickly tries to bat it down along with the rest of his emotions -- attempting, no doubt, to think quietly enough that Charles won't overhear.

Hmm. Perhaps Erik isn't used, then, to making his own decisions; that's a bad sign. Charles decides to push a little in that direction. "It's not a trick," he says, still smiling on the outside. "Would you like a soda, maybe?"

Erik nods, once, and a little too quickly.

 _Unable to make own decisions,_ Charles notes to himself, though he smiles at Erik and says, "I'll just ask one of the agents to bring you one." He sends the thought over to Moira, along with a sharp feeling -- she'll know what that's about, she's no fool. "I think I'll try my coffee now, too, and see if it's cooled down some." When he lifts it to his lips it's still steaming and a little too hot, so he winces for effect, knowing Erik is watching, before taking a sip. "So. Erik. I do have to ask you some questions, I'm afraid, or else Moira will kick me out, so maybe you could just tell me your surname? That should be an easy one to start with, don't you think?"

A pause, as Erik obviously tries to work out whether this could be a trick question, whether it's better to gain capital with Charles by answering one question or avoid a slippery slope by answering none. "Lehnsherr," he says at last. He pronounces it 'lane's hair.'

This Charles transmits to Moira as well, even as he feels one of the more junior agents bringing the requested soda. "German?" he asks, sipping at his coffee. "It sounds German, but I admit that I'm not good at accents."

Erik tilts his head to one side, neither yes nor no. "We don't have nationalities."

"Oh? Well, the name must come from _somewhere_ ," Charles says, setting his mug down on the desk. "Even if you've renounced your nationality. For instance, I'm very clearly English, though my passport states otherwise."

"The name is from Germany." Charles picks up a fleeting location -- _Rhine-Ruhr, Düsseldorf_ \-- from Erik's thoughts before they turn back to the suppressor bands, Erik trying to use the small amount of his power that's escaped them to undo the latches.

Quietly and without comment Charles diverts Erik's attention away from the suppressors, keeping the bands where they should be. "And is that where Mr Shaw found you?" he asks, trying to keep the question as neutral as possible, not at all important.

Erik just shrugs again, but his mind pings affirmative.

The door opens briefly, and one of the agents comes in far enough to hand Charles the soda -- in a glass, not a can. He passes it to Erik, who takes it with both hands, the rope around his wrists making it awkward as he lifts it up to his mouth to take a drink.

"You must have been very young. You're what, thirteen?"

"Fourteen last week." A spark of pride accompanies the words, and it's so ... _normal_ , such a typically teenage way to feel, that it's almost shocking when juxtaposed with the situation.

"Happy birthday," Charles says, smiling a little; here's an opening he can use. "Did you do anything nice?"

A quick rush of memories, Erik's mind flipping through his recollection of the day on reflex -- cold breeze blowing off Lake Mälaren, wore two sweaters, pasta for dinner, listening to the radio while Wyngarde bent him over the armchair and fucked him open. "It was okay."

It's like being shot, but in slow motion, like feeling the thought tear through him millimeter by millimeter, leaving horror in its wake. Charles' heart feels like it skips a beat, an awful, awkward thump in his chest before a long moment of silence.

Charles manages not to show his reaction on his face, but only -- only because, if he's honest with himself, he knew, as soon as he saw the collar. And he's used to seeing people thinking about, fantasizing about, remembering sex, enough at least that he can bring that experience to bear in not letting Erik see the way sick nausea is rising up in his throat, along with a sense of remembered panic that is purely his own, not gleaned from Erik but coming back from his own past to haunt him.

"No mass destruction, then?" Charles asks in a tight voice, his throat dry and burning with suppressed loathing; he needs to change topic, fast, before he gets too het up. "I assume it was you who caved in the Jubilee Line in London last spring." Hardly a better topic -- so many people died that they still weren't sure how many were down there -- and how many may not have been found.

At least this gets Erik to lift his head again, sitting straight in his chair even if his gaze is still low, turning his face toward the mirrored glass behind Charles. Charles catches the thrill that runs through Erik just at the memory of it -- how easily the metal had responded to him and how proud Shaw had been. Even now it makes Erik's mind feel clearer and more alert.

"You think that because you've captured the seven of us, you've won," Erik says flatly. "You haven't. We're everywhere, and we won't stop." It goes unspoken, the rest of the sentence, and in Erik's mind it's Shaw's voice that says: _not until every human is dead._

Charles swallows, pushes on. "Was it your idea, or Shaw's? I assume he's your Dom, since he's the leader."

Erik frowns, and resumes picking at the rope with his nails, scraping his thumb across the unfraying fibers. "He's not _my_ Dom. He's just Head Dom."

That's ... rather more concerning, and Charles holds a breath low in his stomach, getting up the next question like spitting out something unpleasant. "Oh? Who is your Dom, then?"

Erik shakes his head and slouches back down in his seat, losing interest in the conversation again. "I don't have one."

That's worse, that's infinitely worse, because if wearing a collar at fourteen implies child abuse, then being collared and _unclaimed_ suggests abuse on an epic scale, given the fact that every known Hellfire Club member _except_ Erik is a Dominant. Charles swallows again, fingers tightening on the table for a moment before he makes himself reach for his coffee.

Still, he pushes on, because the only way out of this now is through. He can't help the great swelling pity and sympathy he feels for Erik from welling up inside of him, as little, he suspects, as Erik would want it -- but it's clear from his mind that he's been brainwashed by so many people in so many ways that he's not even aware of it, doesn't even know that what's been done to him is wrong. "All right," Charles says, making himself sound calm, neutral. "Whose idea was it, anyway? The tube collapse, I mean. A lot of people were killed."

Erik's eyes flicker up to look at Charles, very briefly, and Charles would have seen the resentment in Erik's glare even if he didn't feel it pulsing out of Erik's mind, because even though Erik keeps his mouth shut his thoughts provide the answer right on cue.

Charles nods, since there's no point concealing the fact that he knows. "How do you feel about that?" he asks, tipping his head slightly to one side, as if he's just curious. "All of those people dying, because of the tunnels collapsing." This, he thinks, is the real question -- is Erik so far gone that he can't be saved, or does he feel something worth fighting for?

"They're just humans," Erik mutters, and he reaches for his soda again, a clear attempt at nonchalance. He's proud of what he did, that much is unavoidably obvious, but it's pride in the _execution_ more than the notion -- pride in Erik's own ability, his capacity to manipulate metal on so grand a scale. Pride in having exceeded the expectations of those whose opinion, good or ill, means everything to him. Pride in being useful for the cause. But not proud of what that means. Erik's emotions are all tangled up in auxiliary concerns, intense and passionate, which makes the fact that he so scrupulously avoids feeling _anything_ about the death toll stand out in stark contrast, like the eye of a storm.

"You know, there's really no difference between a mutant and a human at a genetic level," Charles says, thinking to Moira, _I'm wrapping up here. I have everything we need for this time of the goddamned morning._ "The so-called X-gene doesn't really exist -- it's a collection of smaller chromosome changes within the range of normal mutation. You can't call us separate species until we can't procreate together, which we certainly can." Not, he thinks, that this will fly with someone who has been as thoroughly brainwashed as this boy, but he has to try. "The idea of humans vs non-humans is logically flawed at a scientific level."

Erik doesn't say anything like that, but Charles catches the very distinct, deliberate phrase 'gene traitor' flitting through Erik's thoughts.

"I'll leave you on that note," Charles says, pushing up from his chair as the door opens behind him, smiling briefly at Erik before turning to go. Once he's turned away he can take a deep, silent breath in, eyes closing for a long moment.

When he opens them Moira is standing in the doorway; he gives her a very displeased look as he walks out of the room past her. When the door closes behind him Charles lets his posture fall, has to wipe a hand across his mouth, hitch in a breath and let it out again, before he can speak at all.

"You and I," he says, starting to walk down the hall away from the interrogation room, Moira having to rush to catch up, "are going to have to have a conversation about you not telling me things before I go into interviews. Especially when those things would mean me _not consenting to do the interview_. I -- well, I thought better of you, Moira."

Moira winces. "I'm sorry, Charles," she says, and while he can tell that she's truly apologetic, that doesn't mean much to him at the moment. "I couldn't call in Larsen or Zhang, not for a case like this, you _know_ that. You were the only option!"

"I do know that," Charles says, but his voice is still angry, even if he keeps it lowered, so as not to let the other agents overhear. "But if you had _explained_ that beforehand, then I might have consented, and you wouldn't have bullshitted me into a situation where I ended up flapping around for what to say to that boy and entirely put off my train of thought. It doesn't make me want to do you any more favours, I'll tell you that much."

"I know," she says, rounding the corner ahead of him so that she can turn to face him, forcing them to stop in the middle of the hallway. "But you'll do it, won't you? You'll work this case?" She's got her arms crossed, each hand gripping the opposite elbow a little too tightly.

And it's ... she knows, she knows exactly why he feels the way he does, but Charles knows, too, that there's no way for her to really understand what that means to him. He crushes down the tightness in his chest and steps in closer, his lips pursing, brows drawing together into a tight, pained line as he says, silently, _Moira, you_ know _... you _know_ that I was abused as a child. You _ know _why I don't work these cases. How could you spring that on me like that? I thought we were friends._ His hands are shaking again, and he mirrors her posture to try and hide it, though there's nothing to do about the rapidity of his heartbeat or his fluttering breaths.

 _We are,_ Moira says quickly, and she breaks his gaze, unable to keep holding eye contact. _I had to make a judgment call. I made the wrong choice. I should have told you, you're right, of course I should have, but I needed you to do this, and I didn't want to take the risk that you might say no._ She takes in a quick breath and manages to look at him again. _At the time, as I saw it, my choices were this, or let Homeland take him. I wasn't going to let that happen._

 _And if you had said so, I probably would have come anyway,_ Charles says.

He steps away from Moira for a moment, and has to stand silently, his hands fisted and teeth gritted, turning the thought over in his mind -- he can't do this. He has to do this. The two are mutually exclusive, and yet somehow they're both true, all at once, and the way Moira is thinking now -- that Charles looks pale, shaky, _unstable_ \-- is what decides him on it, finally, stubbornness getting the better of him.

He turns back to look at her, brows drawn together darkly. _You've already fucked me over on this one anyway,_ he says, begrudgingly; _Nobody else would touch it once they've read the report I'm going to write, and that poor boy is fifty kinds of messed up. So I'll work the damn case for you, but don't think you can do this again. I mean it. I don't deal well with these sorts of cases and I avoid them for my own health and for the health of my patients._

"I understand," Moira says, out loud this time. He can feel her thinking about reaching out and patting his shoulder, wanting to, and then deciding against it. "So ... which is it, then? Victim or co-conspirator?"

Charles takes a deep breath in, then lets it out, drawing professionalism back around himself like a cloak, masking his feelings until he has time to deal with them in privacy. It has the benefit of dulling them from himself, too; he's feeling rather disengaged now, and it's so much better that it makes it far easier for him to say, "Victim. Definitely victim. Check his bed sheets and you'll find the DNA of most of the Hellfire Club."

"Jesus Christ," Moira says, eyes going a little wide. "All right -- okay, I'll let forensics know. Do I need to call in the doctor, run a rape kit?"

"Probably," Charles says. "Yes. And for the record, he's Stockholm-syndromed up to his eyeballs, if I'm any judge. They've had him since he was two years old."

"There go all my high hopes for a star witness," Moira says, a bit self-deprecatingly, and she pinches the bridge of her nose for a second. "Okay. Good. This is good. It's a start, anyway. Go home and get some sleep, Charles. Do you think you can have a report in by end of day? Social services is giving me trouble since he's still technically categorized as 'dangerous criminal,' and I'd like to get things moving."

As if, Charles thinks, he will be sleeping any time soon.

"End of day as in the day that we're technically in? Or before I go to bed?" Charles asks dryly, but he manages a small, false smile for her anyway, more or less. "I'll do my best to get it done for you. Am I free to leave, Officer?"

"Yeah," Moira says, returning his smile with a faint mental gust of relief; he's fooled her, at least for now. "Get out of here."

Charles goes. The ride home is a long one, even in the silence between him and the agent driving; the only sounds are the engine, humming, and the road beneath the wheels, and far-off sirens. He can't help but feel that he did a poor job tonight -- that he let his own history get in the way of helping Erik, of asking the right questions and getting to the truest possible answers. The jolt of the car going over a bump; the lean into a turn and the flickering streetlights all blend into one, the sound of Charles' own brain, emptied of meaning and hollowed out.

It is far too late, he thinks, to be awake and regretting things now.

*

_Erik_

The suppressor bands itch where sweat beads beneath the metal; they'll only slide an inch up or down his arm, but he keeps pushing at them anyway, looping his fingers round his wrist and gripping the now-slickened skin. Erik can feel what must be the latch, a tiny electronic grid over the veins on the underside of his wrist, but that does him little good. The bands aren't powerful enough to hold his mutation entirely -- he was testing at Psi level last Mutants' Day -- but they're strong enough to keep him from being able to just flick them off. He grits his teeth together until his jaw hurts and rubs at the right band, hard, until the human bitch they've got watching over him swats his hand away and says:

"Leave those alone, dear." She makes a tsk-ing noise and grabs his wrist, tugging it up so she can look at it. "Oh, look what you've done to yourself." The skin is red and raw, bleeding where he scratched at it.

He lets her hold his arm, keeping his hand limp like a dead fish, flopping around as she turns his wrist over in her grasp, inspecting it and giving him a disappointed look. Obviously, no one informed her that he's a mutant. He's Hellfire.

"It's all right," she says, letting go of his arm and shrugging her purse further up her shoulder. "I'm sure your foster family will have band-aids at their house. Are you excited to go back to a real house? I'll bet it wasn't very comfortable, staying at headquarters for two nights."

He doesn't know what she wants him to say to that, but she's not a Domme so even though it's a direct question he decides he doesn't have to answer. He stares down at the sidewalk instead, at the dirt crushed between the concrete squares, walked over so many times that nothing green can grow. Even if he answered her question, it wouldn't be the answer she wants. Of course he doesn't want to go to some civilian house. He doesn't want to be at the CIA either, but at least there he knew where he was and what was expected of him. He was a freedom fighter behind bars, and his job was to sit down and shut the fuck up. He'd have done exactly that, too, if it weren't for the telepath.

And ... now what? Telepathy isn't admissible in court, he knows that much, so he hasn't given anyone away. He sat mostly silent through his other interviews, all of them with submissive agents who never probed too deeply. Besides the telepath, the only Dom was the doctor, and his only orders were "lie still," "spread your legs," and "deep breath, this might sting a little." No one told him he _had_ to go turncoat. He isn't a traitor. Not yet. But he doesn't have a protocol for foster care. For what to do if everyone else is in prison, and he's the one that's free.

"You'd think they'd have the car waiting for us, wouldn't you?" Human Bitch says, and she laughs, a horrible fake sound. "Taxpayers' dollars at work, am I right?"

Erik rolls his eyes where she can't see it and reaches back for the hood of the jacket they gave him, pulling it up over his head to better shield his face. The car drives up a few minutes later, a polished black government vehicle with tinted windows. Human Bitch shuffles him forward and makes him get in. The seats are a fine plush leather, the interior too-hot in contrast to the cold outside air. He sits on the far side and ignores the way his stomach turns when she reaches over his shoulder to grab his safety belt and fasten it for him.

Human Bitch gets distracted giving directions to the driver, then, and Erik turns his attention back to the suppressor bands. They appear smooth all the way around, or would, to the naked eye, but Erik can feel the tiny fissure where the circle closes, and it's this that keeps drawing his attention, like something he keeps seeing out the corner of his eye and can't ever quite ignore.

It bothers him, a lot, being in this city without his powers. It bothers him to be without his powers, full stop, but especially in Manhattan, when so much is constructed of steel. This used to be one of his favorite safehouses, because of the way the skyscrapers felt towering up all around him, the fiery zip of the subway cars far underground. An entire city, electric from sunrise to sunrise, always making him feel so especially _alive._

Not now, though. Now it's all dull and muted, like he's trying to sense metal a mile underwater.

He turns his face toward the window and watches the East River dart past as they cross the bridge. Back to Brooklyn. The safehouse will be empty now, of course, cordoned off with yellow police tape and under watch, but it doesn't stop Erik feeling like he's just riding back, returning from a mission. Like they're all just going to get out of the car and go home, and Erik will make dinner while the others debrief. His breath feels a little too shallow and he tilts his head against the cold window, lifting a hand to hook one finger onto the single ring at the front of his collar, tugging lightly.

They don't go to the old neighborhood, of course. They drive through Williamsburg, instead, and into Bedford-Stuyvesant. Erik counts the streets they pass in his head and tries to place them on his mental map of Brooklyn in his mind without checking the signage. He does okay.

"All right, hon," Human Bitch says, tapping him on the elbow when they stop, and he doesn't immediately open the door. "We're here."

He waits for her to withdraw before he undoes his seatbelt and gets out of the car. Human Bitch grabs a duffel bag out of the trunk and leads the way across the street with Erik trailing after in her shadow, up the concrete steps of the brownstone and ringing the doorbell for the first floor apartment. She hums something under her breath while they're standing there, and reaches over to tug Erik's hood down.

"You look like a hooligan," she explains.

There's a clattering of footfalls audible all the way outside, and the sound of a lock clicking, and the door opens to reveal a small boy, maybe eight or nine, tow-headed and still wearing pajamas, gnawing on a Baby Ruth. He looks at them for a second, then reaches up to take the candy bar out of his mouth and yells, "Jada! The new kid's here!"

He hangs out by the door and just stares at the two of them, chewing on his chocolate. Erik looks down, a little embarrassed to hold the kid's gaze somehow.

The woman who comes to the door is tall and solid, not stocky but somehow -- dense, her presence strong and tangible. Her hair is tied up in a rough bundle on the back of her head in a myriad of little braids, and her arms are bare, her wrists circled with loose bangles that rattle when she moves. "Chelsea, it's good to see you," she says to Human Bitch, her dark eyes flickering between the two of them where they're stood on the step. "Come in, come in." She steps aside, waving for them to enter.

Human Bitch goes first and Erik follows, taking the duffel bag when Human Bitch hands it to him and hefting the strap onto his shoulder. It's heavy. He knows it contains shoes, and clothes, but somehow he'd thought it would be lighter.

The interior of the apartment is nice. Hardwood floors, old but well-cared-for, scuffed a little from human use. There's a large mirror hanging on the opposite wall, and when Erik catches a glimpse of himself in his peripheral vision, he can see his hair is all tousled and standing up from when Human Bitch pulled his hood back. He lifts a hand and carefully smooths it back down into place, then ducks his head lower; seeing his own movement reflected back at him is unnerving.

"Welcome to our home," the woman says, pausing in the hallway and gesturing for them to follow her into one of the rooms. Inside are two couches, both well-worn leather, separated by a coffee table; she indicates one for Human Bitch to sit down on, and takes the other herself, her posture strong and firm. "My name is Jada. I'm to be your foster mother for the time being. Your name is Erik?" She makes it a question, but one that expects an answer.

"Yes, Miss Jada," Erik says, taking care not to mumble. He puts his bag down and goes to kneel down at her side, perfect posture, settling easily on his knees next to her feet with his hands placed on his thighs, palms-up, head bowed to expose the back of his neck, open and submissive.

"Hmm," she says, her voice contemplative. "You sit very nicely, Erik, but you are not my submissive; that is my husband, John. While you are here you aren't a submissive, you are a child. Please take a seat on the sofa." She sounds firm, not angry, but Erik feels heat rising in his face all the same.

"Yes, Miss Jada," he says again, and he gets up, sliding one knee forward first so he can stand in a single, practiced motion -- and it's worse, like this, standing while the Domme is sitting, but he has his orders. So he goes over to the sofa where Human Bitch is and sits as far from her as he can get. He can't tell if Miss Jada is human or mutant, but for now it doesn't matter. Even if she's human, she's Dominant. She can't be disobeyed.

"Isn't that better?" Human Bitch says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. He ignores her.

"We have rules in this house for you to follow, but they are not difficult, I think," Miss Jada says. "Firstly, there is to be no violence of any kind. Secondly, no theft -- if something of yours goes missing, inform me, and we will find it. If it is in the possession of someone to whom it does not belong, it will be restored to you. Thirdly, you will respect yourself, your foster siblings, myself and my husband John. Fourth, no drugs or alcohol -- I will know if you have touched them. And fifth, no sex. Do you understand these rules?"

He stares at his hands. There's a hangnail starting on his thumb. He resists the sudden and near-overpowering urge to tear it off, and stuffs both hands under his knees instead, out of sight. "Yes, Miss Jada."

"Good," she says, and she sounds pleased. "Though you do not have to call me Miss Jada. Just Jada is fine. We have three other children staying with us at the moment -- Paul you have already met, but also Lara and Colin. Paul is a 2D, Lara a -2S, and Colin is 3D. My husband John is -4S."

Erik nods and closes his eyes for a moment, trying to stretch his power upstairs to feel out the other children, but about two feet in any direction from his own body, his power just ... fades. Suppressors are good enough to do that much, at any rate. He focuses on the latch again, scratching at it a little, but it doesn't even spark.

"You can talk, you know," Human Bitch says, and he finally thinks of an apt metaphor to describe the way she talks to him. It's like he's her disobedient puppy. Like he's a goddamn _dog._ "If you want."

He widens his eyes a little and manages to keep from rolling them, glaring incredulously at his own knees instead.

"He'll warm up once he's used to us," Miss Jada says, unperturbed. "Erik, I will ask John to take you upstairs and show you the room you'll be sharing with Lara while I speak with Chelsea."

Damn. He wants to hear what Human Bitch would say about him, but undoubtedly Miss Jada's submissive will keep him well occupied until Human Bitch is gone.

"I'll be back this weekend to check on you, okay, Erik?" Human Bitch says, and she pats the sofa next to him. "And you have my card. You can call whenever you want."

"John?" Miss Jada calls, and a moment later a man sticks his head in the door, eyebrows raised in a silent question. He's just as dark-skinned as Miss Jada, tall and broad-shouldered, but he doesn't have the same air about him -- something about his face is softer.

"John, Erik here would like to see his room," Miss Jada says, and John nods, smiling at Erik. "Come on then," he says, holding out his hand.

Erik doesn't take the hand, but he does get up and follow after John, turning back only to grab his duffel when Human Bitch calls after and reminds him. John leads the way down the hall, past the large mirror that had disturbed Erik earlier.

"You'll be sharing with Lara," John says quietly, pausing at a door just past the kitchen and smiling crookedly at Erik. "She's a nice girl. You shouldn't have any trouble."

John knocks on the door and opens it after a girl's voice says "Come in." The room is about the size of Erik's at the Berlin safehouse, with two twin beds pushed against opposite walls, two matching sets of desks and dressers, a single curtained window between them. It feels like stepping inside of a doll's house.

The girl, Lara, is sitting cross-legged on the righthand bed, a laptop perched on her knees. She looks like she's around Erik's age, give or take a year, with lots of curly dark hair decorated with a dozen glittering clips. "Hey," she says, tilting her laptop screen down. "I'm Lara."

She looks at him, waiting for a response. Erik wants to say something, but his throat feels like it's been glued shut. He shrugs the duffel bag off his shoulder and drops it at the foot of the unoccupied bed.

"It's okay," Lara says. "Colin didn't talk when he got here either. Hey, John, what's for dinner?"

"Thought we'd order in tonight, in honour of our new guest," John says, smiling at them both. "What do you think, Erik? Pizza or Chinese? Which do you prefer?"

Erik stares, a little, because -- seriously? He strongly doubts Miss Jada is okay with John choosing what everyone eats, never mind letting _Erik_ choose. He lifts his shoulders, then drops them again, discomfort buzzing beneath his breastbone, anxious and restless.

"I think that means pizza," Lara says. "Please can we have pizza? _Please?_ "

John just keeps smiling. "Is pizza okay with you, Erik?"

Erik nods, even though it's not really his decision to make, and sits down on the edge of the bed. It's softer than what he's used to, gives a little too much under his weight.

"All right, then, pizza it is," John says, with a snort for Lara when she cheers. "Do you want to choose what toppings you have on yours? I promise that nobody will judge you, unless you like anchovies, in which case, we may do."

"I don't care," Erik says.

"He speaks!" Lara exclaims with mock astonishment, and Erik wants to say _Of course I speak_ , but his throat's closed up again.

He reaches for his duffel instead, pulling it up onto the bed and unzipping it. The clothes inside don't belong to him. They're all fresh and unworn, with the tags still on. Anger swells up hot and fast in his chest, because how dare they? His things are _his_. He dumps the clothes out on the bed but all that's in the bottom are shoes and a single book, _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,_ also new.

Of course, he knows well enough where his own things are. They're undoubtedly locked up in an evidence locker somewhere in CIA headquarters, because, obviously, Erik's t-shirts and books are going to provide rock-hard evidence of terrorist activity. Right.

"Well, let me know if you need anything or if you have any questions," John says, walking towards the door. "Lara will help you settle in, I'm sure, but just in case -- bathroom is two doors down on your left. All the other rooms on this hall are bedrooms, except for the door at the far end of the hall, which is a den, where you can go to watch TV or read or play games. Dinner is at seven. All right?"

Erik drags his attention back up from the duffel bag to nod acknowledgment and John leaves, pulling the door mostly-shut behind himself when he goes.

"So," Lara says from the other bed, flopping down onto her back, casual as anything. "Like. Do you answer questions more than one in ten? Or is that your quota?"

The heat beneath his skin is back, but now that John's gone it feels like he's actually breathing air again. "I answer questions," he says. "I just don't _know_ them. They're strangers." He hasn't seen any evidence to suggest John and Miss Jada are mutants, for example, and he knows it's statistically unlikely, which means they aren't on his side. It's like the CIA agent told him when he was arrested. 'Anything you say can and _will_ be used against you in a court of law.'

"You don't know if you prefer pizza or Chinese food?"

"I just don't have a preference," Erik says, and he looks away from her, refolding the clothes that got mussed when he pulled them out of his duffel, and he only remembers the suppressors when he tries to reach with his power to pull open the dresser drawer and nothing happens. He has to get physically out of bed and go and tug the drawer open with his hand, an action which rankles him deeply considering it's such a minor thing. No. _Because_ it's such a minor thing. He can tear down the Flatiron Building -- _did_ tear down the Flatiron Building, for that matter. And now he can't open a goddamn drawer.

She's quiet for a long while, though he can feel her watching him as he unpacks; it's a tangible silence, a pondering one. “John and Jada’re pretty nice," she says eventually, her tone oddly neutral. "Don't know about you, but I've stayed in some shitty places before this one. They don't do any of that bad touch shit here. So it's a pretty cushy spot. You're lucky to get it."

"If it's so _cushy_ \--" Erik snaps, rounding on her and thrusting both arms out, hands tightened into fists, so she can see the silvery suppression bands clasped around his wrists " -- tell them to take _these_ off." He can feel the marrow boiling in his bones, anger threatening to rise up hard and fast and tip him over the edge.

As if he should be grateful, to be separated from the Hellfire Club, to be in this house with these humans, with everything that makes him who he is locked away.

"What are they?" she asks, frowning at him; she's reacting a little, though, pulling her body taut, ready to move. "Don't get mad at me because you're wearing bangles."

"They're suppression bands," Erik states flatly. "They suppress my mutation. I'm a mutant."

He watches closely when he says it to see how she takes that, but all he gets is an unimpressed look and a, "Huh. What can you do, then? When you're not all blinged up, I mean."

"I can manipulate electromagnetism," Erik says, dropping his arms back down to his sides after a moment. "Metal, electricity, electromagnetic fields. I was -- am -- Psi-level." Mr. Shaw said he'll undoubtedly be omega-level by the time he's sixteen. Right now? God, he might as well be fucking human for all the good metal does him.

"Hmm," says Lara, considering, but then she rolls her eyes and flops back down onto the bed, reaching for her phone. "Lame."

Erik just stands there, staring at her, feeling alternately furious and confused. "It's not _lame_ ," he says after several seconds. "Why would you say it's lame?"

"Seriously? Like, this one guy at my school can split himself into, like, seven guys, and they can all do stuff separately then _schloop_ back together and he knows all the stuff they learned, he's taking every class in school," Lara says, her phone starting to play a tinny song as her thumbs fly over the screen. "That's some serious mojo right there. So. You're a giant magnet. Seven guys, magnet. Lame."

Erik wants to come back and tell her he could create a wormhole in spacetime and dump her in the sixteenth century if he felt like it, but for one, that's not technically true, it's just theoretically _possible_ , and he'd probably have to be omega-level to do it. For two, he doesn't get the sense that's the kind of conversation they're having. He feels ... out of his depth, navigating this. Lara's the first person he's ever met his own age, but he doesn't get the sense she'd want to talk about the things he wants to talk about: namely, the mutant struggle, and getting the fuck out of this house.

"You could do a lot of damage with seven guys," Erik admits finally, and moves the new shirts and sweaters into the empty dresser drawer. But only if the mutant in question has another skill, or is particularly good at hand-to-hand combat. Otherwise, well ... it's cool, but it's useless.

"The high school football coach wants him to try out for all the positions," Lara agrees. "This other kid I know? He has wings. Like an angel. It's cool."

Erik nods and arranges the new shoes in the second drawer. The book, he sets on top of the dresser. Only one book? Erik reads fast, and he read _The Wizard of Oz_ for the first time when he was six. Whatever. More time to think about how he'll get the suppressors off, and what he plans to do once he does.

He sits back down on the bed, watching Lara play with her phone, not quite sure what to do with himself. He can't just walk out the door. For one, Miss Jada's there. For two, what would he do once he's free? He doesn't have his power. He's useless. And that means that, until either he manages to get the bracelets off or one of the free Hellfire members comes for him, he'll be stuck here.

"Lara," he says. "Where is Miss Jada's room?"

The girl shrugs. "Two doors down to the right. Why?"

"John forgot to tell me," Erik says. He brings his legs up onto the bed and shifts to lie down lengthwise, head on the pillow and his gaze turned up toward the ceiling and the fan slowly whipping the air around overhead.

"You're so weird," she says, still tapping away on her phone from the other side of the room. It's quiet then for a short while, just the sound of whatever it is she's doing to break the silence; then she says, her voice overly casual, "So why have you got a collar on? You're too young for a collar yet."

"That's not true," Erik says firmly, and one hand creeps up to touch the leather band, to smooth over it. It's warm, from his body heat. "I shouldn't be wearing it outside, but they took us in the middle of the night. There was nothing I could do."

He wonders if he isn't trying to convince himself, as much as Lara. He could have taken it off, himself, but that would have been disobedient, too. Only Mr. Shaw can remove it. But the truth is.... The truth is, Erik didn't think of it. He was too concerned with the loss of his powers from the suppressor field around the safehouse.

"Is so true," she says, sitting up on her bed with a creak of springs in the mattress. "What are you, some kind of refugee? _They took us in the middle of the night_ \-- you sound like Anne Frank." Her voice is a little derisive, like she knows something he doesn't.

"Something like that." He tugs on his collar again and wishes Mr. Shaw were here. It's not something he's accustomed to wishing. He presses his lips together and tells himself not to speak again. He's not an idiot; he knows how humans feel about the Hellfire Club. About any mutants who care to stand up for their rights. It was different, when he didn't have to live among them, but now it seems like something he ought to keep secret.

Lara looks set to say something else when Erik doesn't reply, but she's interrupted by a call from down the hall, John's voice shouting, "Kids! Pizza!"

Erik isn't hungry, but he's first on his feet all the same, out the door and in the hall before Lara can say anything else.

He's done answering questions.

*

_Charles_

Probably it's wasteful, but Charles finds it difficult to convince himself that he should turn down his thermostat to save heat. It's far more comfortable to sit and do paperwork in his underwear, rather than bundled up in a million layers, and after a long day of appointments he craves a little informality, stripping away the dignified exterior he has to put on to be taken seriously in favour of being more like his true, twenty-six-year-old self.

He sighs, wincing at the thoughts. He's proud, of course, of being so well-regarded in his career already at his age -- there aren't many clinical psychologists in the _world_ who focus on mutant psychology, and as far as he knows none of the others are mutants -- but still, it's difficult sometimes to be the adult he's required to be when he more or less raised himself, without good role models to build from. Everyone expects him to be so mature, so in control -- and when he can't be it's hard not to punish himself for it, coming home and fretting over it for hours, trying to change his mistakes through sheer force of will. It never works. It just makes him exhausted, and sad, and it makes him hate himself.

Charles turns the page of the report he's proofing and sucks on the top of his pen as he reads, tiredness weighing him down and making it hard to focus. His limbs feel heavy, like they've been encased in cement; his mind, too. He shifts on the couch, the leather making a sticky noise as it peels away from his skin. The thing is -- he's not unaware, of his state of mind. He knows that the mess in the kitchen and a month's worth of undone laundry and sitting around in his boxers fighting through his work so that he can lie down and pretend he doesn't exist for the rest of the evening isn't normal, and in his heart of hearts he knows he's depressed. But it doesn't mean he can do anything about it. On the contrary, he feels rather caught in it, like a fly in amber before it's entirely set, waiting for the world to be sealed away from him, golden-hued and airless.

His phone rings, somewhere in his satchel; he ignores it, not wanting to have to talk to any more people today. Instead he finishes editing the report and sets it aside on the coffee table next to the half-eaten carton of yesterday's chow mein and a pyramid of empty coffee cups and lies back on the couch, curling up on his side and letting his skin stick to the leather again, all over, the cushions drawing him down and in, anchoring him in place.

He wonders if Moira will make him see the Lehnsherr boy again tomorrow, when he goes in to interview the other members of the Hellfire Club. There is a part of Charles that wants to, and a larger part that knows this case isn't helping with his current case of the sads. And yet ... there is something still niggling him about that boy, something he can't put his finger on.

Maybe it won't be so bad, Charles thinks, closing his eyes and letting the central heating do its job of keeping him from catching a chill. He can cope with this. And when it's done and over with he can come back here and maybe he'll be able to sleep.

The phone rings again, and again; he ignores it every time, but then eventually he hears the sound of the answerphone on his landline click in, and Raven's voice says, "Charles, I know you're there. Stop wallowing and pick up." She sounds tinny and far away, not something he has to pay attention to now. " _Charles._ Pick up the damn phone!"

The command in her voice is strong, and Charles sighs, shuffling up off the couch and trudging over to the phone, hitting the speaker button and sitting down again on the floor beside it. "What?"

"I'm just checking you're alive," Raven says, her voice warring between careful gentleness and the acid of her true annoyance. "Since I haven't heard from you in over a week."

"I'm alive," Charles says, and he feels rather guilty now, head sagging towards his knees. "Sorry. I'll try harder."

"It's not a question of trying harder, it's one of getting some help," Raven says. "I know you always say you are a therapist, but apparently ‘physician heal thyself’ isn't working."

"I'll be fine."

"Will you?" Raven asks, and her voice now is soft in disbelief, not unkind. "Will you, Charles?"

And he doesn't have the heart to say that he doesn't know.

*

_Erik_

It's an old building, and Erik realizes on the first day that if he lies on the floor of the bathroom with his ear pressed against the vent, he can hear anything that goes on in the kitchen. So he takes a lot of very long 'showers,' the hot water beating against the tile and the steam beading on his skin, while he stays curled up on the linoleum, listening. He starts because he's hoping to hear something useful; whenever the television's on and the anchor starts talking about the Hellfire Club arrests -- or any mutant issues, at all -- Miss Jada or her submissive immediately changes the channel, and for the first time in his life, Erik finds he has no idea what's going on in the mutant world. His only connection is through the things he overhears.

Most of the time, though, no one's talking about anything interesting. Erik listens, anyway, of course, and it's calming, somehow, his cheek pressed against cool tile and the sounds of cooking or chatter wafting through the vent and lulling him to a shallow doze. Here, it seems, or so far, anyway, showers are sacrosanct. Even if he spends hours in the bathroom, no one comes in. It's the only way he can be truly alone.

Colin makes fun of him for spending so much time in here, but all his jokes go over Erik's head. He doesn't particularly care what the children think, anyway. His world has been reduced to a singular goal: Escape. Get the others out of prison. Blow the CIA straight to hell.

As such, some part of his mind is always fixated on the suppressor bands, tinkering with the latching mechanism. It's only a sixteen-pin socket, it shouldn't be this fucking _hard_ \--

He's still working the latch with his half-conscious mind, somewhere between waking and sleeping, when the sound of his name jolts him back.

" -- can't just let him keep wearing it," Miss Jada is saying, her voice firm and determined. "It's like letting a condemned man keep his noose on."

"I know," says John's softer voice, "but maybe we should wait for him to ask for it off? I don't think force will help."

"He's never going to ask us to take it off. It's not nice, but perhaps shock therapy would be best in this case. If we ask, he'll be forewarned and it will only make the task harder."

Erik only realizes he'd been yanking at his collar when it cuts so hard across his throat that he can't breathe. They can't. They wouldn't -- would they? No Domme would dare remove another Dom's collar. Only .... That telepath, the psychologist, had tried to. Was hoping to. He stopped when Erik told him to stop, but it doesn't sound like the same would go for Miss Jada and John.

He rubs against his now-bruising skin, sliding his fingers underneath the collar to touch the heated flesh, and presses his ear harder against the vent.

"I'm not sure about this," John is saying. "We want him to trust us, but this won't help."

"I'm sure," Miss Jada says. "It's like ripping off a band-aid. It has to be done. So, we're agreed that the other children will go with Nana to the park while we talk to him?"

"Yes," John says, clearly giving up the fight. "Now about Nana, she called me earlier to ask about her garden ... "

Erik keeps listening a while longer, but they don't discuss it again. He pushes himself up, and reaches for the shower handle, fingers slipping on the steamed-up metal a few times before he manages to shut it off. He sits there in the foggy bathroom, leaning against the wall and breathing heavily; where his hand is pressed against his neck he can feel his pulse throbbing, too quickly to count the beats. His collar is the last connection he has to his ideals, right now, in this place so far from the rest of the Hellfire Club, his powers under lock and key. They took his clothes, his shoes, his books and gave him new, sanitized versions of their own. They catalogued every inch of him with their probes and their camera lenses, inside and out. And now this, the final tie the humans will cut in their attempts to excise him from his former life.

Well, they're right about one thing, he decides grimly. They won't get his collar off without a fight.

*

That night, Erik lies awake in bed, fiddling with the suppressor bands. Now more than ever, he knows the importance of escaping, before Miss Jada can remove his collar. Erik's never been a very good submissive, but this would be the ultimate betrayal, beyond even Erik's capacity for disobedience. He doesn't want to imagine what Mr. Shaw would do. His collarbone, only recently-healed, aches again just to think about it, and Erik rubs at it absently, trying to think of his power like a thin sheet of pounded copper sliding between the pins, pressing up against the latch. Nothing.

It must be late. He glances across the room at the glowing digital alarm clock on Lara's bedside table. 11:01 PM. Miss Jada said John would be back by midnight from his work party in Manhattan. It was an obvious and direct cue, but she never specified which one of them it was for. He waits a little while longer, his attention slipping away from the suppressor bands more and more, until his entire focus is on the clock and watching the minutes tick by, stomach twisting in on itself until he feels sick.

11:15, and Lara hasn't moved. It must be his turn.

He slips out of bed quietly and pads to the bedroom door, still just cracked; Miss Jada had said they weren't allowed to close it entirely, or lock it, until Erik earned the privilege. It makes it easier to go into the hall without waking Lara, though. _Second door to the right,_ Erik reminds himself, and he trails his fingers along the wall as he passes. His legs are shaking a little. Fuck it -- _control yourself, Lehnsherr_. Two doors.

He pauses just outside Miss Jada's shut bedroom door and closes his eyes, taking in a few shaking breaths, trying to steady himself. It's not very effective. He's still such a child, in so many ways.... It'll be better, once he knows exactly what's expected of him, once he figures out the exact schedule. He just doesn't do well with this kind of uncertainty.

It's a flimsy reassurance, but it makes him feel a little bit better, all the same. He turns the knob and lets himself in. The room's dark, Miss Jada nothing more than a shadowy lump under the covers on the bed. Is she sleeping? Is he late?

He wavers for a second, there in the doorway, unsure if he should wake her up or go back, knows he risks punishment either way. In the end he decides to proceed, moving quickly across the room and pulling back the corner of the coverlet, crawling into the warm bed next to Miss Jada's still body and lying there on his side, staring at her through the dark, keeping himself still only by virtue of holding his breath.

"Mmm ... John?" Miss Jada murmurs, rolling towards him and opening her eyes as tiny slits, lashes heavy still against her cheeks, the whites of her eyes showing through just a little. Then, after a moment, she opens her eyes wider, then fully, blinking at Erik. "Erik? What are you doing here?" Her eyebrows have shot up towards her hair, and her body has stiffened, not the relaxed, loose shape of before.

Erik flinches back, responding to the change in body language more than anything else, even though she hasn't touched him, hasn't done anything -- "What do you mean?" he says, and hates himself when his voice quavers a little, his heart dropping into his stomach with a sickening lurch.

"Why are you in my bed?" she asks, her voice very, very neutral.

"Don't you -- " he swallows, and under the covers his nails claw at one of his suppressor bracelets, digging painfully into his skin. "Don't you ... want me here?"

"In my house? Yes. In my bed? Honey, no," Miss Jada says, sitting up and letting the covers fall away from her body, which drags them away from Erik too. "You're a child -- nobody expects you to sleep with them. You have your own bed because I want you to sleep there."

Erik sits up, but he doesn't get out of bed. He feels steadier, now, all of the sudden, and he tilts his head down, trying very hard to look submissive, to keep his voice soft when he says, "I wasn't suggesting I sleep here."

He watches her very carefully from under his lashes, and so he sees exactly when her expression changes, just a flicker of disgust before she hides it away, but she's stiff and unwelcoming all over now, her face just as set as the rest of her. "I know," she says. "And as I said -- you're a child, Erik. Now go back to bed. We'll talk about this tomorrow when John is home."

It's an order, and so he obeys, climbing back out of bed and walking out of the room without looking back. It's only once he's back in his own room, sitting cross-legged on his bed with the lamp on his bedside table turned on, that he is able to think at all about what Miss Jada said, turning it over in his mind with a growing sense of incredulity. Knowing that it was likely only because he was late that she turned him away doesn't change anything, not really, because she implied she was going to tell her submissive about it, which ... is fucking strange, as far as Erik's concerned. He doesn't see why she'd care what John thinks.

"What are you doing?" Lara mumbles at him from across the room, eyes squinting against the light from his lamp.

"Nothing," Erik murmurs back at her, winding his power like a ribbon between the pins of the latching mechanism on his bracelets. "Go back to sleep."

She pulls the blankets up over her head and obeys, and Erik stays up until the sun is rising over the skyline, gently coaxing metal back under his control.

*

Miss Jada sends the children off with John's mother the next morning. Erik, who is staying behind and who knows exactly what that means, waits in his room until they call for him, still teasing at the bracelets with his power, desperate for every last second he can claim to work on them. But when John knocks on his door and asks him to come sit in the den with them, the suppressors are still locked firmly around both wrists, his power restrained like a bird in a cage. The collar is coming off, and Erik won't have any way to fight back.

He goes, anyway, following John down the hall to where Miss Jada waits, sitting in one of the leather armchairs with her legs crossed at the knees. The sheer Dominance she gives off makes Erik feel apprehensive all over again, anxiety clawing at the inside of his ribcage and making him want to go and kneel even though she told him not to, as if that could stave off the worst of whatever she has planned.

"Sit down, Erik," she says, her voice pleasant enough, and gestures towards one of the couches, even as John comes to kneel by her side, tall enough that his head still reaches Miss Jada's shoulder. "We need to have a little talk, after last night."

He sits, choosing the center cushion of the sofa directly opposite her. He feels like a thousand tiny insects are crawling up his spine, and he keeps his posture stiff, glaring at his hands clasped in his lap, the silver bands around his arms abhorrent.

"I understand from Chelsea that you lived in a very different place before," Miss Jada says, "and that it is probably confusing to be here now, with different rules. Do you remember what the rules were that I told you the first day you arrived?"

"Yes?" He wonders if it's possible to cut the suppressors off if he has a sharp enough knife. Or perhaps it would require a chainsaw. The second the metal was sliced through, he'd have his powers back, could deflect the blades before they cut his skin.

"Then you remember the one that said, 'no sex.' That doesn't just apply to between you children," Miss Jada says, "or even between you and outsiders, but also means that there will be no sex for you at all, including with myself or John. You are fourteen -- not only not legal to have sex but a _child,_ Erik. And I am not interested in children." Her voice is firm but kind, and Erik feels a little bit sorry for her, because Mr. Azazel said the exact same thing, once. It didn't last then, and it won't last now, either.

Miss Jada pauses, to let her words sink in, before she continues. "Furthermore, it is not legal for you to be collared at your age, Erik. Given that your -- that the person who gave you that collar is now in prison awaiting trial, you will need to take off the collar. There is no need for you to wear it."

"No." Erik's hand has leapt up over the collar as if to hold it there. He isn't looking down anymore; he's meeting Miss Jada's gaze from across the room, eyes narrowed -- maybe if they realize he won't go easy, they'll give up before they even begin. "It's not yours to remove."

Her mouth tightens, lips pursing. "I am your legal guardian, Erik -- I have every right to remove it. That your ... previous co-inhabitants gave you a collar at your age says more than enough about them, and I will not have you continuing to wear the badge of your own abuse at their hands. Remove it, or I will remove it for you."

Erik's on his feet a second later, tension drawing all his muscles taut, ready to run, to fight if necessary. "I said _no_ ," he snaps out, curling his hands into fists, casting out his power for weapons before remembering it's useless, there's nothing that will answer to him, not now. "Don't touch it. If you try, I will make you regret it." And Domme or not, _that_ much he can do.

"Sit down, Erik," Miss Jada says sharply, and her voice is forceful now, full of Dominance that beats down at Erik's shoulders like being deep underwater. "Behave yourself."

"I won't," he says, and he pushes back against her Dominance as hard as he can, gritting his teeth, and it falls away like a flimsy thing, Erik left a little breathless, dizzy, heat thrumming beneath his skin. "I won't," he says again, louder this time, clearer; his nails are cutting into the heels of his hands, sharp hot bursts of pain.

Her expression is darkening now, and she stands slowly, using her height to loom over him. "Sit down, Erik," she says, her voice stronger again, like being at the bottom of the ocean. "Right now."

"You can't make me," Erik says. He takes a step forward, just to prove it, squaring his shoulders a little, a posture that feels false, too Dominant, not-his, but he does it anyway, his heart beating so fast that he worries it'll just -- stop. She's a strong Domme, but she isn't as strong as Mr. Shaw, and Erik disobeyed him plenty of times. He can disobey her, too, if he wants. "And you can't take off my collar, either."

Miss Jada looks surprised, and not in a good way -- she doesn't take her eyes from Erik as she steps forward to match him, and she says, steadily, "John, come and help me with this."

Behind her, John gets to his feet, and Erik takes a sharp step to the side, angling to get his back toward the door, breathing with shallow, quick breaths and ready to run, but not willing to make the first move. He won't be able to fight them off physically, he knows that, but he can be quick when he has to be. He watches Miss Jada's shoulders -- he'll see her posture shift right before she reaches for him, can react faster than she can finish the movement.

"Erik," Miss Jada says warningly, "this is for your own good. It brings me no pleasure to force it on you, but believe me, you will like it much less if a policeman stops us in the street and enforces the law. They will not be nearly as careful and understanding as I am trying to be with you." Her eyes are sympathetic, but her mouth is very firm and determined, not a hint of give in it.

"No." Erik can hear his own voice, how he sounds panicked, childish, but he can't care right now, when the most important thing is making sure the collar stays on his neck, where it belongs. He presses a hand over his throat, hiding the collar from view -- as if that would make a difference, when they're just going to try to hold him down and force it off him. "You can't. Please -- please don't."

"Why not, Erik?" John asks, his voice soft and slow, though he too is standing ready, awaiting Miss Jada's order to help her. "Why are you so determined to keep it on?"

The truth -- it's all I have left -- hurts too much to say aloud. "I'll get in trouble," Erik says instead, and he hates himself even for saying that much; it feels like weakness, somehow, and he can feel the sting of hot tears prickling at the backs of his eyes even as he takes another step toward the door, ready to run.

"Hey now," John says, and he steps between Erik and the door, blocking him in before Erik can stop him. "You won't be in trouble. Who would you be in trouble with?" He holds his hands up, probably trying to look harmless, but it just makes clear how easily he could reach out and grab Erik, hold him down.

"Just don't touch it!" Erik says. His only escape route taken, he decides to go for the window instead, moving quick to get the sofa between himself and Miss Jada.

But instead, she just nods, and before Erik realizes what that means -- what she's doing -- John's arms close around him from behind, locking around his arms and pinning him against John's broad chest. Erik yells, immediately, kicking back with both feet as hard as he can, thrusting his heels against John's shins and clawing, biting at his arms -- he feels like -- he -- he can't breathe, like he's slowly being crushed -- his heart's pounding in his temples and he can taste flesh, digs in harder, trying to taste _blood_.

John is yelling now, too, a loud bellow of pain as Erik fights him, but it doesn't stop Miss Jada from stepping in and grabbing the collar with her hands, finding the buckle and working at it with her fingers despite Erik's tossing head. It only takes a few seconds before she pulls back, and with her goes the pressure that has sat around Erik's neck for so long, a long strip of black leather clutched in her fist. Erik stares at it, and the room's gone blurry; it takes him a second to realize that's from the tears cutting down his face, hot and surreal.

John lets go of Erik the second he can and Erik drops to the floor, gasping for breath and shaking, his whole body electric; he watches one tear slip down his nose and drop off the tip to splash on the hardwood floor and feels like ... feels like _none of this is real_ , like someone's cut him out of his own body and let an imposter take his place, his hands long and pale and wrists looking like they belong to a stranger, encircled by those slim silver bands.

"There," Miss Jada says, sounding relieved, almost, and when Erik looks up she's coiling the collar around her palm and closing her fingers around it, keeping hold so Erik can't take it back. "That wasn't so bad, was it, except for poor John."

Erik feels too-hot, and anger rips down through him from his head to his gut, a horrible sensation that trembles through to his very fingertips, and he seizes it, lets it fuel him as he focuses what's left of his power and _drills_ it hard against the latching mechanisms on his suppressors -- and just like that, just like that, the bracelets drop to the floor, empty and useless, and the entire world comes flooding back in.

"Erik -- " Miss Jada starts, warningly, her eyes on the empty metal bands.

It's too late. Erik has thrown his power wide and grasped onto pipes in the walls and yanked them forward, the whole building shuddering as metal plows through mortar and shot through the room. Water is spraying out overhead, soaking the east corner, and Erik reaches for the iron railing lining the front steps and it crashes through the window a split second later, colliding with Miss Jada's head. She drops to the floor immediately, unconscious; John is trapped with his leg caught under fallen bricks, unable to move, screaming Jada's name and reaching for her, his trouser leg stained red.

Erik leaves. The suppressor bands he melts into twin silver pools on the floor before he does, making sure they can’t be used against him again. 

Outside, it’s like seeing the street for the first time -- everything’s brighter, more awake, more _alive_ ; he can feel the hum of the cars, the silver ribbon of the subway cars below lacing through the city, the distant glimmer of Manhattan steel. And … there it is, that pulse of electromagnetism tying it all together, woven throughout everything in existence: the fabric of the universe. 

He follows the line of the train tracks underground to the nearest subway station and makes the machine spit out a Metrocard, letting himself get swallowed by the ranks of the humans shuffling through the turnstiles, tapping their cards against the magnetic reader. Erik almost laughs; it’d be so easy to just _make_ the turnstile let him through, but that would draw attention, and he’s been taught how to be subtle until the situation calls for something … stronger.

Riding the train has always been the best part of any city he’s visited. That they’re all, mechanically, very similar doesn’t matter; he never gets tired of the way it feels to be completely encased in metal, moving rapidfire down metal tracks alongside an electrified rail. It sings now to a part of him that’s been suppressed for too long. He looks down at his now-bare wrists and gingerly touches the inflamed skin, slick and blistered from all his fussing with the bracelets. He pulls the sleeves of his hoodie down to obscure the redness and curls his fingers up against the fabric, tucking his arms in close around his stomach.

The sign overhead says this line will take him all the way to Midtown, near enough to CIA Headquarters that he won’t have to catch a connecting train. He leans against the side of the car and closes his eyes, keeping a vague sense of how many times they stop but otherwise letting his mind drift close to the sleep he’d missed the previous night and fall into a shallow doze.

When they reach his stop, it seems like half the train wants to exit. Erik joins in behind a human family: tall, bulky father and his wife, three young children, all with red hair. He keeps close to them as they pass a knot of human police officers, tilting his face away and trying to look like he belongs. 

Surfacing to street-level, Erik feels stronger already, buoyed up by his own power, as if his mutation himself were telling him -- yes, this is right, you must do this, only you _can_ do this.

The CIA’s New York field office is an unlabeled, unobtrusive building, designed to blend in with the ones around it. From the outside, it looks indistinguishable from an office building, but Erik’s been there, knows how the structure is reinforced, has seen the cell block and met the agents with their cold eyes and affectless smiles. But somewhere, within all that soullessness, are the only people that matter to Erik in the entire world.

He reaches his power deep into the bones of the building, seeking out something -- anything -- familiar: Miss Emma's jewelry, perhaps, or Mr. Azazel's watch, Mr. Wyngarde’s tie pin or the cufflinks that Mr. Shaw and Mr. Essex always wore --

There's variations on all these things, but none are what he's looking for. None rings true. They're gone, then. The CIA's moved them somewhere -- elsewhere. Erik pulls back and frowns at the building's tall black walls, taking a step closer and dipping in again, this time pouring his awareness down as well as out, finding the metal infrastructure beneath the streets and the steel girders in the walls, reaching out with one hand as he goes deeper, further, eyes falling shut. The outside world falls away, the sound of traffic fading into the background, secondary to the metal that hums all around him.

A dom of keys and a wallet approach him, and Erik's mind suddenly falls back into his body without his input as a voice says, "That's enough of that. Let go of the metal, Erik -- there are people around here, you know."

Erik's grip on the steel falters, then slides. He opens his eyes and looks over to see -- the telepath, the one who spoke to him after the arrests, his hands half-raised and eyebrows raised; though his expression is calm and not unkind, his eyes are a little wide, the whites showing around his irises.

"What?" It's not eloquent, but it's the only thing Erik can think to say.

"There are people around here who have nothing to do with the CIA," the telepath says, adjusting his stance and glancing at the building in front of them. "And frankly, this isn't going to make you feel any better." He pauses, and there's a flicker of something on his face that Erik can't read before it's gone, a slight shift in his posture, and then he lets out a breath and says, "Come on, let's go get a coffee and you can tell me about it."

Erik's power is still tangled up in steel cable and wires, but he draws it back anyway, a little reluctantly, letting go of the metal even though it still calls to him, lets it become nothing but a thrumming presence on the periphery of his mind, no greater a distraction than the hum of traffic. He catches himself after a second and pulls his gaze away from the telepath's face, fixing it on a crack in the sidewalk instead, both his hands thrusting into his pockets and curling into fists. At last, he makes himself say, "Okay."

"Good. Great." The telepath lets out a breath, expression relaxing, and then gestures for Erik to follow him, starting off down the street. "I suspect you've forgotten, so -- my name is Charles Xavier," he says once Erik has caught up, his pace slow and steady. "You can call me Charles."

Erik doesn't say anything. Isn't sure what Charles -- what Dr. Xavier wants him to say, since he obviously already knows Erik's name. He just follows him, walking along in Dr. Xavier's wake as they weave through the mid-afternoon foot traffic. The city seems so much louder, now, than it ever did when he was out in it with the Hellfire Club. Somehow Mr. Shaw's presence made everything else seem insignificant.

"I expect you were focused on making sure you didn't misbehave, or miss any orders," Dr. Xavier says, without so much as a by-your-leave. He seems calm now, as though the wide-eyed worry of a few moments ago was never there. "Of course, the city is always very loud to me. I don't remember a time when it wasn't deafening."

Miss Emma never liked the city, either. 'Too loud,' she'd always complain, and she'd never go out unless it was a mission, preferring to stay in the safehouse, sipping White Russians and rubbing her temples. Erik doesn't say that out loud, of course, but he knows Dr. Xavier will catch it, all the same.

"Here we are." Dr. Xavier sets a hand briefly on Erik's shoulder to turn him to their left, and across the other foot traffic to enter the open door of a coffee shop, the inside richly fragranced and decorated in the sort of bland modern way all chain stores seem to be, glass tables and metal-framed chairs. "Do you know what you'd like to drink, Erik, or would you like to look at the menu first? I'll buy."

Erik just shrugs, following Dr. Xavier to the counter where an overly friendly barista is waiting, pen poised over a paper cup.

"What can I get for you?" she says.

Erik stares, a little; she's wearing a collar, a simple brown leather loop around her neck. It makes him feel the absence of his own even more keenly, his fingers skipping up to rub at the empty skin. He can feel the delicate sterling silver latch at the back of hers, a slim chain undulating down the nape of her neck. He feels suddenly -- bizarrely -- dizzy, and looks away.

"A pot of Earl Grey for me," Dr. Xavier says, setting his hand back on Erik's shoulder, his broad, square palm steadying Erik where he stands. "And ... Erik, shall I get you another cup for some tea, or would you prefer a soda?"

"It doesn't matter," Erik says, power latching onto one of the little steel pitchers instead, feeling the metal heat up as another barista steams a pot of milk. He's starting to regret letting Dr. Xavier drag him here; he should be in the library, looking up where they take people once the CIA's done with them, not ... not drinking _tea_ in Midtown.

Dr. Xavier's hand squeezes for a moment, then drops away. "Another cup then, please. And Erik, perhaps you can think of it as mining me for information? Surely I'm a better source than hoping to find something at the library." His voice is wry, warm, but honest, as far as Erik can tell; he's not playing games at least.

That said, Erik very much doubts he'll be giving up the kind of information Erik needs. Dr. Xavier made it perfectly clear last time they spoke that he's a gene traitor, and no friend of the Hellfire Club.

Dr. Xavier takes them to an empty table along the wall, setting the little wire mannequin with the numbered card the barista gave him on the table, presumably so she can find them later with the tea. Dr. Xavier sits and Erik goes to kneel down at his side on the provided blue submissive's cushion.

"Oh, there's no need for that. I'm a sub myself," Dr. Xavier says, smiling down at him. "Won't you sit up at the table? I wouldn't want you to get a crick in your neck."

It's -- not at all what Erik would have expected. Dr. Xavier ... Charles ... is nothing like any sub Erik's ever met. Though, then again, Erik's only met two other subs, both Mr. Essex's playthings, young boys who cried too much and then went limp when Essex fucked them. It had always been made quite clear to Erik that he was an unusually disobedient, mouthy sub. Charles? Charles is _worse._

Erik gets up, though, and goes to sit in the chair across from him, settling his forearms atop the table and feeling strangely nervous, for reasons he can't be bothered to try and pinpoint. "You can't be a sub," he says after a moment. "...Are you sure that's what you are? What's your DS score?"

Charles _laughs_ , a warm, pleasant rolling sound that's echoed in the slight creases at the corners of his eyes, mouth curling upward. "Yes, I'm sure," he says, still chuckling a little. "Your understanding and training as a sub was quite different from most of the world's, Erik, from what I gather, but if it helps then I am _biologically_ a -5S. I have five of the seven submissive chromosomal mutations, which should mean that I am very submissive indeed. Unfortunately for society, which seems to put an inordinate focus on how far away you are from zero, telepaths tend to vary wildly in their presentation. It's all very well measuring subs to -7S and Doms to +7D biologically, but when you look at _behavior_ I'm generally functionally somewhere around -2, as far as I can judge."

Erik frowns, confused -- an unpleasant feeling, and one he rarely experiences. "That's not right," he says. "I'm only -1S. I'm barely a sub at all, and you're ...." He almost bites it back, worried he'll insult Charles, but it has to be said. "You're practically a Dom."

The tea arrives, and Charles sits back to let the waitress set the teapot down on the table in front of him, then the sugar bowl and milk jug, followed finally by two cups. "Thank you," Charles says to the waitress, who nods; then to Erik he says, "As I said, your training has been rather unconventional. From what I've seen in your mind the Hellfire Club are unusually strict with their submissives; quite aside from the abuse, of course. But I assure you that I am a submissive."

Erik stretches his legs out under the table until his right toes are pressing against the pole holding the table up; he wedges his feet there, one ankle tucked under the other. He doesn't think it's fair of Charles to deride the Hellfire Club like this, just for adhering to a more traditional approach to Dynamics, but he doesn't want to argue about that right now.

"You aren't collared," he says, and it is, admittedly, a bit of an accusation; Charles is _old_ , probably over twenty-five, and most subs would have been collared well before that. People say Erik was collared early, and maybe that's true, but that doesn't make Charles not _late._

But Charles just snorts, picking up the teapot to pour. He lifts it first to Erik's cup, pouring out a steady stream of fragrant brown liquid; then his own, the same. "I haven't found a Dom I like yet," he says, shrugging. "Now. Tell me what's on your mind, Erik. You were very upset when I found you on the street earlier."

Was he? At the time, all Erik could think about was getting them all free, breaking chains and tearing down bars. But that sort of power .... Mr. Shaw was right, of course; Erik's strongest in pain, and anger. If Miss Jada and John hadn't done what they did, would he have been able to manage it? Possibly. He doesn't know.

"They took my collar," he says, and grips his hands together to keep from reaching up to his neck again, the bare skin feeling cold against the air. He remembers John's arms around his chest, the way he felt like drowning, and heat rises fast in his cheeks. "They said it was illegal, so they took it."

The teaspoon in Charles' hand is circling slowly in his cup, pinched between two fingers. "Hmm, well, they're not wrong," he says mildly, adding another lump of sugar. "It is illegal, actually. But it's a shame they forced the issue like that -- I understand why that would be upsetting. Were you ordered to keep it on?"

Erik nods, and ducks his head a little lower, ashamed of the color in his cheeks but not able to will it away, still watching Charles from underneath the heavy fringe of his eyelashes. "Yes. Only inside the house, and only Mr. Shaw can put it on or remove it." He grimaces, lips twisting tight together. "Miss Jada -- my foster mother -- tried ordering me to take it off." As if he'd listen to _her_ , over Mr. Shaw --!

"Oh?" At this Charles looks up, eyebrows rising in surprise; his eyes have sharpened, their gaze focusing on Erik in a way he realizes that Charles has been avoiding up until now, and Erik can't help but wonder if Charles is reading his mind. "You disobeyed a direct order? That seems unusual for you."

Erik lifts one shoulder, then drops it again. "I'm disobedient," he says bluntly, which really should explain everything.

"Hmmm," Charles says again, and he's silent for a long moment, sipping finally at his tea, his mouth hidden behind the rim of the cup. There's a kind of pondering feeling to the silence, palpable and real, as if he's projecting his consideration outside of his own mind. Eventually though Charles sets his cup down again, folding his hands on the table. "A quick question for you, then -- which order is more important, to never wear the collar outside the house or for only Mr. Shaw to put it on or remove it?"

If there had been any doubt Charles was reading his mind, it's put to rest, now, because Charles might as well have plucked that fear from Erik's own thoughts verbatim. "All of Mr. Shaw's orders are equally important," Erik says, and it's barely more than a whisper; it feels like a confession, a quiet admission of guilt, and there's a horrible clenching feeling in the pit of Erik's stomach, the kind that usually precedes well-deserved punishment.

"Let's try a thought experiment," Charles says, and he reaches over the table to place his hand over Erik's, warm and solid. "You're at home, wearing your collar, when there's a knock at the front door. Mr. Shaw is out and will not be back any time soon, as is anyone with concealment powers. Someone opens the door and it's the police, with a warrant to inspect the apartment. There's nothing incriminating on display other than your collar, and nowhere for you to hide. Is it better to let yourself be seen wearing the collar, or for someone who is not Mr Shaw to remove it so that the police don't see it and make arrests?"

Erik digs the toe of one sneaker into the back of his ankle, hard, harder, until it hurts. "Better someone removes it," he says finally. "But that only works when it's in protection of the Hellfire Club. They're already in jail, and this is -- this _was_ the only thing I had left."

He looks back up at Charles, who is watching him with steady and very blue eyes. "Well," says Charles, "if you're part of the Hellfire Club, and the purpose of removing it is to protect you from being hurt or bothered by the police, then I would think this would fall under that remit. Quite aside from the fact that if you were to wear it publicly and the public found out who you are, seeing you wearing it all the time might damage the Club's case in court by turning public opinion more against them. Don't you think?"

Maybe. Probably. Erik grits his teeth, something heavy dropping into his gut. "So I fucked up again, then," he mutters, glaring at Charles' teacup. "I should have taken it off when they were making arrests. Before anyone saw. I've only made things worse."

"Don't be silly. They would have found it whatever you did," Charles says firmly, squeezing Erik's hand. "Now there isn't a problem any more, because it's off, so no harm done. But I'll tell you what. I'll speak to Miss Jada myself and ask her to give it to you to hold onto, since it's important to you. Not to wear, of course, but maybe you can keep it in your pocket. I know it's reassuring."

"All right." Erik lets out a slow breath and sits back in his chair, his hands sliding out from under Charles'; he lifts one to scrub it back through his hair, dragging his nails along his scalp, fingers brushing the bare skin at the back of his neck. He feels a little relieved, and he doesn't like to think of it this way, but part of it's because the collar's gone. Because he has an excuse not to wear it now, or at least until the Hellfire Club is freed and Mr. Shaw puts it on him again.

"Now drink your tea before it goes cold," Charles says, with a small smile. "It's good, and it'll warm you up."

Erik obeys; the tea's the perfect temperature now, and there's just enough bergamot that he can really taste it, even beneath the bitterness of black tea without sugar. Normally Erik would have coffee -- with the exception of London and Tokyo, none of the Hellfire Club safehouses were in locations where there was much of a tea-drinking culture. But he thinks he likes it. It's ... different.

Charles sits quietly while Erik drinks, not asking him any questions, or bothering him in any way; it's a big change from anyone else he's met since the raid, where everyone is always fussing at him, wanting something from him. Instead Charles takes out his phone to check his messages, and tops up his own cup, hands careful with the milk, as if he's worried he'll spill.

"About my foster parents," Erik says after a while, when Charles doesn't break the silence, his gaze slipping back down to the table and his own thumbnail, picking at the edge. "You should probably call to have an ambulance sent."

He knows Mr. Shaw wouldn't care, that they're just humans, humans who took his collar away, but .... It's an exchange, he tells himself. Payment for services rendered, since they aren't the ones keeping him away from the rest of the Hellfire Club. Not personally, anyway.

"I already texted Agent MacTaggert to send one," Charles admits with a wry smile. "I saw what happened when we met up, so I thought I'd make sure they got looked after. But maybe it would help, to tell me what you did? Like a confession, though I'm no priest."

Erik grimaces, and shakes his head. "There's nothing to confess. They shouldn't have taken my collar." He drops his hands beneath the table so Charles won't see the way he circles his hand around his wrist, pressing thumb and forefinger together where the suppressor bracelet used to be. "I won't let them put the suppressors back on."

That much is a promise. They only got them on the first ta ime because they were already suppressing his mutation, and that of everyone in the safehouse. This time he won't make it nearly so easy for them.

"Hmm, well, in that case, will you promise me not to use your powers to hurt people? Except in direct self-defense," Charles says, raising an eyebrow. "You have to know that I could make you, if I wanted, but I don't think that's necessary. You're a smart boy."

Erik's not sure he's so very smart, but he knows Charles is telling the truth, all the same. He digs his nail into the edge of one of the blisters on his wrist and closes his eyes against the sudden stinging pain. "All right." He doesn't have any other choice, does he? Not if he wants to keep his powers at all. And he can't go back to being like that, the way it felt to be so ... isolated, from the world. "Except in self-defense."

He looks back up at Charles, and holds his gaze as long as he can while he reaches for his teacup, until the discomfort finally gets to be too much and he breaks away, looking down as he finishes off his drink.

"Thank you, Erik," Charles says, his hands moving to cup his own tea. "Now. I see two options here -- either you can come with me to see Agent MacTaggert first, or I can just take you home. Which would you prefer?"

"I don't care." That's not true, but he says it anyway. The remaining tea in his cup has gathered around the edge of the bottom, a pale amber crescent moon. He shakes his cup once, ruining the image. "You choose."

"I tend to think it's better to get things over with. Tear off the band-aid, so to speak. So I'll take you home. Are you all done with your tea?"

Erik nods, and waits for Charles to stand before he gets up himself, collecting both their empty cups and the teapot, carrying them over to the black plastic bin meant for dirty dishes. Charles smiles at him when he comes back and lifts the strap of his satchel onto his shoulder before leading the way back out onto the sidewalk.

"I'll get us a cab," Charles says, gesturing for Erik to follow him off to the left down the street. "Do you know the address of the place you're staying at?"

"Close enough," Erik says, following after in Charles' shadow, reaching back to pull his hood over his head again, blocking out the glare of the sun. "It's in Bed-Stuy. Franklin Ave." He's not so sure Miss Jada and John will want him to stay anymore, after what happened, but he expects Charles will at the very least be expecting him to put the pipes and handrail back where they belong.

"All right." Charles turns the corner, and there's a taxi stand just past it, with three or four cabs standing by. He goes to the first one and opens the rear door, saying to the cabbie, "Franklin in Bedford-Stuyvesant, please."

Charles lets Erik slide into the car first, scooting across the warm fake-leather seat all the way to the opposite window. Charles gets in next to him and Erik grabs for Charles' seatbelt with his power, admittedly showing off just a little as he buckles it in around Charles' waist, glancing at Charles out the corner of his eye to catch his reaction. Charles' smile is sudden and surprising, uninhibited by his usual composure; it makes his eyes light up, and when he turns it on Erik it warms him right through, sparking beneath his breastbone like something electric.

Embarrassed, Erik turns his face away, tilting his brow against the cold cab window and watching the street pass by as they drive toward Brooklyn, and he decides that maybe he's allowed to like Charles, even though he's a gene traitor. Charles seems intelligent, and he's a powerful mutant; he doesn't know better, but if he learned, he'd join them in their fight. So, for now, at least, perhaps it's all right.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains references to both recent and distant past child sexual abuse and rape, and discussions thereof. Also contains visible signs of child abuse and neglect.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to Subtilior for the beta, as ever <3
> 
> Content notes at the end of the chapter.

_Charles_

After that almost-scene at the CIA Charles is still a bit apprehensive when he gets into the cab with Erik Lehnsherr. His heart is fluttering madly in his chest, waiting for something to erupt; but then Erik fastens his seatbelt for him and Charles has to smile, delighted despite himself in how easy it is for Erik to use his power, in how much Erik wants Charles to be pleased. When he looks at Erik it's hard to remind himself that the young man beside him is a devoted if abused terrorist, and that if given the chance Erik would go straight back to Shaw, and to the destruction and murder he perpetrated with the Hellfire Club.

The thought is enough to quench some of that enthusiasm in him, and Charles feels his sudden appreciation flicker and wane in his chest, turning away from Erik to stare out of the window. They drive through the city in near silence, only the sound of the cabbie's radio breaking into the quiet. 

Charles tries to think of something else to say -- some topic of conversation, some question to ask -- but comes up blank. In the cafe it was easy, somehow, to talk to Erik, to give him advice and act the therapist, but now ... almost alone with him, out of that context ... it's like Charles has lost the mindset he had before, and all of his apprehension has flooded back in to fill the void.

"You're a mutant," Erik says, breaking the silence unexpectedly; he's not looking at Charles when Charles turns to him, head still tilted toward his own window. "Why do you work for the humans?"

"We are humans," Charles says. It's not dissimilar to questions he often answers from his regular patients, and it makes him feel steadier. "Just mutated humans. I work with mutants as a mutant psychologist, to help them with their unique problems, and I get referrals from government agencies from time to time, like you. I'm not an employee, if that's what you mean. I'm a consultant."

Erik doesn't say anything else after that, just sits quietly, one hand rubbing at the raw skin on the opposite wrist where his suppressor band used to be.

Is now the time to ask the question that naturally comes to mind? They're going into a difficult, potentially upsetting situation, and Erik has had enough to deal with today. But at the same time Charles may never get this good an opening again. "Do you not think of yourself as human?" he asks when the cab stops at a red light. "I mean, do you think of yourself as being entirely separate from all the non-mutants on the planet? I would imagine your parents were human, since most mutants come from non-mutant families."

A moment passes, then two.

"I don't remember my parents," Erik says, looking away from the window only to stare down at the back of the cabbie's seat. "They aren't important now, anyway. The Hellfire Club is my family, and we aren't human. Neither are you."

"Well I'm certainly not an alien," Charles says; he feels almost entirely calm now, and it makes it easier to continue. He folds his hands in his lap, turning a little more towards Erik. "My parents were human, and my sister and I are mutants -- the very word implies that we are altered humans, not a new species. On what grounds would you say we are not human?"

"Evolutionary grounds. All mutated species are the offspring of non-mutated parents." In Erik's mind, there's a memory, an amalgamation of all the hundreds of times Shaw's said similar things, while commenting on the news, speaking to his followers, teaching Erik during what passed for Erik's education. "Our experiences are nothing alike."

Charles shakes his head. "I understand that it feels like there's a magnitude of difference between being a mutant or a non-mutant, but it's not present at a genetic level. It's a fallacy to pretend that there is just because we would like it to be so." by which Charles means Sebastian Shaw, who by the sound of it is full of such pseudoscientific bullshit that Charles would pay cash money to see him debating with a real geneticist.

Erik makes a dismissive sound and hunches forward a little, shoulders rising toward his ears. He doesn't argue the point, but Charles can tell he's not convinced; twelve years of brainwashing are not reversed so easily, of course, but Charles can never quite stop himself from trying to make the point anyway, when he hears that tired old rhetoric dragged out again. Maybe it will sink in and maybe it won't, but at least Erik has heard a more rational point of view.

They pull up outside a house, and Charles leans forward to pay the cabbie even as he notes Erik shrinking further, withdrawing more fully into his shell. And no wonder. The tall windows on the ground floor of the building are all smashed, shards hanging from their frames like broken teeth, glittering in the late afternoon sun. The railings that should be outside are entirely missing, save for twisted stumps protruding from the concrete, narrow and pulled thin like strands of taffy torn apart by an eager hand. Charles can feel only one mind in the apartment, and it's not a happy one. Nor, he thinks, is it one of Erik's foster parents.

"Come on," he says finally, ungritting his teeth and turning his attention back to the cringing boy. "Let's go inside."

The front door is locked, but that proves no contest for Erik's power, which has the latch clicking and the door swinging open before Charles can even reach for the knob. Inside is a short hallway leading to some stairs; the door to the apartment is on their immediate right, water trickling out underneath it through the narrow gap, and Erik opens this as well, onto a scene of total destruction.

There's water on the floor everywhere, soaking into the furniture and leaving the carpets dark and swamplike, squishing underfoot. Not just that, but the metal railings from outside are inside, forcefully embedded in the opposite wall as if thrown by some enormous force and a wet pile of sodden plaster is crumbled underneath where the railing knocked it loose.

A tall blonde woman around Charles' age is sitting on the sofa in the only portion of the room that's still dry, and she gets to her feet immediately when she sees them come in.

"You found him," she says, the overwhelming relief throbbing through her mind showing on her face. She closes the distance between them and holds her hand out toward Charles with a small, forced smile. "Thank you so much. I'm Chelsea Gibbons, Erik's case worker."

"Dr. Charles Xavier, very pleased to make your acquaintance," Charles says on autopilot, reaching out to take her hand and shake it briefly, with the firm, tight handshake taught so painstakingly to him by his etiquette tutor as a child. "I was called in to see Erik when he first came into the state's care."

"The name's familiar," Chelsea says, her smile becoming a little more genuine, although it fades a little when she looks at Erik, who is loitering a step behind Charles, his mind torn between feelings of guilt for hurting his foster parents, and more guilt, for feeling guilty in the first place. There's a harsh sense of pride there, too, of pleasure when he looks at the destruction his ability has wrought. "Erik, do you want to tell me what happened?"

A pause. "Not really."

"I can tell you that your foster parents have told me their version of events. Don't you think you might like to tell me yours? Clear up any confusion, maybe?"

Silence. Chelsea sighs and steps back, gesturing for them to follow as she goes to sit down on the sofa. She seems like a nice woman -- certainly her mind is one that cares deeply about her charges, and she wants very much for Erik to reach back to her, to let her help him. Yet at the same time there is a large part of her that is preoccupied with having noticed the lack of Erik's suppressors, and Charles can taste her fear like bitter ashes in the back of his throat, the voice in the back of her mind that tells her Erik is unsafe to be around. 

Charles sighs internally, because it's clear that he can’t simply leave Erik in her hands and take his leave -- Chelsea is not capable of taking Erik in hand, and Charles, damn it, is not capable of leaving things like this. He feels, rightly or not, a responsibility to the boy.

"Erik, I would be pleased if you told Chelsea what happened," Charles says, careful not to phrase it as an order directly, but giving it the hint of one. 

He can feel that Erik is very unhappy to have to tell this story again, but nonetheless Erik says, "They took my collar. I broke the pipes. And I kept them from following me when I left."

Charles takes a seat beside Chelsea on the sofa and gestures for Erik to join them; Erik takes the third seat on the other side of Charles, furthest from Chelsea, and it's both gratifying and worrying to feel the twinge of relief and security from Erik at having Charles between them. "It was a little more complicated than that," Charles says finally, directing his comments to Chelsea. He's already involved; he might as well entangle himself fully. "They removed his collar by force. It would not have been my suggested manner of interaction with Erik, to put it mildly. Where are his foster parents now?"

"They're at the hospital," Chelsea says, leaning forward a little so that she can look around Charles at Erik, who refuses to look back. "Jada just has a concussion, but John's still in surgery. What if you hit an artery? You could have killed him!"

 _But I didn't_ , Erik thinks, and it's in such a clear, defined way that Charles realizes with a burst of surprise that it's meant for him. Not many people can project so clearly. It's accompanied by an impression of Erik's own knowledge of anatomy, learned painstakingly from Shaw, whose grasp on the human body is unparalleled, and who wanted his disciples to know both the quickest and the slowest ways to kill a man. _If I wanted him dead, he would be dead._

 _I don't think you can excuse causing a man grievous bodily harm by saying you could have done worse,_ Charles says reprovingly, though he doesn't indicate to Chelsea that they are speaking telepathically. Instead he says, "Will he be all right, do you know yet?"

"Yes, thank God," Chelsea says. "The iron didn't hit anything too important."

"Other than his leg," Charles murmurs, eyebrows rising.

"Well, yes. Other than that." Chelsea's cheeks flush pink, the colour spreading to the tips of her ears. "He'll be just fine, though, once he's had time to recuperate."

It’s a bloody mess, is what it is, and Charles wishes he could just lean forward and pinch the bridge of his nose, tight, or cover his mouth with his hand and just -- not breathe, for a moment, make himself lightheaded -- but he has to be in control, and that means looking the part, too, especially in front of strangers. There's something in the way Erik keeps his silence, and in the way that Erik thinks of the fight -- unrelenting, almost proud -- and the way he went after the CIA afterwards, that is making Charles wonder a little bit, thoughts churning over some hidden grist. It's certainly not typical behaviour for a submissive, even a -1S, and even one as seriously and institutionally abused as Erik, and he can't help but wonder ... what reason Shaw would have had, to be honest with Erik if it didn't suit his own purposes.

"What happens now?" he asks to fill the silence, since it's clear Erik has no intention of speaking, and Chelsea simply looks uncomfortable, fingers plucking at the light fabric of her skirt and thoughts all awry, unsettled and out of order in a mind that he can tell is usually spick and span.

"Well," she says, "for the obvious reasons, Erik, Jada and John aren't comfortable having you in their home anymore. We're in the process of trying to arrange a new foster family, but for the time being you'll stay in a group home, until we find somewhere more permanent."

Erik just nods, picking at a loose thread on his jeans, an echo of her behaviour, and Charles ... no. No. He has to draw the line somewhere, and it's one thing to feel sympathy for a boy who doesn't even see for himself the extent to which he has been abused -- something that probably only Charles in the entire world understands right now, no matter how carefully he wrote his report for Moira -- but there is a line, and he cannot take responsibility any further. He will not.

"In that case, I think it's probably time for me to go," he says, getting sharply to his feet and brushing imaginary dust from his trousers, conscious of the pang of Erik's sudden desire for him to stay and forcing himself to harden, to ignore it, turning his face determinedly away. "Chelsea, I would like to say it's been a pleasure, but I hope we meet again under better circumstances."

"As do I," Chelsea says, standing as well, face still flushed and hands jittering, flustered. "Again, thank you for bringing Erik back here. I guess that means I can call off the hounds." She laughs, but, of course, he can see it's true she has the police out looking for Erik right now, scouring the city for a child they consider armed and dangerous. It's all too easy, then, to imagine Erik as the fox, afraid and pursued, running itself ragged until it can no longer escape -- and then torn apart limb from limb by the dogs.

Stop it, Charles. _Stop_.

Charles turns to the boy and gives him a wan smile, trying to warm it but knowing he doesn't succeed. "Erik, I'll see you again soon, all right? Be good for Chelsea."

Erik looks up at him, meeting his eyes for a split second. Then he nods, and sinks back into his cocoon, leaning against the back of the sofa and pulling the sleeves of his hoodie down to cover his hands.

He looks -- Charles can't care how he looks. That way lies madness, and so he turns, gives Chelsea a brief nod, and excuses himself from the situation before he can make it any worse, finding the cab driver thinking of leaving no matter what tip he was promised for waiting. He slides gratefully into the car once more, relief flooding through him, and when they pull away from the curb Charles lets his head fall back against the seat and just breathes at the ceiling, lips parted and eyes trying not to focus, forcing his thoughts apart before they can form to keep himself from turning around.

*

He doesn't see Erik Lehnsherr again until two days later, once the CIA have got it together enough to organize further appointments; this time instead of in an interrogation room he sees Erik at his own office, a room he rents as part of a collective of other physicians and psychologists in a building uptown. It's a nicer environment than the dingy CIA headquarters, certainly, and much less threatening. Charles feels comfortable here, in his own territory and master of his domain.

Chelsea brings Erik along to his appointment, ushering him into the room with Charles and hesitating in the doorway, looking torn.

"Please take a seat in the waiting area," Charles says firmly before she can ask if he wants her to stay; he can feel her relief even as she smiles at him and turns to go, leaving him alone with Erik once more.

"Hello," Charles says, smiling at Erik and gesturing towards the soft couch opposite his own armchair. "Take a seat, Erik."

Erik goes, his gaze skimming around the room, taking in the magnolia colour of the walls, the inherent office-ness of the room underneath Charles' more comfortable decor. The desk is worn and scratched, the armchair a little threadbare; books line the haphazard shelving, and board games are stacked on the floor along with some assorted toys for small children. When Erik finally sits, it's on the sofa cushion closest the door.

With some patients Charles might take notes, but his memory is good enough not to need it, and he suspects that it would upset Erik more than it would aid himself. The tape recorder is an unfortunate necessity, but one he has to compromise on when working for the CIA; he can take his appointments with Erik in his office, where the environment is less intimidating, but he has to record them to be used as potential evidence.

"How are you today?" Charles asks, folding his hands in his lap.

"Fine," Erik says. His mind is awash with discomfort and suspicion, having guessed that everything he says here will be transmitted right back to the federal agents investigating the Hellfire case, but that's tempered somewhat by his approval of Charles.

Charles smiles, trying not to look uncomfortable as he asks, "And how are you finding the group home? Last time I saw you things were a little up in the air." He knows all too well what those places are like, and appearing calm and neutral about the question is more effort than he'd like to admit.

"...Loud." Erik grimaces slightly, just for a split second, then revises. "Like I said, it's fine." 

"Mmm," Charles says, his smile stiffening, because what he hears from Erik's thoughts is another story entirely -- Erik's been fighting with some of the other children, mostly in reaction to real or perceived slights against mutants, or the Hellfire Club. He resents the human caretakers, and keeps quiet and submissive-appearing while using his power in increasingly brazen ways to intimidate the more mutantphobic of them. And then there's the fact that over the course of two days, Erik has already managed to sleep with four of the five teenaged Dominant children sharing his roof.

It only confirms further what Charles had suspected before, when he last saw Erik, and exactly why he had called Moira on his way home to ask her to organize a blood test to be certain. "You do know there's no point in lying to a telepath," he says. "You may as well be honest about your experiences. They won't get you in trouble."

Erik unwinds a long, red thread from his hoodie and twists it around his forefinger, looping it over and over, drawn tight enough to blanch his skin. "Some of them are fine. Some of them aren't. Some of them are everything Hellfire stands against."

"I imagine it's quite strange, being with other people your own age." Charles says, wondering if he should have asked Moira to run an STD panel as well. "I can't imagine you've ever spent much time before with your peers."

"No," Erik says; a quick burst of amusement colors his mind, one that would have been a snort if he'd vocalized it. "I suppose you could say it's educational."

God. It makes Charles want to wince to ask this aloud on the tape, but a long silence would be no better, either; he shifts in his seat, crossing his legs, and says, calmly as he can, "One thing I do have to ask, for your own safety -- do you know how to practice safe sex? I'm sure you're aware by now that it is illegal for you to be sexually active at all, but since evidently that doesn't concern you, I would like to be sure you understand how to use a condom, and so on." 

The faint whirl of confusion through Erik's mind answers that for him. "Ah," Charles says, with a brief nod to himself; it won't be the first time he's given The Talk in lieu of parents, especially with his more extremely mutated patients -- some of them have serious barriers to overcome when attempting sex that nobody else is willing to talk through with them. "All right then. We'll go over that the next time you come to see me, when I can make some preparations."

Erik's head is tilted down, but Charles can see enough of his expression to note the quick upward lift of one of Erik's eyebrows. "I thought you were a submissive," Erik says, very evenly.

"I am," Charles says, puzzled for a moment before he catches Erik's meaning. "Oh! I'm not going to demonstrate _personally,_ God," he exclaims, flushing pink before he can help himself. "Erik, I'm your psychologist! I'm not going to have sex with you. Ever. It would be wildly inappropriate, and you're a child, besides!"

"Because you're a submissive," Erik says, lifting his head again, abandoning the loose thread he'd been toying with. 

"Because I'm responsible for your welfare and wellbeing, and ... _interfering_ with you would not be acceptable whether I was a Dom or a sub." Charles decides to leave alone for now the question of Dom/Dom or sub/sub relationships, since Erik seems to be having such trouble with the idea of anyone not wanting to commit statutory rape on his person. "I'll bring in some condoms and vegetables for you to practice on. That's all I meant."

"All right." Erik goes back to winding the thread around his fingers, having already dismissed the interaction in his mind, although now his thoughts have turned to wondering if he could get away with this, use the entirety of their time together discussing mundanities, whether Charles would forget to ask about the Hellfire missions and Erik could escape without having to condemn his compatriots.

"Not so lucky, I'm afraid," Charles says, in his mind flicking back to the list of questions Moira had given him. "We do need to speak a little about your history, Erik, so I know best how to treat you. I'll start with a very simple one: how old were you when you first came to live with the Hellfire Club?"

He hears Erik analyzing the question, trying to assess how damning any answers would be, but running up short against the wall of his own ignorance regarding any legal system but the bastardized version Shaw fed to him. And then Erik dismisses his own arguments, frustrated, because he knows Charles will overhear any answers whether he says them out loud or not. 

"Two," Erik says at last. "My parents died in a car crash. Mr. Shaw found me on the side of the road; my mutation had saved me. He took me to live with them. He says he knew I'd be strong one day, and he wanted to cultivate me."

What a lovely choice of words. "Cultivate you?"

"Teach me how to use my mutation." Erik straightens from his hunched-over position, then leans back against the sofa. "He thought I could be an asset."

Charles nods slowly, tapping his forefinger against his thigh. "And how did he go about teaching you?"

"Most mutations have certain situations in which they'll activate. Mine was obvious, because of how it had activated to save me from the accident. Pain, fear. Anger, as well." An emotion Erik has linked with fear in his mind, for he rarely experiences one without the other. "Mr. Shaw would -- " a pause, as Erik struggles for the English word for _auslösen_ ; interesting, it seems German had been the lingua franca of the Hellfire Club " -- induce these emotions. At first I could not use my mutation without them. I can now, obviously. But pain, anger, fear ... they make me stronger."

The most difficult part of being a psychologist is trying not to give opinions, or trying not to pass moral judgment; Charles struggles with this now, wanting so fiercely to condemn this idea, knowing that this isn't just a theory, that this is something that has been practiced on Erik. "He caused you pain?" he asks instead, through a tight throat, and a prickling feeling like old dread runs down the back of his neck that he has to fight to ignore. "How did he do that?"

"His mutation makes it easy," Erik ... relaxes, a little, talking about this, discussing his own torture at Shaw's hands without so much as a flicker of emotion, his present mind completely divorced from the fear that stains his memories of it. "But he used tools, as well, sometimes. Metal ones, early on, to calibrate. An easy way to see how much pain my body would take before protecting itself instinctively." 

Charles takes in a slow, steady breath, keeps himself the image of calm interest. "And how do you feel about that? Him causing you pain?"

"I understand it was necessary." Erik spreads his hands on his thighs, fingers splayed, then curls them up again into fists. "It wasn't a punishment. Besides, it worked."

"Do you think it was the only way he could have trained you? Most mutant children are encouraged to learn organically." It's almost over the line, but someone will need to explain this to Erik at some point, and Charles can already see who that muggins is going to have to be. Certainly nobody at the CIA could be trusted to do it delicately.

"I learned faster. I became stronger, _faster._ " Erik's eyes are narrowed, glaring at a point just over Charles' left shoulder. "It might not have been the only way, but it was the _best_ way."

"All right," Charles says, making a note to come back to it later; Erik is starting to get agitated. "Was it only Mr Shaw who trained you? Or were others in the Hellfire Club involved?"

Erik shakes his head, some of that sudden animosity dissipating slightly. "Why would they waste their time with me? Mr. Shaw was the one who saw my potential."

Charles uncrosses his legs, recrosses them the other way, shifting his hands to curl over his own belly and lap. "I just wondered, since you said that Mr Shaw wasn't your specific Dom, and that you were involved with all of them. Am I right in thinking you meant sexually?"

"That's not the same thing as training," Erik says, as if correcting him. 

"Of course not," Charles murmurs, as if he's conceding the point. "But you were sexually active with multiple Doms within the Hellfire Club?"

"Yes. Not with all of them. But with most." Emma Frost, in particular, stands out in Erik's mind as one Domme who'd never shown any interest -- but given that she stood by and did nothing while knowing Shaw and the others were raping a child, that does little to endear her to Charles. 

"It must have been difficult, being shared between so many Doms," he says, fingertips curling and digging a little into his own sweater.

"Not especially. There were only five or six Doms in a given safehouse at any time. It was only a problem when I was younger, because I was more easily injured. But even then, if I was too swollen to be fucked I could always suck cock or eat pussy."

He says it so plainly, so candidly, that it takes a moment for Charles to really -- he can feel a part of him that is teetering on an edge, clawing itself back from tipping over only by tearing fingernails and desperate force of will, making himself stay present and remember that this _isn't about him_. "How young were you, the first time?" he asks, and his voice comes out a little croaky. 

Erik notices, too; he can feel the spike of concern in Erik's thoughts, Erik wondering if Charles is ill. "I don't remember. Young." Erik frowns. "Are you all right?"

"It's just a frog in my throat, thank you. I'm fine," Charles says, reaching for the jug he keeps on his desk and pouring himself a glass of water that he lifts to his mouth with a hand that resolutely does not shake. "How did you, do you, feel about that?" he asks once he's presentable, holding the glass loosely in his lap, ready to cover any other reactions as necessary.

"What do you mean?" 

Slow breath in before elaborating. "Having sex so young, and being hurt by it -- by people who had a duty of care over you, as a child and their submissive. How did that make you feel?"

"I don't feel anything about it." Erik's frown has deepened slightly, his mind a murky cloud of suspicion and confusion. He was too isolated from the world to realize that what happened to him was wrong, but now enough people have questioned it for Erik to start noticing the patterns of inquiry and to feel, reflexively, defensive. "Like you said, I was their submissive. I _am_ their submissive. Of course it hurt me, frightened me, as a child. That's to be expected." 

"If it was frightening, or painful, do you think that they were right to do it anyway? Did you ever ask them not to?"

"They're Doms," Erik says, as if that explains everything. He's looking at his knees again, hands clasped tightly together in his lap, and there's a sense of slight, almost grudging embarrassment, now, as Erik goes on. "When I was very young ... I would fight, sometimes. Or try to run." Charles catches how Erik's mind flinches away from memories of the punishments that would follow, how Shaw always knew exactly where to hit to cause the most pain, bones he could break and reset and break again. "Even as old as ten. I knew better, of course, but I've always been a bad sub. I needed a firm hand."

It’s clear from the echo of those words in Erik’s mind that this is something he’s been fed -- a line given him by Sebastian Shaw, justifying all of the horrific things done to Erik in the name of ‘discipline’, and Charles thinks, all right. Time to start deconstructing things into their true parts.

He turns in his chair to set down his water glass and pick up a white envelope from the top of his desk, bringing it over into his lap and laying it on his thigh. "I think I know why that would be," he says, and he can admit to himself that even though this is going to be difficult, he's relieved to be moving away from the topic of sexual abuse for the moment. "Erik, who told you your DS score?"

A brief pause. "Mr. Shaw did." Erik is glancing up at him now, gaze fixing on the envelope resting on Charles' leg. Charles doesn't have to look deep to find that Erik already knows what Charles is going to say, knows where this line of conversation will inevitably end, but he's pushing that knowledge away, unable to even put it into words in his conscious thought. "Why?"

"I had wondered," Charles starts slowly, even though he had already decided what to say beforehand, when he saw the results, working it through to try and find the best way to phrase it, "when I last saw you, about your DS score, especially after we spoke about socialization and how it affects scored behaviour. And about the way you react to stress. It's under stress that we usually see people's most instinctive reactions, you see." He uncrosses his legs, and this time keeps both feet firmly planted on the floor. "Erik, you don't react the way a submissive would. Almost all submissives would react by becoming more withdrawn, more passive, letting events wash over them. But when everything happened at the house, with your collar, you did entirely the opposite."

Charles picks up the envelope and holds it out towards Erik, hovering halfway between them; odd that something so momentous could be so light, could occupy just a single sheet of paper. "Would you like to see the results of the test I asked Agent MacTaggert to run on your blood sample?"

Erik takes the envelope, as Charles knew he would. His hands are steady, but even so, he hesitates for a long moment, just looking at it, the top seam already torn open by some agent at the CIA. And then he slides the paper out from the envelope and unfolds it, turning the text-side, gaze quickly skimming past the jargon to the result and interpretation at the bottom. At first, he's silent, even his thoughts blank and whited-out, just ... sitting there, the evidence in front of his eyes but unable to process it.

"This isn't right," Erik says, and it's more to himself than to Charles; he's still staring at the page, gripping it a little more tightly now, his mind a whirlwind of denial and betrayal and fear and a strange sense of déjà vu. "That's not possible. I've been tested. I'm -1S."

"Erik ... " Charles gets up from his chair and comes to sit on the couch beside Erik, not touching him but close and hopefully reassuring. He can feel Erik trembling a little, the cushions beneath them transmitting a fine shiver to Charles' body. "Obviously I haven't met Mr Shaw, and you know him far better than I do. But he seems to me to be the kind of man who might lie even to his closest friends, if he thought it would achieve his goal. Would you agree with that?"

Erik looks up from the paper, at Charles, and when he meets Charles' gaze it's almost startling; it's only the second time Charles can remember that Erik's looked him in the eye, and he can feel the faint flutter of surprise in Erik when Erik realizes and jerks his gaze away again, but not before a small voice in Erik's thoughts whispers, _You see?_

"Why would he lie?" Erik says, staring now at Charles' knee, blinking fast, agitation and uncertainty rattling in his mind and drawing his whole body tense, as if a live wire had been pulled up through his spine. "If it would achieve his goal, yes, but ... this doesn't -- it wouldn't achieve anything. He'd be happy about it, I'd be more _useful_ \-- he hates subs, he says we're weak, useless on the battlefield. There's a _reason_ he doesn't let subs into the Hellfire Club, except me."

"He doesn't let subs into the Hellfire Club, full stop," Charles says, with a small, sad, genuine smile, and his heart pangs for Erik, it really does. "He couldn't throw you away, not with your powerful mutation; but Sebastian Shaw is by all accounts a 5D. If he'd raised you within the Club as your true score -- Erik, you're not a sub, you're a _7D_."

Erik makes a harsh sound, almost like a laugh, only not at all. "Only I'm not, though. The test must be wrong. No one's a 7D; it's not _possible._ " He folds the paper up again, pushing it back into the envelope, and this time his hands _are_ shaking. 

"It's rare -- less than one in fifty million," Charles says, and he places his hand on Erik's back, between his shoulderblades. "Vanishingly small numbers. But it is possible -- otherwise we wouldn't have -7S, either. It does seem to be more weighted towards mutants, though that may be a false reading of the data given how few there are."

It's impossible not to feel a little afraid, sitting next to Erik now that he knows what he is; the thing about 7Ds is that they've been romanticized and villainized so much in the media that it's hard to know what's fact and what's fiction, but one thing is very clear, and that's that if Erik got it into his head to really Order Charles to do something, and put weight behind it, Charles would have very little if any choice but to obey. Sitting beside Erik is like sitting next to a baby bomb, and trusting that it hasn't yet learned how to explode.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asks after a long few minutes of silence, keeping his hand where it is, motionless on Erik's back, just feeling Erik's breathing sharp and shallow rising and falling under his palm.

Erik's twisting the loose thread on his hoodie again, quickly looping it over his finger then unlooping it, then looping it once more, pulling tight on the stray end. He's piecing things together, and coming up with a result he doesn't like, struggling to justify Shaw's actions to himself. "He lied to me because he thought I would ... want to overthrow him? And the others would follow me, if I was omega-level, and 7D. But -- I wouldn't have, I was _loyal_ , I'd never ...." Erik clenches his hand into a sudden fist, and lets out a heavy breath all at once.

"In my experience," Charles says, gently, "people tend to project onto other people what they would do themselves in that position. If you were in charge of the Club, and Shaw were you, and knew he was a stronger Dom than you were, do you think he'd be happy to play second fiddle?"

Erik is silent for a long moment, but there's no denying, not even for Erik, that Charles is right on this point. "It doesn't even matter," he says at last, setting the envelope with the test results down onto the sofa next to him and gripping his knees. "I don't want to be a Dom, anyway."

"It's not up to you, I'm afraid," Charles says, with a rueful twist to his mouth. "It's down to biology, for the most part. Though it _is_ up to you how you want to behave in the world. If you don't want to act like a Dom then you don't have to."

Charles starts his hand on a slow, circling motion, stroking Erik's back, trying to be calming -- it's distressing, though, how clearly he can feel Erik's spine and ribs through the fabric, the boy skinny and alarmingly underfed. There's a sharp spike of discomfort in Erik's mind, and he flinches away, arching his back to escape Charles' touch; somehow it'd escaped his notice before, it seems, Erik's conscious mind dismissing it in favor of stronger, more immediate concerns. Charles immediately withdraws his hand, placing it back in his lap with the other where Erik can see them both at once, murmuring an apology.

"I don't," Erik says after a second. "I don't feel like a Dom, I feel like a submissive."

"And that's perfectly fine," Charles says, working hard to keep his hands relaxed, still and steady where they rest against his own thighs. "Erik, nobody would expect you to wake up tomorrow and start ordering people left and right, and swaggering around like you've got basketballs in your armpits and testicles the size of grapefruits." Alarm, and then a curl of incredulous amusement winds out from Erik's mind, pinning the description perfectly onto his memory of one of the younger Hellfire Doms, who, in Erik's opinion, always acted like he had something to prove. 

"I'm not telling you this because I think you need to change," Charles continues earnestly, "but because I think you ought to know the truth." Even if Erik never feels like a Dominant, Charles thinks, undoing some of the damage that's been done to him by Shaw and the Hellfire Club has to be the first priority, and exposing the most basic, intrinsic of their lies is the only way to get Erik to really listen to what Charles has to say about all the rest.

Next to him, Erik closes his eyes, and Charles sits in silence while Erik thinks about all the bruises he bore for his disobedience, the times he fought back, as a child, before his will finally gave out and he learned to just give in; being a terrible submissive has been such a foundational part of how Erik thinks of himself, reinforced every time he looks someone in the eye.

"If I were really a submissive," Erik says, slowly relaxing his hands and joining them together between his knees, "I suppose I would have liked submitting more than I did." His eyes are still closed, long lashes like charcoal smudges against his cheeks. "What's it supposed to feel like?"

Oh, if only Erik knew how poor a choice of sub he's made to ask that question. Charles swallows down bitterness and self-loathing like a mouthful of bile, and forces his voice to stay normal as he says, "It's supposed to feel freeing, like giving yourself over into someone else's control and being entirely safe, because they're looking after you and you don't have to worry any more. That's what it's supposed to feel like." Or so he's told, by movies and books and other subs, ones less ... damaged, than Charles is. He's never even reached subspace. He has Cain to thank for that, like so many other scars.

Erik makes a strange sound and lifts his head, eyes finally opening. "I never felt that. I felt duty, and obligation, and .... Not safe, though. I always worry I'm doing something wrong."

"Well, now you know why that is," Charles says. He doesn't say, _me neither,_ , because unlike Erik, he doesn't have a biological excuse. He's just broken.

"I don't think I could order someone, though," Erik says, glancing at Charles out the corner of his eyes, then looking away again almost immediately. "I couldn't ...." He shudders, and Charles glances at his mind just in time to catch Erik's memory of Nathaniel Essex in the safehouse kitchen, ordering Erik to use his powers to cut himself with a kitchen knife for disobeying him. Erik had done it, eventually, slicing into his own forearm in long, shallow red lines, one for each time he had refused, on top of the first cut, payment for his original sin.

"That's not at all normal, and you shouldn't ever order someone to do something like that," Charles says, horrified, feeling nausea rising up in his throat and seeing through Erik's eyes that he's turned a pale shade of green. "That's not -- that's not true Domination, Erik. That's just pure sadism, and if you were that kind of a Dom then you would belong in jail, and we wouldn't be having this conversation." Just the memory of that memory is enough to set a tremor in Charles' limbs, one he hardly contains, fear juddering through him.

Charles' anxiety seems to be bleeding over onto Erik, who is still looking at Charles, gaze roving nervously over his body, taking in the way Charles is shaking, alarm written all over him. "I thought," he starts, then revises: "Isn't sadism ... I thought that's what some subs like?"

"There's a difference between mutually agreed sadomasochism," Charles says, voice tight and croaking, "where the Dom and the sub agree on what is and isn't desirable, and cruelty, where Essex caused you pain you didn't want because he enjoyed making you hurt yourself and forcing you to do it against your will. True Dom/sub relationships are mutual -- the sub agrees to let the Dom be in charge, and they can take back that permission at any time. It's not force. They have a choice." 

He tries to stop himself shaking, feels far too raw and on display to Erik in a way that's not conducive to Erik's feeling safe with him, but has limited success. "I'm sorry, don't mind me. The memory was just ... pretty intense, and I'm having a bit of a telepathic reaction. It's nothing to worry about." A white lie, but a necessary one.

He can tell Erik doesn't entirely believe him, but that Erik doesn't feel like he can argue, either, not least because Charles is an adult. Erik wets his lips and says, "I can try not to ... remember anything about Mr Essex, if that would help."

"No, no, it's fine," Charles says, smiling weakly at him, trying to put on a better face. "Erik, you need to feel that you can talk to me about anything you need to or want to, and listening and being here to help you with things is what I'm here for. It's sweet of you to offer, and thank you, but don't worry about me. Just think and talk as you always would, not trying to censor yourself."

"All right," Erik says, perhaps a bit dubiously, and he looks back down at his own hands. He's thinking about whether he should say anything else at all, whether it was the forgivable type of treason to give Essex over willingly if he stayed silent about everything else; thinking about Nathaniel Essex makes Erik uneasy. Erik's arguing with the part of himself that thinks Essex was insane, his mind threading quickly through dozens of memories of things Essex did, the little human boys brought home, drunk off Essex's own twisted telepathy, whom Essex would kill when he was through with them -- even though he didn't have to, even though he could have made them forget. They were, of course, only human. 

Charles holds himself tight and does not shudder, though his mouth tightens, sorrow coursing through him for these children he's now too late to help. "Did he ever threaten to hurt you like that?" he asks, wishing that Erik would let him reach out to him, giving physical reassurance just as important a touchstone for Charles as it is for most of his patients. "It must have been frightening, knowing he did that, when he had similar relations with you."

"I'm not human," is all Erik says. And while Erik does seem to truly believe that his mutation exempted him from being the focus of Essex's darker activities, it's just as clear that Erik was all too aware that his survival depended on Shaw's continued interest in him, and Erik's ability to perform to standard. That much, though, Erik keeps to himself, refusing -- at least for now -- to say it out loud for the tape recorder to pick up and put into evidence.

Oh. Bother, Charles thinks, suddenly remembering the tape recorder is there and on; he probably should have qualified more often what he was replying to, when picking things out of Erik's thoughts. Too late now without disrupting the conversation to go back, but no doubt Moira will be cross with him later.

"I think the main thing to remember about all this," Charles says, "is that you get to be whoever you want to be, Erik. If you want to try exploring Domination, that's fine. If you want to present yourself to the world as a sub, that's fine too. Because you're an individual, and nobody can make you be anything you don't want to be, not anymore. If they try, then I'll be here to help you, too, to decide for yourself who you are. Okay?"

Erik's power is fiddling with the zipper on his jacket, moving it up and down the same three inches. "You won't be able to keep them locked up forever," he says at last, his voice perfectly calm. "We have enough allies around the world to destroy wherever you're keeping them a thousand times over. And when that happens, I'll go with them."

"Mmm," Charles says, and this at least -- this one thing out of this entire session -- does not shock him at all, is easy to maintain calm throughout. "Perhaps that's true, I wouldn't know. But would you go because you want to, or because you have to?"

The zipper stops moving. "Both."

Charles tilts his head to one side. "You don't seem very excited about the prospect, if you don't mind my saying so."

At least that gets him a response, even if it's only frustration. Erik doesn't say anything, just shrugs, but the irritation is still there, Erik equal parts annoyed with Charles for the presumption and worried that Charles might be right, that he isn't excited enough.

"There's no such thing as a correct emotional response," Charles corrects him, fingers curling against his own thigh in lieu of touching Erik's shoulder. "Though I wonder if maybe it has to do with you knowing, now, that Mr Shaw lied to you about your DS score?"

"He had every reason to," Erik snaps, color rising dark and fast in his cheeks, both his hands grasping at the edge of the sofa cushion. "That changes nothing."

"Oh? So if you had known, then you _would_ have grown up and masterminded a coup?"

"He isn't a telepath. He can't read my mind -- he had no way of knowing what a two-year-old child would or would not plan to do in twenty years. He prioritized Hellfire over the alternatives, which is _exactly_ what he should have done." 

It may be pushing beyond his boundaries, but Charles can't just let this one sit; much better to start deconstructing it now, and leave Erik with something to chew on until he sees him again. "Uh-huh," Charles says, nodding. "Do you think that you would be a bad leader, if you were raised as a Dom? Most 7Ds are considered to be very good leaders."

Silence, for several long moments, and then Erik presses his lips tight together and says, "Hellfire already had a good leader. A leader who could never be _killed_. Mr Shaw is 5D. He is a _very_ strong Dom, and the only leader we need."

"Well then, he should have nothing to fear from a child," Charles says, glancing up at the clock. "Though perhaps he's just a particularly cautious man. In any case, I'm afraid we're out of time for today, Erik. Did you have any questions for me before I let Chelsea know we're done?" He looks at Erik expectantly, knowing it's more than likely Erik will refrain from asking anything, even if he wants to; but still, he has a lot to think about himself, and certainly a lot to write up in notes.

It's -- before today Charles had mostly managed to keep himself from getting emotionally involved here, but having really sat down and talked to Erik now he can't help but feel a connection there, just like the rest of his patients -- a certain investment in their wellbeing that probably makes him a good therapist but also makes it hard to disengage when things don't work out. It's dangerous, but Charles can never seem to stop himself from doing it anyway, and perhaps, given Erik's history, it was foolish to ever imagine that he could.

"No," Erik says. His mind's still on Shaw, and what Charles had said, even if his thoughts keep skirting any considerations of whether Shaw could have been wrong, too well-trained by brainwashing and the presence of the two telepaths in the Hellfire Club to allow himself to really think about it. But at least Erik is allowing himself to feel _some_ doubt, even if he has to frame it in his mind like it's just Charles' opinion and not his own.

"All right," Charles says, getting to his feet and smiling gently at Erik, waiting until the boy follows to offer him his hand to shake. "Then I'll see you in two days' time for our next session."

Erik looks at the outstretched hand, wrapping his own arms around his stomach as if hugging himself, hands tucking away out of sight. He stays like that for one tense second before he withdraws one hand again and tentatively reaches out, his fingertips only just brushing Charles' palm. Charles just closes his grip softly around Erik's and shakes it once, twice, ignoring the slackness of Erik's hand in favor of simple touch.

"I'll see you soon," he says, opening the door with his other hand, and gesturing for Erik to precede him.

Erik's hand drops from Charles' grasp and he goes, walking out into the hall and down the corridor toward the waiting room. Chelsea is sitting in one of the low chairs, reading a celebrity gossip magazine, but she looks up as soon as they enter, setting it aside and reaching for her purse. Erik walks toward her, but he glances back, once, over his shoulder, at Charles, and there's a brief surge of regret through his mind as, just for a moment, Erik wishes he could stay with Charles instead.

Charles shuts his office door between them, cutting off the line of sight, and closes his eyes, shuddering a little bit as he forces himself to dismiss the thought -- he's too involved if Erik's desire to stay, which was momentary, more a dislike of Chelsea and the group home than true preference for Charles, is enough to make him feel a little heartsick with wanting to help him.

He stays there for a long few seconds, just breathing, before he makes himself move to his desk and shut off the tape recorder, finger pressing down on the red button until the tape whirs and slows to a gradual, juddering halt.

*

 

_Erik_

 

Erik goes straight to his room when they return to the group home. He means just to latch his bedroom door when he shuts it but ends up melting the lock instead, searing brass into the wooden socket. He lies down on his bed, shoes still on, and stares up at the ceiling, his pulse pounding in his ears and his mind strangely blank. 

His first instinct is to just choose not to believe it, what Doctor Xavier -- what _Charles_ had said about his DS score. It's an option he keeps cycling back around to, simply because it's easiest and doesn't come saddled with any uncomfortable considerations of why Mr. Shaw would have lied, and whether he should have. Only ... only it makes _sense_. He is -- was -- a terrible submissive, and it's better, almost, to believe that might be because he was never a submissive to begin with. 

The CIA has every reason to lie to him. They're motivated to drive a wedge between Erik and the rest of the Hellfire Club, and making Erik believe Mr Shaw had lied to him about something as significant as this would a good way to go about it. If they thought Erik cared whether Mr Shaw saw fit to lie to him, anyway. 

But 7D? Most people have between one and three of the chromosomal mutations responsible for either Dominance or submission. At 5D, Mr. Shaw had been an unusually strong Dom -- and Charles, for that matter, at -5S, is meant to be unusually submissive. Another two mutations, on top of that? It's possible, but it's unbelievable. Even with the paper in his hands, Erik hadn't believed it. If they wanted to lie, why not choose something Erik would be more likely to accept as true?

He holds a hand up and looks at it, the familiar tendons and greenish veins snaking up toward his knuckles, long slim fingers and close-trimmed nails. He heard some stupid joke once, about strong Doms having large hands, one of the Russians mocking Mr Quested, who is a 1D and apparently has short fingers. Erik's hand just looks normal, the same hand he's always had. He can't tell if it's large or not. It's hard to imagine his own fingers latching a collar around someone's neck, or holding a whip.

His hand drops back down onto his stomach and Erik closes his eyes. There's also the matter of how Charles had reacted when Erik remembered Mr Essex's punishment. In a way Erik had known that Mr. Essex's predilections were unusual, but the other Doms had seen the bandages, they knew what happened, and as far as Erik is aware, no one cared. 

No. No, that's not entirely true. He overheard Miss Frost once, speaking with Mr Shaw after Erik had been punished for talking back. Erik had been knocked unconscious, and when he woke he realized he had a broken collarbone; he'd been crawling down the hall to beg for however long Mr Shaw wanted him to in order to get the bone set. He hadn't been intentionally eavesdropping, but he'd been moving slowly, and there was no way not to overhear. 

"You could go easier on him," was all she'd said. 

Needless to say, Mr. Shaw had not found the argument particularly persuasive.

But other than that, she was silent. Including when Mr. Essex cut him, which Erik ... even now, if Mr Essex ordered him to do that, he doesn't think he would. He'd fight it. But then again, he's a terrible sub, and Charles probably is as well. Maybe their opinions don't matter.

Erik lets out a slow breath and pushes himself up, swinging both legs off the edge of the bed and standing. He's not sure he likes the direction his thoughts are going.

It doesn't take much effort to put the lock back the way it used to be and push the door open again. He can still hear Human Bitch's voice down the hall, toward the lobby, probably flirting with Sean, the counselor with the hair who's usually on duty this time of day. So Erik redirects and heads for the common room instead. 

Four of the others are on the couches, watching TV. It's not the news. Erik tried insisting, when he first got here and was on full observation, that they change the channel because he isn't allowed to watch anything but the news, but the caretakers said they had different rules here. He hadn't been that upset but they made him go talk to the doctor anyway, a doctor who wasn't Charles, an older Domme who didn't order him to speak to her but who he could tell was irritated all the same when he just sat there and said nothing as the hour ticked past.

Erik doesn't think he needs whatever it is that woman had been peddling. He doesn't need it from Charles, either, no matter how much Charles says he can and should _talk_ to him, especially not when he knows that somehow all of this is only adding up in a black book somewhere: the collected evidence against the Hellfire Club.

"Hey," one of the boys, a Dom a few years older than Erik, says, getting up from the sofa and grinning at Erik, walking toward him across the room. "You're back."

Erik's pulse thrums away in his stomach; he watches the toes of the Dom's shoes cross over the cracks between the tiles, approaching, and tries telling himself -- _I'm not a submissive, I'm a Dom like him, I don't need to fuck him._ It sounds like reciting lines. He feels as submissive as he's always felt.

"I was thinking," the Dom says, and his hand settles on the back of Erik's neck like it belongs there, as he murmurs in Erik's ear. "Maybe you wanna fool around again?"

Erik doesn't say anything, but then again, he doesn't have to. He just smiles the way he knows they like it, just sharply enough to be suggestive, and tilts his head forward with the press of the Dom's hand.

"Come on, then," the Dom says, grinning; he glances back over his shoulder, presumably to make sure a counselor hasn't come into the room while his back was turned, but one of the others just says "You're good, bro," and so the Dom leads Erik down the hall to his room, closing the door behind them. 

Alone, now, the Dom lets go of Erik's neck to start undoing his belt; Erik can feel the steel in the buckle as the teeth slip through leather, clicking against the little alloyed button at the fly of the Dom's jeans. It feels -- not good but right, to be here, like this, and so when the Dom says "What are you waiting for?" Erik kneels.

*

 

_Charles_

 

The board room at the CIA office is smarter and less dingy than the lower half of the office, the room large and airy with actual windows to look out of; a luxury, the natural daylight, Charles thinks, a little amused as he takes a seat, folding his hands atop the table and squaring his shoulders.

The others in this meeting are a mixture of Doms and subs, sitting down in a loose hierarchy that ignores dynamic in favour of their standing within the CIA; Moira settles beside him to his left, her shoulder brushing his for a moment, and Charles gives her a small smile, grateful, before turning his attention back to the man at the front of the room.

William Stryker, Senior, is an imposing man, all blocky body and intractable mind; to Charles he feels rather like a boulder, incapable of change and careless of what he might crush to achieve his goals. He makes a noise rather like a harrumph, lifting his chin as the other agents sit, and speaks before anyone else can. "So. We have a guest today, Dr Charles Xavier, who is here to tell us about his progress with the boy Lehnsherr. Any sensitive information he shouldn't hear should be kept back until his part is done, and as the Doctor is a telepath, try not to think on it too loudly. He has promised me his discretion in keeping himself to himself, but even so, don't be idiots with it."

Charles raises an eyebrow, a little amused despite himself; it’s refreshing, really, to have someone say it aloud, but he can’t help but wonder how good Stryker can be at keeping the nation’s secrets if he’s always this blunt.

"Dr. Xavier, I'm Gabrielle Haller, representing the United Nations. I'm lead prosecutor on the case," says a young black-haired Domme seated near the end of the table. She has a pen in hand, poised above her notes as she speaks. "We are hoping that we might be able to use Lehnsherr as a lead witness in the case against the alleged Hellfire members. Do you think this is overly optimistic?"

Charles can't help but take another moment just to look at her -- she's incredibly pretty, with large, dark-lashed eyes and a rich, warm voice that's echoed by the feeling of her mind. He only gets a taste of it through his own shields, but he already knows he likes it. "I think there's a possibility, but a slim one," he says, shaking himself out of his attraction enough to smile at her, hoping it comes across as charming. "Erik is a very damaged boy, and one who has been raised in a way that has thoroughly bent him to Sebastian Shaw's will. If I'm honest I think the only reason I have even the slightest chance of really reaching him is because he's a 7D, and naturally disinclined to follow the beat of another's drum. A weaker Dom would probably be entirely Shaw's animal."

"We can subpoena him to testify if necessary," Ms Haller says, making a small notation. "Is he likely to perjure himself, if so?"

Charles shakes his head ruefully. "He's more likely to say nothing at all. The fact Erik is speaking to me at all is entirely because I'm a mutant."

"And very good at your job," Moira says, elbowing him under the table.

"We'll wait and see, then," Ms Haller says, setting her pen down. "I'm sorry to have interrupted. Please, tell us what you've learned so far."

Charles takes a moment to gather his thoughts again before speaking, adjusting the position of his hands on the table in front of him before beginning. "Erik Lehnsherr is fourteen years old, and came into the possession of the Hellfire Club at the age of two. Sebastian Shaw told him that his parents had died in a car crash, and that they fortuitously found him afterwards, having survived due to his mutation, which gives him control of electromagnetism. They classified him -- wrongly -- as a -1S, and since an extremely young age have been collectively sexually abusing him on a daily, if not more frequent, basis. Erik himself has been raised to believe this is normal, and that it is his duty to allow any Dominant to have sex with him whenever he or she demands it, regardless of whether it causes him physical or emotional harm."

He pauses to accept the glass of water one of the agents hands him, taking a long sip. "Erik has been raised to hate humans and to believe that mutants are superior in every way. He doesn't enjoy hurting people, I have established that, but he obeys Shaw utterly and without question. His participation in terrorist activities is due to his obedience and belief that their ideology is correct, not down to his own inclination or desire."

"We have some of this on tape." Stryker taps the cassette that's sitting on the table next to him. 

"Good," Ms Haller says. "We can submit that into evidence whether Lehnsherr testifies or not."

"I'm working to try and break through Erik's programming, but it's hard going," Charles says, thinking of how little Erik trusts him, even now -- and how difficult it is to sit there calmly and not to show how badly Erik's experiences are shaking him. "I've made some inroads by showing him his DS test results, and that Shaw lied to him about his orientation, but it remains to be seen if he rationalizes the lie. I'll keep working towards that -- not just for the case's sake, but for Erik's. What's been done to him is terrible."

"Wait, you showed him his DS results?" one of the other agents -- Levine, Charles thinks his name is -- says, leaning forward in his chair. "Are you sure that's a good idea? Damaged or not, he's still a terrorist."

Charles bristles. "He's a child, who still believes that the world's most notorious terrorist cares about his well-being and deserves his loyalty," Charles says, fingers tightening around one another until his knuckles blanch white. "Would you rather I let him continue to believe a lie that means he has to continue obeying that man's orders? I'd be no better than Shaw if I did that, and I have no intention of being a bad psychologist to fit the whims of the CIA. Quite aside from the fact that Erik has no idea of how to be a Dominant. He'd be like a lioncub trying to roar. Don't be ridiculous."

"Charles is right," Moira says, speaking before Levine can open his mouth to make a comeback. "Right now, this might be one of our only concrete ways of proving to Erik that Shaw lied to him. Being 7D doesn't make you a Bond villain."

"It's done now, regardless," Stryker cuts in. "And hopefully it won't come back to bite us all in the ass. Xavier, you were supposed to meet with the Hellfire members last week, before you ran into Lehnsherr with that suppressor band business. I want you to reschedule as soon as possible; I don't want their defense getting it in their heads to go for an insanity plea."

On Charles' other side, one of the people wearing a UN badge says, "Their lawyers are a shady bunch, as it is. I wouldn't be surprised if they were the ones passing information and orders along to the outside."

There’s a murmur of agreement around the table, and although Ms Haller gives the other Domme a pointed look she doesn’t argue the point, either. 

"What do you mean?" Charles asks, frown now turning from anger to confusion; it's hard not to pluck the information straight from her head, but Charles restrains himself to an inquisitive look instead. "What sort of orders?"

"We've intercepted two attempts on Lehnsherr's life," Levine says. "Hired guns, but it's obvious who's lining their wallets. They won’t want Lehnsherr to testify, with how much he knows."

"What do you think?" Another agent asks. "Witness protection?"

"No good; we might have Essex and Frost in suppressor bands, but there are at least three other confirmed telepaths working for Hellfire, and who knows what else -- maybe someone with some kind of tracking ability. Wherever we put him, they'll find him."

Charles can feel -- something, rising up inside of him at the thought of it, and he swallows to no effect, taking a shallow breath. "Does Erik know about this?" he asks, keeping his voice steady even if he feels as though he's standing on the edge of some unseen cliff.

A protracted silence, and Levine and Moira exchange looks across the table, before Moira says, gently, "We think it best not to tell him. If he knew Hellfire was after him, he might be inclined to try to rendez-vous."

"Then what's your plan?" Charles asks, and lets his toes curl inside his shoes instead of moving his hands, another, sharper breath catching under his breastbone. "You must be doing something to protect him; he’s a child, and your star witness, after all."

"We're doing what we can," Stryker says, fixing Charles with a narrowed gaze. "We have agents on this full-time, but as of now that's the best option we have. It's not that easy, either, when the kid keeps running off every damn day."

Oh -- Charles recognizes this feeling, now. It's the sparking, electrical feeling before he either panics or defends himself, crackling through his body and making him wonder how Moira can't feel it, the way the small hairs on his skin are standing on end. "Please at least tell me the agents are mutants," he says, a last-ditch attempt at staving it off. "With some kind of useful power? You're not just leaving Erik naked out there as bait?"

"He's not bait, Xavier, for Christ's sake," Stryker growls, but none of them deny it, that the agents watching Erik are all human.

"Can you talk to him?" Moira says, touching Charles' elbow lightly. "I know his case worker said he isn't settling very well anywhere she's placed him so far, but for his own safety we really can't keep switching him from foster home to foster home, and he certainly can't keep going off by himself all the time."

"I can't watch him all the time," Charles says, feeling himself tense up thinking about Erik out there -- thinking about what seems most likely, him falling back into the hands of his abusers and not fighting them, letting them do it all to him all over again, and he can hear his heart thudding in his ears and Moira feels worried next to him and Stryker is giving him a strange look and Charles is saying, "I'll take him. He can come to live with me."

"What?" Moira asks, looking shocked.

Oh God. It's the only option, even if Charles thinks it's a terrible option, but it's the only thing he can think of to keep Erik _safe_ , and it's not his job but there's something inside of him that is just -- he thinks about going back to his mother's house, about being taken back to somewhere that Cain could get at him, and the thought is just -- no. No.

So, "He can come to live with me," Charles repeats, ignoring the part of him that's asking what the hell he's doing. "I'm more powerful than any of the Club's telepaths -- " more powerful than any known telepath, if he were being immodest, " -- and Erik would be safer with me. He should come to live with me."

There's a long, drawn-out pause; Moira's staring at him like he's lost his mind, Levine keeps looking between Charles and Stryker, who's frowning, and down at the end of the table even Ms Haller is giving him an appraising look. 

At last, it's Stryker who speaks, tapping on the table twice with his knuckles. "If you think you can keep him in one place and in one piece, Doctor, then I say you’re welcome to the little bastard."

“Is that ethical?” someone asks, and Gabrielle Haller fixes them with a small smile, slipping her pen behind one ear. “It’s certainly legal, and to me it sounds like an excellent opportunity to expose Lehnsherr to a less partial authority figure. We all want him to take the stand, don’t we? This is our best chance of getting him there.”

All attention is focused on Charles, now, the tension drawn out in the room like the moment before a gladiator was saved -- or thrown to the lions.

"Okay," Charles says, feeling a bit lightheaded, and as easily as that he signs his life away.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains references to both recent and distant past child physical and sexual abuse and rape, and discussions thereof. Also contains visible signs of child abuse and neglect, mild offscreen violence.


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Til for the great beta work! <3
> 
> See notes at the end of chapter for content warnings.

_Erik_

Erik had only ever seen the Upper East Side out of a car window, or felt it from underground on the train: a waypoint, but never a destination. Tall brick-faced buildings where apartments cost more money than Erik could even imagine; the shops on Fifth Avenue where Mr Shaw would sometimes deign to get his suits if he didn't go to Savile Row, the tailors' silence bought with an extremely large check; Erik knew, in a sense, that people lived here, but he had no concept of what kinds of people these might be.

Apparently, Charles Xavier is that kind of person. Charles tells the cab driver to take them to 740 Park Avenue, an address which means nothing to Erik until he sees it: a 19-story limestone building towering over Central Park. Then he remembers -- they trailed one of the Koch brothers here when Erik was ten, before they had assassinated them both. He would have been Charles' neighbor.

"A messy business," Charles says, giving Erik a wry look. "The probate took years to clear, and then there were people tramping in at all hours to look at the place. It was all very tragic, of course; not that they were especially nice men, but still."

"You're rich," Erik says. It isn't a question; the building has doormen, and the cars lined up front for valet, excepting their cab, are all high-end models, engines humming contentedly in Erik's metal-sense, chassis construction as beautiful as sculpture.

At this Charles looks almost embarrassed. "Well," he says, face doing something complicated, before he says, "Well, yes. But it's a little gauche to talk about it, so I didn't think to bring it up. Is it going to be a problem?"

"No," Erik says, and he gets out of the car after Charles, wrapping both arms around his stomach and curling his fingers into the opposite pockets, feeling very small around all of these tall dark-suited Doms rushing past, the towering glass-and-stone building feeling somehow Dominant itself in design, as if its very architecture were an exercise of power.

The cab driver gets out of the car too, going around the back to fetch Erik's small suitcase, and Charles busies himself for a moment paying before turning back to Erik with a smile, gesturing for him to follow. "Come on," he says, stepping back up onto the sidewalk as the cab drives off. "I live on the top two floors, so we'll have to take the elevator."

The doorman doesn't even look twice, just smiles at Charles and opens the door to let them in. The lobby is vast, carpeted with expensive rugs of the sort Erik had only ever seen in embassies. It is also, bizarrely, empty, except for the concierge sitting at his desk at the far end, and Erik feels like a minnow in an aquarium as they cross to the gold-plated elevator doors and Charles presses the call button.

It looks, Erik thinks once the elevator arrives and they're safely inside, like a museum. Like a place where one ought not to speak at all, just respectfully look on. The interior of the elevator itself is mirrored; Erik sinks his power into the steel and the cables shooting out below and above them, and it settles the anxious thrum in the pit of his stomach.

"How long am I going to be staying here?" he asks Charles without looking at him -- a difficult feat, given the mirrors. It feels like their images are reflected back at him wherever he looks.

"Hmm? Oh, I don't know," Charles says, with a shrug of his shoulders that ripples around the mirrors. "For the time being, let's say. I know that you didn't really settle in at the group home, or at the first foster home, and I thought perhaps the problem was one I could solve. So I suppose the answer is for as long as you need, you have a place here." Erik can feel Charles' mind too in the room around them, pleasant and calm, like sinking into a warm bath.

The elevator pauses at the eighteenth floor and the doors open onto a small vestibule leading to a single door with its bronze knob. The lock is an older model; Erik can tell just from grazing it with his power, even though he leaves it to Charles to use a key. Probably early twentieth century. 

The door opens onto a large gallery, marble-floored and high-ceilinged, big enough that it makes Erik's breath catch in his throat for a second, staring at the circular marble staircase in one corner of the room, the paintings hanging on the walls. He immediately goes to toe off his shoes, pushing them back against the wall near the door; Americans like to wear shoes inside the house, he knows, but he can't quite bring himself to track dirt over this floor.

"There's a closet just there," Charles says. "You can put them in there, I always do. Then we can go take a tour of the place, though if you get a little lost at first I wouldn't blame you, the apartment's a bit of a warren! I inherited it from my parents, who had more expensive taste than I do, but what can you do."

"Did you grow up here?" Erik asks, carrying his shoes to the closet Charles had indicated; even the coatroom, he finds, is spacious. He can't really imagine a tiny Charles wandering through this room in sock-feet -- although, no, maybe he _can_. 

Charles comes in after him, toeing his own shoes off and hanging up his jacket; his satchel he keeps slung over one shoulder, Erik's suitcase still in his other hand. "London, first, then later we lived out in the Westchester house," he says, leading Erik back out into the gallery. "It was easier for me to be out in the country, not so many minds, you see. Now. This is the first floor; there's a second upstairs where the bedrooms are. I don't use every room, but we'll have a wander around and you can see what there is to see."

They go through one of the doors on the far side of the room first, into a large, airy space with tall windows all along its walls; the furniture here is pale and pristine, as if it was just plucked straight out of a catalogue. "This is the formal living room," Charles says, gesturing around them with one hand. "I don't really use this unless I have proper company, which is why it's so tidy. I'm afraid the rest is rather messier."

'Tidy' is not precisely the word Erik would have used. 'Spotless,' perhaps. 'Immaculate,' certainly. Erik feels like if he were to touch one of these white sofas he'd leave a trail of grime behind, even though he showered just this morning. 

Charles' mouth quirks. "In here is a bit more representative." He leads Erik over to another door, which he opens almost gingerly.

The room this reveals is smaller, and crammed with furniture; it's more like a second-hand bookstore than a room in the same apartment as that perfect parlor, an old armchair wedged into one corner between a ragged-looking ficus and a broad oak desk, all of it scattered with papers and books, some of those weighed down by empty mugs. "This is my study," Charles says. "Nobody else usually has to see it, mind you."

Erik picks his way across the floor, equally littered with books and crumpled paper, to poke at a metal contraption on Charles' desk, setting four metal balls to rocking together asynchronously. "Can't you afford cleaners?" he asks, tapping the rim of one of the empty coffee-stained mugs and glancing back at Charles over his shoulder.

"What, and hear them thinking all the time about how messy I am?" Charles laughs. "No, I prefer to manage for myself. More or less."

Privately, Erik decides to go through and clean all of this up later on; there might be something growing in one of those mugs. He follows Charles back out through a second door that leads around into the gallery again, Charles closing the study door carefully behind them and leading him on to the next room.

A pair of worn old leather couches sit in front of a big-screen television, the coffee table between them cluttered with books and knick-knacks; there are a few more abandoned mugs here, but overall the room is almost cozy despite its size, a lot more personality here than in the formal room. "This is the den," Charles says, and sets down his satchel by the door, leaning against the wall. "I tend to spend most of my time in here; it's for relaxing, and casual guests."

Erik can see why that would be. Despite the mess (compared to the Hellfire safehouses, anyway, and Miss Jada's home), it has good natural light, and the couches look soft enough to sleep on. Erik rolls his power through the room, rustling up a few loose coins from between the sofa cushions and settling them down on the coffee table, shivering a little when his senses spark against the electric wires behind the TV.

"What do you do when you aren't working?" Erik asks, turning back around toward Charles and thrusting both hands into his jeans pockets. Erik only ever filled his time with books, or watching the news, when he wasn't getting ready for missions. He doesn't know what other people do, though. The Hellfire Doms liked watching movies, occasionally, or being on their computers.

"I read," Charles says, with a warm smile. "Or watch trashy reality television, sometimes. I like to go out to the theatre when I can, too, though it's less fun to go alone, so that's usually only when I'm dating someone. I have an Xbox, if you'd like to play games, or there's always Netflix if you want to watch a movie?"

Erik's fingers curl up inside his pockets. "Maybe," he says. He's never really had the option before. It's not prohibited, not exactly, but the Doms usually made him leave the room when they wanted to watch a movie, and none of the safehouses had video game consoles. The problem is, he doesn't know if he isn't allowed to watch all movies, or just certain movies, or if it was merely an excuse to have him leave the room so they could discuss something in private. 

"Here you can watch anything you like that's rated under R," Charles says. "I understand if you feel this would be against the old rules, but those are the rules in my house, okay? I'd probably suggest you ask me about any films first, though, so I can tell you what they're about and we can work out together if you'll be interested in them."

Erik nods, and decides it's probably all right. If it were important, someone would have made the order explicit, and in any case, while he's in Charles' home, Charles' rules are just as important. If Charles allows it .... "Can we watch one tonight?"

Charles' smile is brilliant. "Sure," he says, and it's palpable how pleased he is, a warm brightening of the room around him. "Come on, I'll show you the kitchen, then we can take a peek in the library."

The kitchen is an L-shaped room all decorated in shades of white and grey ... or at least, probably, underneath the haphazardly-piled dishes on the sideboard. Charles backtracks them out of there hurriedly, his face flushed, and takes Erik instead to the last of the big rooms on the lower floor.

This one is easily Erik's favorite: the walls are lined with bookshelves on all sides, enough books that in some cases they're stacked two rows on top of each other, the air cool with the dusty scent of old paper. Erik's instantly reminded of a used bookstore they used to visit in Paris, owned by an old mutant who would let them hide explosives in his back room. Mr Shaw always said a building full of paper was the worst place to hide a bomb, but it was also the last place anyone would expect. The meetings went on for hours, sometimes, and the store owner was happy to let Erik wander through the stacks. Erik liked looking at all the titles, even if he knew he wasn't allowed to read anything Mr Shaw hadn't approved. He could imagine what stories they held.

Here, he goes straight for the shelf on their right, spotting a wide brown-spined book labeled 'Tolstoi' in fading gold lettering. " _Voyna i mir._ " This copy's in English, and the one he read in Russian, but the title's unmistakable, and he's grateful for the sudden glowing burst of familiarity in his stomach. "You like this?"

Charles comes up to hover somewhere behind Erik's right shoulder. " _War and Peace?_ It was interesting, but it's a bit of a brick. Heavy going, and you could prop up your foundations with it."

"Perhaps. Mr. Azazel says _Anna Karenina_ is better." It was never among the books Mr Shaw brought home for him so Erik hasn't read it, but he did enjoy _Voyna i mir_ well enough.

A humming, noncommittal sound. "Mr Azazel is Russian, am I right? So I suppose he would be into the greats of Russian literature."

"Yes. He gave me this one as a present." Erik taps the book's spine. "And _Brat'ya Karamazovy._ That's one of my favorites."

"You're well-read for your age," Charles says, and he sounds impressed. "Well, you're welcome to read whatever you like in here, there's not much that you shouldn't be quite capable of managing. Just be careful with the books and keep them nice. Shall we go upstairs now and see your bedroom?"

"All right," Erik says, and he follows Charles out of the room -- leaving the books only reluctantly, although the feeling's softened somewhat by the knowledge that he can come back later on, if he likes. He's interested to see if he can find _Anna Karenina_ ; he'd like to discuss it with Mr Azazel, when he's back with the Hellfire Club again.

The upstairs of the apartment is full of little doors; most, Charles explains, are closets of some kind, or lead to guest bedrooms. "I've put you at the far end of the hall from me," Charles says, turning right; the corridor is entirely enclosed in the building, dim with artificial light. "If you'd rather be closer then there is space for you to move, but I thought you might like a bit of privacy. Plus the other bedroom I would have chosen for you has an adjoining bathroom with mine, which could be misleading. I want to make clear, Erik, that I'm not interested in having sex with you, and you don't have to -- indeed, shouldn't -- make yourself available to me that way. Do you understand?"

Erik feels his cheeks go a little hot. "Of course I do," he says. "I _know_ that. You're a submissive." Charles wouldn't have the right to demand that from another sub, even if he _were_ interested; that Erik has Dominant genes is completely beside the point.

"Even if I were a Dom, that would still be the case, but I'll take what I can get," Charles says, pausing with his hand on one of the doors. "All right, then: this will be your bedroom."

It's very simply decorated: a plain double bed and matching dresser, chest of drawers, wardrobe, all in shades of blue -- well-made, but without the same personality as the more lived-in areas of the house. In a certain way, it reminds Erik of safehouses. There were some things he and the others stored in their individual bedrooms, but for the most part their belongings traveled with them.

"So yours is one of those, then?" Erik asks, turning to point down the hall at the very far end, where there are two doors on the opposite wall.

"The one on the same side of the corridor as this," Charles says. "If you need anything you can come and let me know, day or night, or think loudly -- but unless you need me and I'm in there, my bedroom is off-limits. Everywhere else in the apartment you're free to wander, though do try not to get lost." He smiles, making it a joke, though it's perhaps more appropriate a warning than Charles realizes, given the size of this place.

They go back downstairs and Charles makes him sit with him on the sofa and choose some things to go in his new room from the computer. Charles decides to buy Erik a laptop as well -- "You can find out anything you want to know on the internet, just take it with a pinch of salt and back up your information in two or three places before taking it as writ" -- and then goes into the kitchen to fetch some menus for take-away food restaurants, ordering from a Chinese place he says is good when Erik refrains from offering an opinion on the options.

Charles finally seems to settle once the food's arrived and they're both sat at the table with heaped plates in front of them, like he's finished ticking off a to-do list in his head; his posture is more relaxed, and he lets things fall into a comfortable silence while they eat, just the sound of cutlery and the clock ticking to break the quiet.

"Do you have any questions for me?" Charles asks after a while, deftly using his chopsticks to pick up another portion of noodles. "Anything at all, Erik."

Erik shakes his head. It's always when people ask, like this, that he forgets all the questions he'd stored up on his own, ones that came to him in the middle of the night or while he was showering. He decides to start writing them down; at least that way he won't keep getting caught flat-footed. 

"Hmm. Well, I thought you might have some about being a 7D, for one thing," Charles says. "We should probably talk about what it means, since it's so unusual."

"I told you, I don't want to be 7D," Erik says, searching with his chopsticks for a bit of carrot he just dropped. "I'm not a Dom."

Charles has finished his food; he pushes his plate aside and laces his fingers together in the space where it sat, expression becoming more serious. "I know that you don't want to, and I respect that," he says, calmly, "but at the same time, I think you'll feel better about rejecting it if you understand everything you're rejecting, instead of wondering what it entails. Don't you? I always think knowing is better than not."

It's clear Charles wants to tell him, regardless, so he shrugs and says, "Fine," before pushing another bite of lemon chicken into his mouth.

Charles nods. "Well, in the first place, I think it's important for you to be aware that if you were to get into a fight with somebody and use Dominance against them, then it would be considered assault with a deadly weapon, since your Will is so much stronger than that of an average Dom; it's much the same as a black belt martial artist in a physical fight. And the same goes if you were to use your Dominance to coerce someone into doing something harmful against their will."

It's a bit useless, Erik decides, telling Charles or anyone else that none of this will ever be a problem for him, as he has no intention of using his Dominance to do anything at all. His genes might say it's there, but Erik can't feel it; he wouldn't know how to harness that power, even if he wanted to. If it exists, and if it's like a muscle, then by now it must be atrophied. 

There is one interesting implication, however. 

"With a _deadly_ weapon?" he asks, putting down his chopsticks. 

"Pick those back up and keep eating, you're skinny enough to hide behind them at the moment," Charles says, eyes flicking down at the chopsticks. "And yes. Because it has been known for a 7D to be strong enough to force someone to hurt themselves fatally, or to hurt others, against their will, doing so is considered tantamount to attempted murder unless you can prove it was self-defense."

Well, Erik thinks, that is something else entirely. Had Mr Shaw known this? If so, did his concern that Erik would stage a coup still override the potential usefulness of having a 7D in battle? Never mind the enemy combatants with anti-telepathy technology; Erik could simply have Ordered them to jump off the top of the nearest building. 

"Does that work with everyone," Erik asks, "or just with submissives?" Belatedly, he remembers Charles' order about eating, and picks his chopsticks up, reaching blindly for another bite of his chicken.

"It depends on the Dom. Stronger Doms, probably not. Weaker Doms it is possible. Legally speaking it's a gray area as to whether they would judge you culpable, so I wouldn't advise giving it a try," Charles says, raising an eyebrow.

Undoubtedly, then, a missed opportunity on Mr Shaw's part. Erik chews his chicken slowly, frowning down at the cardboard box it came in. After a second, he says, "Does that go for telepathy, too? You could kill someone even more easily, and it wouldn’t matter what their DS score was, either.”

At this Charles looks a little uncomfortable, his hands flexing on the table before relaxing again, too deliberate to be real. “Yes,” he says, eyes flicking down and away from Erik. “It’s a little more complicated to prove, of course. And if that telepath is a submissive and ordered to do it by a Dom … then it gets very messy. Technically, from a legal standpoint that Dom has committed assault with a deadly weapon.”

Twice over if the Dom in question is a 7D, Erik imagines: one deadly weapon being the telepath, and the other being the Dom’s Will. 

He keeps eating his chicken, even though he’s already full. It’s a habit he got into a long time ago. He could only eat when Mr Shaw said he could eat, and had to stop when he said stop. It was in his own best interest to eat as much as possible in those times, since he never knew whether he’d get to have the next meal, or if he’d be disobedient between now and then and lose the privilege. 

“What class are you?” he asks after he’s finished off the last of the chicken, setting his chopsticks down inside the empty box to be thrown away. “How strong is your telepathy?”

Charles gets up from his seat and picks up the box along with his own, gathering the detritus of their meal together. “Omega-class,” he says distractedly, flicking a grain of rice off the table and into one of the boxes. “Though personally I’m never convinced the class system really quantifies mutations accurately. They’re so variable between mutants.”

Now _that_ sets a thrill of real excitement running down Erik’s spine and he sits up a little straighter, following Charles with his gaze as he carries the boxes across the kitchen to the trash can. “I’m Psi-level,” he says. “Or I was last May; I might be higher, now.” 

It’s difficult to even conceive of all the things Charles must be capable of, if he really is omega-class; whatever Charles might say about the class system, the fact of the matter remains that there’s nothing more powerful than omega-class. Charles’ abilities are, quite literally, off the charts they’ve developed for measuring them. If Erik can’t live with the Hellfire Club, then at least he’s here; besides himself, the most powerful Hellfire Club member was only Tau-level. 

“I should have known that would make me look cooler,” Charles says, smiling at Erik over his shoulder. “Perhaps I ought to have mentioned it upfront. It just seems rather silly to me when you’re talking about telepathy, like comparing shoe sizes. After a certain point it doesn’t make much difference, unless you’re looking to brainwash a large number of people, which frankly holds no attraction. But Psi-level, Erik -- that’s wonderful, very impressive! What’s the largest thing you’ve affected?”

“The largest is the earth’s magnetic field,” Erik says, feeling light inside, smiling at Charles’ turned back. “But right now I’m working on trying to expand my powers to the atomic level. I can already interact with molecules, a little.” It tends to give him the sort of headache that leaves him laid up in bed for hours afterward, but he was able, with a piece of nickel aluminide and a piece of titanium to make, instead, a piece of aluminum and a piece of nitinol.

Charles turns to lean against the kitchen counter, both eyebrows raised now. “That’s very impressive indeed,” he says, and even his eyes are warm and encouraging, everything about him somehow … comfortable, in a way Erik isn’t sure how he feels about. “I do a lot of work with some of my patients to help them control their mutations better; perhaps we could work together on fine-tuning yours.”

Erik nods, and although he tries not to be obvious about it, if Charles is omega-class he can probably still sense Erik’s excitement, tangled up with apprehension, and the deeply secret ambition he’d always had, that he might be able to achieve omega-class by the time he’s sixteen. But he’s only gotten as far as he has, as quickly as he has, because of Mr Shaw’s methods, and he knows Charles doesn’t hold with those. He might have to moderate his expectations.

It hits him like a sudden rush of ice water through his system, that he’s thinking in terms of years, of what he might be doing two years from now, with the assumption that he’d still be here -- that he wouldn’t already, inevitably, be back with Mr Shaw and the rest of the Hellfire Club. His happiness dies instantly, quenched out like a flame in water, replaced by the slow roll of guilt in the pit of his stomach. 

“We’ll see,” he says after a second, and his voice sounds flat, even to his own ears.

The smile on Charles’ face wanes, quieting down to a smaller, more reserved curve, though his eyes are still warm. “All right,” he says, turning back to the sink to wash his hands. “Well, it won’t do you any harm to do some training while you are here, will it? Regardless of what happens in the future.” He doesn’t, at least, question whether Erik really _will_ go back to the Hellfire Club, though he must be thinking it.

After a few moments of silence Charles seems to shake himself out of it, because he brightens again, and says, “Oh, by the way -- I’ve enrolled you in school. You’re due to start next Monday, so we’ll need to get you some school supplies, too. And a uniform.”

“School?” Erik echoes, a little surprised. He never went to school before; Mr Shaw saw to it that he was educated as necessary, and he had ‘class’ six days a week with him, or if Mr Shaw wasn’t available, with Mr Essex. But both Mr Shaw and Mr Essex had agreed that at this point, Erik knew pretty much everything he needed to know. He’s not sure a human school would offer anything he’s interested in learning.

Charles shrugs, mild as milk. “Mr Shaw also thought you didn’t need to know you were a 7D. Perhaps it’s worth finding out?”

Whether it is or it isn’t, Erik gets the sense Charles is unlikely to change his mind on this point, so he lets it go, picking at a ridge in the wood of the table with his thumb nail. “All right.” Maybe there will be mutants at his school, like the ones Lara had described at hers. Boys who can split themselves into seven.

“I think Warren Worthington goes to your school now, he’s a mutant,” Charles says, then stands up from his lean. “Come on, let’s go watch that movie. You can pick anything you like.”

Charles leads him into the den, opening the door back into the comfortable sitting room and walking over to the couch to sit down with a sigh, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. “No sitting on the floor,” he says before Erik’s knees can bend, and pats the couch next to him.

There’s enough space to sit down without being in direct contact, so Erik settles down next to him, pulling his legs up to cross them on the cushion. “What do you want to watch?” he asks Charles, reaching for the pillow and pulling it into his lap.

“If I give you a list, would you like to choose from it? I can tell you what they’re about.”

“We can just watch your favorite,” Erik offers, trying to cover the way he feels oddly nervous all of a sudden, hot and prickly under his skin.

Charles shifts a little on the couch, sinking deeper into the cushion. “All right. Let’s watch _Harry Potter_ , then. It’s not my favorite, but since my favorite film is a bit obscure, this is probably a good place to start. It’s about a boy who is raised by his aunt and uncle, who are normal humans, but the boy finds out when he’s older that he’s actually a wizard, and goes to magic school. I think you’ll like it.”

Charles fiddles with the remote, and flips through a few menu items on the screen to start the movie. Whatever apprehension Erik felt fades quickly as his attention gets wound up in the plot playing out on the TV, until he forgets it’s a character and not he himself who is trying to out-Dom Professor Snape in Potions, or trying to best a series of increasingly complex tests to find the Philosopher’s Stone. 

When the movie is over, Charles lets him stay up to watch the sequel -- apparently there are _eight_ movies in all, enough to take all day tomorrow to finish them -- and Erik tries to keep himself awake despite the way his eyelids are growing heavy, but before he knows it Charles is shaking his shoulder gently to wake him. He’s fallen asleep with his neck twisted at an awkward angle and his head pressing into Charles’ upper arm, drooling a little bit on Charles' sweater.

Charles’ hand is square and gentle on Erik’s shoulder, and Erik feels overly sensitive to the touch, can feel each individual finger where it presses through his t-shirt. “Come on,” Charles says, without pushing Erik off him; he’s warm where Erik is leaning into him, solid under Erik’s weight. “You can watch the end tomorrow.” The sense of his mind is present like an enveloping mist, like being wrapped up in cotton.

Erik makes himself get up, even though his head and body both feel fuzzy, and lets Charles direct him through the apartment, which seems larger and more labyrinthine than ever in the dark. The carpet on the stairs is thick and luxurious-feeling beneath his bare toes as he heads upstairs, Charles following along behind, Erik’s power idly threading from rivet to rivet holding the railing onto the wall.

“Good night,” Charles says when they reach the top landing; he’s paused in the hallway, body angled towards the left and his own room. “If you need anything just come and find me, all right?”

“All right. ...Night.” Erik walks down the long hall to his own room, and he doesn’t have time to bother about how large and foreign it seems; when he tucks himself up under the bedcovers, curling on his side with his head cushioned on the puffy down pillow, he falls asleep regardless.

*

_Charles_

Charles doesn’t go to sleep when Erik does, though it’s strange to feel another mind in the apartment with him, so near and dreaming. Instead he settles on his bed once he’s changed into his pyjamas and taken off his watch, limiting the amount of metal he’s wearing in case it disturbs Erik to feel him still moving around.

His bedroom is the largest in the apartment, with its own fireplace, two closets and an ensuite bathroom that it shares with the second bedroom; at first when he moved in it had no personality whatsoever, but after two years Charles has turned into his own space, furnished with comfortable old furniture he rescued from the Westchester house and in warm, rich colours that make it feel a little like a comfortable cave, swaddling him in, soft and welcoming.

It’s strange, Charles thinks as he lies down on his back, head on the pillows, to have been performing all day for another person, putting on a calm, controlled face that he can only let drop now, when he’s in his own private space. He rolls onto his right side and lets his legs curl up towards his chest, a long sigh escaping his lips as he finally, finally relaxes.

After a short time he reaches over to the bedside table and picks up the cordless phone, hitting speed dial and propping it between his ear and the pillow so he doesn’t have to hold it.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Raven,” Charles says, letting his eyes fall closed as he hears the familiar sound of her breathing, the curious little rasp at the end of each inhale. “Sorry to call so late.”

He can hear her shifting on her bed, scales on silk. “Don’t be ridiculous, you know I’m a night owl. Unusual for you to be awake, though. What’s up?” 

Charles exhales. “I did something. I thought I should let you know.”

“Something? Charles, what did you do? Have you hurt yourself? I can come over -- ”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Charles says, a little alarmed at how easily her mind went … there. “I sort of … took in … a patient? A boy. His name is Erik. He’s in the blue bedroom. He’s sleeping.”

A pause. “What do you mean you took him in? You’ve what, _adopted_ him?”

Charles adjusts the phone against his ear, then lets his hand fall back laxly to the bed. “I’m looking after him for a while. He was being held by some very bad people for a long time, on one of the cases I do for my special clients, and he wasn’t settling anywhere, but there was a risk to his safety. So I said he could come live here for a bit. I have the space, after all.”

A longer pause, and Charles can hear Raven half-muttering to herself, words too low to parse; if he tried, of course, he could stretch out his mind to hers in Soho, it’s well within his range, but Raven would hate it, hence the phone. So he waits, until finally Raven says, “Do you really think that’s a good idea, Charles? We both know you’re not in great shape right now. Can you really look after a little kid? I mean, I’ll be blunt, I’m not entirely convinced that you’re capable of looking after yourself at the moment.”

It’s … not unfair, but it still stings, and Charles rolls away onto his back before remembering that he won’t be able to hear her if she says anything further, and has to reach for the phone to press it back to his ear. “Erik’s fourteen,” he says, “and I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t think I could help him. I did a good job today feeding him and putting him to bed, I’m already a whole fifty percent better than Mother ever was.”

“Sharon had an army of servants to raise you,” Raven says dryly, but she doesn’t argue the point. “Look. I’m just worried about you, okay? I love you, dummy. And I know for a fact that you’re struggling at the moment with the workload you have. If you’re doctoring this kid at home as well you’re not going to get the break from it you need to keep motoring on, and that means I have to pick up your pieces later. It’s entirely selfish; I’m terrible at putting them back together right.”

Charles sighs. “I’ll be fine,” he says tiredly, feeling drained by the conversation now, his limbs heavy. “I was mostly calling to let you know not to just drop in by surprise. Erik doesn’t respond well to Doms, and I suspect surprise Doms would be worse. So I think probably we should do things outside my apartment until he’s more settled in. I can come meet you for coffee, or something.”

“Hmmph. And now you’re ditching me for a shiny new toy. I’m liking this less and less.”

“It’s not like that,” Charles says, but he can smile a little at Raven’s exaggerated petulance. “It’s just what’s best for Erik right now. You understand?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just … ” Raven pauses, and there’s another shifting sound, like she’s sitting up, then a clicking of fingernails against the plastic body of her phone. “Be kind to yourself, all right? If you can’t cope with it you’ll have to make a decision between keeping the kid and hurting yourself, or giving yourself a break. You can’t heal the whole world, Charles.”

Charles’ smile tightens at the corners, turning inwards sharply. “Maybe not.”

“We’ll grab coffee sometime this week, all right? I’ll text you.”

“All right,” Charles says, and when Raven hangs up he lets the phone drop to the bed and stares at the ceiling for a long time before he finally turns on his other side and falls asleep.

*

_Erik_

Charles sends him to a school on the Upper West Side, requiring them to cut through the park in the early morning when it’s still mostly-empty and quiet, blanketed in a couple of inches of snow which crunches underfoot and hangs frozen in icicles from the naked tree branches. It’s cold enough Erik can feel his ears burning by the time they’re standing in front of the building, Erik avoiding the gazes of some of the curious students passing by. They’re all dressed in the same navy blue and khaki uniform he is, excepting of course the girls, who are in skirts, and the Doms with the lower collars on their blazers.

Erik tugs at the high edge of his own collar, the constriction around his neck recalling the feeling of a different type of collar entirely. 

“I’ll come pick you up after school,” Charles says, placing his hand on Erik’s shoulder for a brief moment before letting it fall away. “Have a good day, okay?”

“All right,” Erik says, shifting his grip on the handle of his satchel a little, then reaching for the strap instead, pulling it up over his head to carry the bag from his shoulder instead. His stomach feels strangely queasy. “See you, then.”

He turns and follows the current of students flowing from the sidewalk inside, and already he feels like he stands out, by virtue of being new if nothing else; he can feel their eyes on him, their curiosity, even if no one is impolite enough to whisper overtly. Everyone here seems perfect in that alien, unattainable way: no one with a hair out of place, all with perfect skin, their shoes shiny and unscuffed. When Erik spreads his power out along the hall he counts no less than eighteen Rolexes. Everyone -- everyone except for Erik, that is -- has nearly-identical gold or silver charms hooked onto their satchels, glittering like tiny stars in his metal-sense.

It’s probably as obvious to them as it is to him, that Erik is out of his depth. He dodges a trio of Doms heading down the corridor and presses himself up against the wall, out of the way where he can reach into his satchel, digging for the folded-up piece of cardstock with his class schedule. 

“Hey, you’re new,” a voice says, and Erik looks up to see a red-headed girl in the school uniform standing slightly closer than he would normally expect, her pert nose slightly upturned at the tip, head tilted to one side. “Are you lost? The bathroom is down the hall a bit if you need to upchuck breakfast before class.”

Erik tries to take a step back, only to be reminded he’s already standing with his back against solid brick. “Oh,” he says. She’s still looking at him, like she expects some kind of a response, and Erik lowers his gaze to stare down at her black patent leather shoes. It’s impossible to tell if she’s human or mutant. His fingers finally close around the cardstock in his satchel; he stands there, uncertain, feeling his stomach slowly sink down toward his hips.

“I’m Madelyne,” she says after a moment’s pause, and her voice is a little less strident now. “Madelyne Pryor. Look, come on. I can show you where the office is and you can sign in or whatever you need to do, and then I can wait for you and miss the beginning of algebra by doing a good deed. It’s totally kosher and I hate math, so you’d be doing me a favor. ”

“All right,” he says, relieved to have directions on what to do next; he lifts his gaze from her shoes and focuses on her glittery diamond earrings instead. It’s only after several seconds that he remembers. “I’m Erik. Lehnsherr.”

She nods, tossing her hair and turning to start walking down the hallway deeper into the building. “Scholarship?”

“No?” 

Come to think of it, he’s not sure _who_ is paying for him to go here, but he’s fairly certain this is the kind of question Charles would tell him is ‘gauche.’ He follows along after her, pulling his schedule out of his bag and glancing down at the list of classes behind her back. He’s signed up for Biology, English, Algebra I, French I, Physical Education, Drawing, and something called ‘Crisis and Change’ that he assumes must be a History course. The last is the only one that sounds remotely important to the cause. Maybe Biology, if they discuss mutation and evolution.

“Oh, well, then I just must not recognize the family name,” she says breezily, shrugging. A bell goes off in the corridor and all the other students start talking in unison, breaking away towards the doors on either side, but Madelyne ignores it, just keeps going. “Anyway, you need to get a score charm. Everyone has one, it’ll be weird if you don’t. I can get you one if you want, what’s your score? _I’m_ a -2S.”

His score. Erik hadn’t thought of what he was going to tell people his DS score is. It doesn’t seem right anymore, saying he’s a -1S when he knows better now, but he doesn’t want to tell the truth and be treated as Dominant, either. He tugs at the collar of his jacket again, suddenly feeling overheated. “What’s a score charm?” he says instead, stalling.

“ _Everyone_ has one,” Madelyne emphasises, turning to look at him with eyebrows raised. “It’s this, see?” She flicks the little beaded charm on her satchel, the silver flashing in the electric light. “Silver for subs, gold for Doms. The beads are like your score. So I have two silver beads, which means I’m a -2S. People used to wear wristbands, but the school got so pissy about them that we switched, and frankly these are much nicer than those old plastic bits of tat, don’t you agree?”

Erik makes a noncommittal sound. He’s never heard of them, whether metal or plastic, but clearly he’s expected to have done. He imagines the way it would feel, having a single silver bead sparkling in his awareness all the time, reminding him of what he only wishes were true. He can’t stop noticing them, now, dangling from the satchels of the students hurrying past on their way to classes, silver and gold alike, mostly all 1s and 2s with the occasional 3 or 4. 

“Anyway, here we are,” she says, turning a corner, and pushing open the door to a small office, mostly taken up by a large oak desk and the older submissive sat behind it, wire-rim glasses perched on the tip of his nose.

“Can I help you, Miss Pryor?” he says, looking up from his computer when they come in, his gaze flicking from Madelyne to Erik. “Mr. …?”

Erik’s throat feels dry as sandpaper. “Lehnsherr,” he says, just loudly enough to be heard. 

“Ah. Yes, Mr. Xavier said you would be joining us today. Grade 8, yes?” The man spins his chair around to face them more fully. “Do you have your schedule already?”

Erik nods.

“I’ll go ahead and check you in, then,” he says. “Miss Pryor, will you do me the favor of showing Mr. Lehnsherr here to his first class?”

“Sure,” she says, with a bright smile, and _puts her hand on Erik’s elbow_ , steering him around and back out the door into the corridor, the office door falling heavily shut behind them. “What have you got first?” she asks, as if this is entirely normal. “Don’t say math.”

“French.” Her hand is burning a brand into his arm, and trying to force himself not to pull away takes almost all his concentration, his heart pounding high in his throat.

“Okay, no problem,” she says, gesturing down the corridor, still deeper into the building. “Let’s go. Seriously, though, Mr _Xavier_? You could have said you were an Xavier lovechild, that name actually gets a lot of cachet around here even though none of them go here. _Everyone_ with money knows who they are.”

“Do you know him?” he finds himself asking, looking askance at Madelyne and taking the opportunity to extricate his arm without her noticing too much. “Charles Xavier?”

“Only on TV,” she says, with an elaborate shrug.

Erik watched the news every night with the Hellfire Club, and he’d never heard of Charles Xavier before the man was waltzing into the CIA interrogation room and picking his way through Erik’s mind. What is he doing on TV? 

They come to a halt outside a closed door, and Madelyne turns round to face him, shifting her own satchel further up her shoulder. “Here you go,” she says, gesturing towards the door. “I’ve got to get to my own class now, but come find me at lunch if you want.”

“Thanks,” he says. He watches her go back down the hall, and wonders if he could get away with just … leaving. If he could walk right back down those stairs and go outside onto the street, turn right, find the subway station, and go. Probably. The problem is, he doesn’t know what he’d do after that; he still hasn’t learned where the CIA keeps its prisoners long-term, and without Miss Frost or Mr Essex he wouldn’t know the first step in how to get back in contact with Hellfire.

He presses his lips together and resigns himself to seeing this through, at least for now. The door handle is pewter, and he opens it without his hands, letting himself into the room, which goes silent almost immediately. 

“Bonjour,” the Domme standing at the front of the classroom says, raising an eyebrow; the rest of the class have all turned to look at Erik with varying degrees of interest. “Comment vous appellez-vous?”

Erik starts to kneel on reflex, but then he notices that the rest of the class, submissives included, is seated in desks facing the front of the room; he stands there for a moment, indecisive, weak-kneed and clutching the strap of his satchel, before he says, as perfectly politely as he knows how, “Erik Lehnsherr. Comment vous appeler-vous?”

“Je m’appelle Madame Claude,” she replies, with a flicker of approval on her face. “Asseyez-vous, s’il vous plaît.”

There’s an empty seat on the far left near the windows; Erik ignores the gazes that follow him as he walks between the rows of desks and takes his seat, setting his satchel down on the floor and pulling out one of the blank notebooks Charles bought him, along with a pen. On the chalkboard behind Mme Claude’s head is written out the conjugation of _devoir._ He blinks, a little surprised, but covers quickly, opening up the notebook and writing the date in the upper right-hand corner.

“Êtes-vous français?” Mme Claude is still looking at him. “Votre accent est très bon.”

“Je suis allemand,” Erik says, even though it’s not true, not really; German by birth, perhaps. But Charles had asked nearly the same question, when they met, and Erik’s honest answer had been found lacking. “Mais j’ai grandi en parlant le français.”

“Very good,” she says, this time in English, and gives him a small smile. “If you would be so kind, please stay after class, Mr Lehnsherr.” Then she turns back to the rest of the class, some of whom look very bored. “Turn to page one hundred and seventy two, please.”

They spend the class learning simple conjugations and basic grammar. Erik takes notes all the same, drawing neat boxes around _je dois, tu dois, il/elle doit_ as his mind tumbles through the possible explanations for Mme Claude’s request. Surely he isn’t in trouble already?

When the bell rings again everyone bursts into conversation at once, splitting off into groups of twos and threes and slowly filtering out into the hall. Erik slides his notebook back into his bag and gets up as well, waiting until the last of them has gone to make his way up to the front of the room where Mme Claude sits at her desk, marking quizzes with a blue pen. He pauses, just for a second, and then goes to his knees next to her chair with his head bowed, waiting.

She makes a flustered noise and flaps her hand near his face for him to get up, clucking her tongue at him. “None of that, Mr Lehnsherr, you’re not on trial,” she says, setting down her pen. “I just wanted to talk to you about perhaps taking another class more suited to your level. It’s clear this isn’t challenging for you.”

He takes care to rise up in a single smooth motion all the same, clasping his hands behind his back, thumb pressing into the underside of his wrist. “Which class, Mme Claude?” he asks.

She eyes his posture but says nothing further on the subject. “How fluent are you in French?”

“It was my second language,” he says. “We -- I -- lived in Paris.” 

She nods. “Then we’ll scrap French; pointless making you sit through it. You can pick between Spanish and Mandarin; the Spanish will be easier for you to catch up on, but the Mandarin will be more of an interesting challenge, I’d think. Up to you.”

That he knows Spanish as well as he does French, Erik decides to keep to himself. “Mandarin, thank you,” he says. They spent as much time in Shanghai as anywhere else, but Erik hadn’t grown up with the language in the same way; the written language, in particular, was impossible to pick up automatically. And he can’t deny he likes a challenge.

It earns him a smile, and she nods again, decisively. “All right, I’ll get you transferred over to Mr Hua’s class. Now you’d better get to your next lesson; tell whomever it is that I kept you and they’ll let you live.”

“Thank you, Mme Claude,” he murmurs, and leaves. It’s not until he’s all the way down the hall and looking at his schedule for his next class, though, that his stumbling pulse finally begins to slow. 

The rest of the morning passes much, much differently. 

He’s ahead in math, but the terms they use in English are ones he’s never heard of, and in addition to reading literature they are expected to write several essays on topics that don’t seem to have anything to do with the English language at all. Erik picked up English in bits and pieces over time, fit together patchwork from the time spent in American and English safehouses; the teacher’s discussion of _syntax_ and _participles_ is dizzying. 

History is only slightly better, because Erik has an intrinsic interest in anything to do with politics, but it references an understanding of the world that’s nothing like what Erik had been taught, a history in which mutants are a byline rather than the shapers of their eras, and in which religion plays a larger role than mutation or Dynamic. Worse: the syllabus says that here, too, they will be expected to write essays. By the end of class, Erik is a seething ball of frustration -- but when the teacher’s computer breaks down, at least, no one seems to realize it was him.

He doesn’t speak to any of his other classmates, keeping his mouth shut and his gaze downturned when he passes over requested pens or hands out class syllabi. For the most part they leave him alone. The exception is Madelyne, who shares his History class and who waves him over to join her come lunchtime, making room for him to sit at a table outside beneath a birch tree with her and her friends. 

Erik obeys, and spends lunch examining the other students and teachers out of the corner of his eye. He doesn’t see any mutants at all, or at least, none with visible mutations, or proud enough to show them off. Surely Charles wouldn’t send him to a human school …?

“Here,” Madelyne says, interrupting his introspection, and holds out her hand; there’s a metal pin resting on her palm, sterling silver. “How many beads do you need?” Her other hand dips into her satchel and pulls out a little case, which she lays in her lap and flicks open with her thumbnail to reveal a shifting pool of silver and gold beads. “We’ll make it up and you can put it on your satchel.”

He very nearly tells her to fuck off, but the words don’t make it out of his throat. He can feel the gold beads pulsing in his consciousness, the pile in Madelyne’s lap echoed by the beads on the charms of the Dom students at their table: _2D, 2D, 3D._

Erik shuts his mind to the gold and instead a single silver bead rises up out of the case, floating itself onto the pin.

“Oh!” She flushes, mouth forming a little round shape of surprise, eyes wide. “You’re a mutant?”

"Electromagnetism," he says, and he lifts his head to meet her gaze straight-on, fierce and proud and daring her to say something to prove she's no better than any of the rest of the human scum polluting this city.

“Huh,” she says, still a little wide-eyed, but then she shrugs, putting the box back in her bag. “Cool. But -1S? I’d have pegged you for a -4, -5 for sure -- I’m kind of surprised!”

He doesn't say anything to that, just looks back down at the curried vegetables and rice he bought in the dining room and swivels the metal fork around the bowl. Madelyne picks up the pin and snaps it into a matching setting, then reaches for his satchel, pinning it to the flap. “There. Now you’re all sorted,” she says, sounding satisfied, and the bell rings for the end of lunch.

*

_Charles_

Charles works through lunch like he does every day, trying to maintain his momentum; if he stops for too long he runs out of juice, and it’s difficult then to dig himself out of his own head enough to pay attention to those of his patients. It’s easy enough to scroll through his emails with one hand and hold his tuna panini in the other, a napkin spread in his lap for the crumbs, and Jocelyn the receptionist knows not to bother him between one and two except in an emergency.

Two spam emails, three consultation requests from other psychologists, this week’s cinema times; Charles files the requests away to look at later and deletes the other three, then moves on to his other inbox, the one he keeps entirely separate from his work one. He has to log into a completely different service to access it, but this way he can be sure not to email out from it as anyone but _Cerebro_.

The round-up email his blogging service gives him now in lieu of individual alerts says his last post has thirty-two new comments. Charles clicks the link, and it opens up the back-end of his blog, where he can read through them.

Much like his professional inbox, several are useless, including two outright attempts at starting arguments; Charles deletes these just like the spam, before moving on to the meatier ones addressing his post.

 _I’m in my thirties, female, submissive, and also unattached,_ the first one writes, the IP address telling him she’s based in Colorado. _And like you said, everyone assumes it’s because I’m a bad submissive, or that nobody wants me. Which isn’t true! I was with a Domme for a long time before that relationship broke down, and I’ve not found anyone else I like for the past few years. I don’t see why people assume that I’m ‘past my best’ because I_ choose _to be single. It’s ridiculous. You wouldn’t say that about a Dom/me._

And the next:

_You don’t have to be telepathic to pick up on this -- this happens to me all the time. Sometimes Dom/mes even ask me if I’m really a sub? Like I couldn’t choose to be single for myself!_

Another, from a user named Tessa348, reads, _I think some Dom/mes just assume that every sub wants to be on their knees all the time, but there are a lot of good Dom/mes out there who are more savvy. My Dom never even questioned why I was single until I met him -- he just accepted me for who I was when we met, and I’ve never looked back. But I guess it’s must give you a different viewpoint Cerebro, being able to hear what they’re thinking? Instead of just guessing like the rest of us!_

This one Charles answers, clicking into the reply box. _You’re right that there are a lot of good Dom/mes out there too, Tessa, but telepathy does give one a unique perspective to being on the street and hearing people’s assumptions all the time! It really isn’t all bad, but it is frustrating when you meet someone you’re starting to like and get that instead of what you were hoping for. It’s very wearing after a while to be able to hear all the bad things, and to wonder when you’ll get back to something good. I imagine it’s very similar for non-telepaths, too, but with less direct input than I feel I’ve been getting lately._

_There’s a lot of educating still to do on subs’ capability to make their own choices in and out of the bedroom -- we all know about safewords, but there’s no safeword to get you out of a bad date! In any case, I’m glad to hear that you found someone who appreciates you for you, instead of wondering -- as is sometimes the case, and the prompt for yesterday’s rant -- what’s wrong with you. There’s nothing wrong with choosing when -- and whom -- you submit to, even if Dom/mes sometimes think there is._

He answers a few of the other comments, leaving encouragement and commentary where people have added their own experiences, then comes out of the comments and goes to a new post, where he copies and pastes the text he had written up last night, then tinkers with the formatting a bit. It’s a little risky, posting his own commentary on the arrest of the Hellfire Club given his own intimate acquaintance with the case, but he’s been careful only to use public knowledge and give opinions he hopes are fairly unaffected by things he shouldn’t know; and, honestly, if there wasn’t coverage on the C E R E B R O blog (tagline: “All humans are mutants, and all mutants are humans. Some of us are just more visible”) then people would start to wonder more than if he held his tongue.

While he finishes sprucing it up and adding images of the arrested Club members to the post he reaches out his mind, just lightly enough to find Erik still at the school without taking in his state of mind; that’s good, reassuring, and Charles adds the title before hitting _post_ , closing down the blog site and email. Later he’ll look to see what responses he gets to his utter disdain for and excommunication of the Hellfire Club from any group he’s willing to be named part of; for now, he has to get to his next appointment, and so he closes his eyes for a moment, takes a deep breath, and pushes the remains of his sandwich into the trash, popping a breath mint into his mouth to take care of the fish breath.

He presses the intercom button. “Jocelyn? It’s Charles. Is my two o’clock here?”

A crackle. “Yes, Doctor. I’ll send her through now.”

Charles makes one last sweep of the room -- everything is in place, comfortable and reassuring -- before expanding his awareness out to the approaching girl and her mother, who are here for a joint session today. When the knock sounds on his door he gets to his feet and comes to open it, smiling at Kitty before turning his attention to Mrs Pryde. “Hello,” he says, stepping back to let them inside. “How are you both today?”

“We’re doing well, thank you,” Mrs Pryde says, taking a seat at one end of the sofa, her daughter settling in next to her with her legs folded up on the cushion. “How are you?”

“I’m well, thank you.” It’s a simple answer, the one she expects. Charles looks at Kitty, who is all curled in on herself; in her mind is embarrassment at having to tell Charles what happened this week, and Charles can’t help but think --

God. How much easier it is, to see patients who fall through floors and sometimes lose their clothes, horrible as that is for them, than it is to try and be professional while listening to Erik’s history unrolling in front of him like a tapestry of his own past horrors.

“I can see that it’s not been a great week,” he says to Kitty; she glances up at him, lashes a little wet, and the session begins.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains passing references to past child physical/sexual abuse and child neglect.


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end of the chapter for content warnings.
> 
> Thanks to Til for betaing, as always! :D

_Charles_

It's probably the worst thing Moira has ever asked Charles to do. Interviewing Erik was bad enough, given how triggering it was for his own issues, but asking Charles to interview _Sebastian Shaw_ is like asking him to confront Cain, live and in the flesh, and Charles can't afford to spare any of his attention for fear, or self-loathing, or flashbacks.

And yet. Here he is, sat across the table from one of the world's most notorious terrorists. It's difficult to keep his face calm, not to either hit the man or flinch away from those icicle eyes.

"Good morning," Charles says. "My name is Doctor Charles Xavier, and I've been asked to interview you as part of the process of your prosecution, assessing your competence to stand trial. Everything that you say to me in this room is confidential, unless you threaten my safety or that of another person, or reveal to me a crime which has not yet taken place. Do you understand?"

"Charles Xavier," Shaw says, slowly, as if testing out the syllables of Charles' name on his tongue, and smiling. "I've heard of you. I must admit, I didn't expect you to be quite so young."

"We're not here to talk about me. Do you understand the parameters of this interview, Mr Shaw?"

One of Shaw's brows lifts a fraction of an inch. "I understand," he says. 

"All right," Charles says, and he sets his jaw before opening his mind just a little -- just enough to catch the surface of Shaw's thoughts. 

He had been thinking it would allow him to see without feeling, but Shaw is thinking about putting Charles in his place, finding pleasure in the image of breaking both Charles' legs and seeing two or three Doms fuck him at once, until Charles has learned to hold his tongue. It's all but impossible to keep the reaction from his face; Charles can feel his nostrils flare, the corners of his mouth curling downward in a moue of disgust, and he knows Shaw sees it by the way the man chuckles, deep and dark and self-satisfied.

"A few establishing questions." Charles’ voice is dry and bland. It's the best he can do. "Who is the current President of the United States?"

"Eleanor Harmon.”

Charles makes a quick mark on his page, the sheet hidden behind a stack of folders. "And what year is it?"

"2016. Really, Charles, is all this necessary?"

"It's Dr Xavier, thank you," Charles says tartly, something inside of him drawing up into his throat as he looks back up at Shaw. "And yes, it is. I apologize if you find these questions unchallenging."

"I know you can be more creative than this," Shaw says, gazing into Charles' eyes, his own pale and unblinking. "Don't sell yourself short, boy. I'm told you're very impressive. So. Impress me."

He's thinking of all the things he's heard about Charles -- all the _research_ he's done into him, Charles realizes, forcing his toes to curl instead of his fingers when he wants to make claws.

"Mr Shaw," Charles says, putting down his pen and folding his hands in front of him on the tabletop, "I am not a circus animal here for your amusement. Nor am I someone to be verbally belittled. I am here to determine for the government where they should send you -- to prison, or to a mental institution. Asking me to behave in a manner that best pleases you, instead of following my professional code of practice and the legal procedure, is childish at best. Do you find you often struggle with impulse control?"

Silence, for a split second, and then Shaw laughs, tilting his head back and exposing his neck in a gesture that would seem submissive if it weren't performed by such a Dominant man. "Very good," he says at last, when he looks back at Charles. He leans forward, settling both forearms on the table; Charles can't help it, he glances down at Shaw's wrists, but they're still encircled in the slim steel suppressor bands. 

"You haven't answered my question," Charles says, picking up his pen once again and going back to an attentive pose, ignoring the prickling sensation running up and down his back. "Are you an impulsive man, Mr Shaw?"

"No, Dr Xavier, I am not," Shaw says. Somehow he manages to make the use of Charles' title seem like an indulgence rather than a gesture of respect.

Charles nods. "Then you prefer to plan ahead?"

"As do most men with some intelligence. I can't imagine you're given to much spontaneity yourself, doctor."

"Does it ever trouble you," Charles asks, ignoring this fresh attempt at drawing him out, "the consequences of your plans for other people? A great many people have been hurt and injured by your actions and those of the other members of the Hellfire Club. Assuming, of course, that those plans were yours, and not created by one of your colleagues."

Shaw smiles, the expression sickeningly paternalistic. "My dear boy, surely you realize that was rather the point."

"I don't like to make assumptions. Do you have any feelings about the people who have been harmed by your actions?"

Shaw leans back in his seat, and for several long seconds doesn't say anything, one arm draped over the back of his chair, long forefinger tapping against the metal support. "Their deaths are a tragedy. Every single one of them was destined to change the world. Five hundred years from now, we will still remember their names. Is that what you want to believe?"

"What I want to believe is irrelevant," Charles says, but mentally he's working through the Psychopathy Checklist, marking off traits -- glibness and superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, lying, manipulation, a lack of remorse and proneness to boredom; he's fitting most of the boxes quite neatly, and given the fact that when he gets angry he flies off the handle and beats the shit out of Erik suggests he's impulsive in at least some domains. "I would like to know what you believe, please." The ‘please’ he throws in to appeal to Shaw's ego; with any luck it will tempt him into an honest answer.

"Humans are fragile," is all Shaw says, his body relaxed and languid in his chair. "They die so easily."

Charles hums, tapping his pen on the table. "Does it please you when they die? Do you find it pleasurable?"

Shaw wouldn't have to say anything for Charles to know the answer to that; it's written in his mind, staining all his recollections of violence and making them glow with the warmth Charles has come to associate with people's favorite memories. "It pleases me to see mutants becoming strong. If weaker beasts die in the process, that is inconsequential; collateral, for the greater good."

A cold, sordid feeling of confirmed disgust settles in Charles' stomach.

"So you consider humans and mutants to be separate species?" he asks.

"Now that wouldn't be entirely scientifically correct, would it?" Shaw drawls, the corners of his lips curling up. "The term does come with less historical baggage, however, than that which is more accurate, which is to say we're different races. Only in this case, unlike the pseudoscientific nonsense upheld by white supremacists, and the Nazis before them, it is quite clear how one race is vastly superior in every way."

"And how is that?"

"Really, Dr Xavier -- you can read my mind. Were it not for these," he holds up one hand, displaying the suppressor bracelet, "I could crush your skull with a simple tap. Among my associates we have a man who can cast illusions indistinguishable from reality, a teleporter, a boy who can control one of the four fundamental interactions of nature. Is it not obvious?"

Charles shakes his head, keeping his eyes on Shaw's -- not backing down despite the implicit threat. "I have patients whose mutations cripple them far more than any unrelated disability," he says, "including a boy who cannot have any contact with oxygen without burning like he's been set on fire; a woman who cannot come near to other living creatures or she is troubled with insanity-inducing visions of thousands of possible futures; another girl who was born without eyes, or a mouth, and can only breathe through her nose thanks to medical intervention. Mutation does not grant a person automatic power; it can cripple as well as create new abilities."

"Rarities," Shaw says dismissively. "But even they are a part of something greater than themselves. Their existence contributes to the rising supremacy of the mutant race. In two hundred years, humans will be entirely extinct. But as long as they survive, they will continue to fight this inevitability, and as long as they fight, Hellfire will respond."

Charles nods, and asks perhaps the most important question. "And so you commit your acts of terrorism willingly, knowingly and without remorse because you feel that mutants need protecting from humans? No matter the consequences or pain you cause."

Shaw does not hesitate. "I do."

"Is that also your justification for the prolonged, violent sexual abuse performed by yourself and the rest of the Hellfire Club on an underage boy?" Charles asks, and as he does he can feel everything inside him cramping up, clenching and crushing itself together as if the question itself is enough to make him afraid. It's pathetic, and he hates himself for it -- this is his job, and Shaw is the one in the wrong, not him. "Does that somehow enhance the standing of the mutant race, as you call it?"

One would expect to detect something like guilt, or shame, but Shaw doesn't even seem surprised by the question, and he is far from unsettled. "Ah," he says, both brows lifting. "You've been talking with young Erik, I see. Such a pitiful child, isn't he?"

"On the contrary, I find him to be very resilient," Charles says, flicking the question away with a brief gesture that's sure to infuriate Shaw. "So you have no justification for your treatment of him, then? That surprises me, given that you're a man who contemplates his actions so carefully before executing them."

"I raised him as I saw appropriate," Shaw replies; it's clear he's unsure whether the CIA has thought to test Erik's DS levels, debating whether to claim he treated him as he would treat any submissive, or whether he might expect Charles to know better than that. "How _is_ he doing? Have you managed to keep the bracelets on him?"

"As you saw appropriate for a child with a DS score of 7D?" Charles asks instead of answering Shaw's question again -- he raises his eyebrows, politely incredulous. "I find that hard to believe. Unless, of course, your Club botched Erik's test and you were unaware of that important fact. A rather heinous oversight, if so."

A brief moment of angry silence, Shaw's mind going dark. "What I have found most benefits Hellfire," Shaw says after several long seconds have ticked past, "is building a sense of ... fellowship, if you will. To that end, I cannot allow any members which might upset that precarious balance. Even at a young age, it was clear that, despite his mutation, Erik's personality was unlikely to benefit the team without extensive -- revision."

Charles feels nauseated, and feels a bit of a burn at the back of his throat when he swallows before saying, in a cold voice, "You could tell this at the age of two, could you? Then, sir, you are a better psychologist than I am. And _I'm_ a telepath. Personally, I rather suspect that you had him tested and didn't like the result, so you decided to forcibly amend it to one you preferred. But it would be unprofessional of me to say so."

"Yes," Shaw says, "it would be, wouldn't it?" His memories of Erik at that age show a relatively bossy child, but no more so than any other two-year-old who likes getting the positive attention adults usually afford precocious demands, toddling over to throw his arms around Shaw's leg and beg for a cookie, all smile.

Charles' heart aches for that child -- so small, tousle-headed and big-eyed, so in need of love and yet destined for ... something far worse. He doesn't feel competent enough, really, even to provide that for a teenage Erik, but had he the choice he would step back in time in a moment, an instant, to pluck that child out from there and protect him from all harm.

"I think I have everything I need," Charles says, folding up his papers and getting to his feet. "Thank you for your time, Mr Shaw. I hope the rest of your stay is a pleasant one." Preferably roomed with someone big, mean and too vicious to listen to him, who will give him a taste of his own medicine. Perhaps Charles should feel guilty for taking a vicious sort of enjoyment in the thought, but somehow, he doesn’t.

"I'll be seeing you again soon, I'm sure," Shaw says, and while he doesn't move from his chair his gaze follows Charles out of the room, prickling on the back of his neck.

*

Charles is grateful to be at home that evening, having spent the afternoon discussing his findings with the CIA and having to explain over and over again that the details are confidential; he can't divulge anything outside the parameters of his medical opinion of Shaw's mental state, even his own opinion of the man. Though he suspects that, at least, they can read from his face and the way his hands tremble, ever so slightly, around his coffee cup.

That said, it's not _overly_ relaxing to be around Erik -- not when Charles has now heard the story from both sides, when he knows how utterly callously Shaw made the choice to abuse Erik, and how little he actually cares about him, no matter how Erik thinks Shaw feels. If he had his druthers Charles would go upstairs to his bedroom and try to sleep until the memory of Shaw's mind felt less immediate, less raw, but he can't. Instead he's sat on the couch beside Erik, staring blankly at something on the television screen that he can't recall them switching on in the first place.

"How was school?" he asks finally, to try and cover up that he'd spaced out for ... who knows how long. God.

Erik's curled up in the corner of the sofa, drinking one of the supplements the CIA physician had prescribed, and when Charles looks at him he's grimacing around the straw, although he doesn't need to read Erik's mind to gather that's from the taste of Ensure Plus rather than anything to do with the question. 

"Fine," Erik says, lowering the bottle and glancing up at Charles from beneath long lashes. "I'm behind. I'll have to catch up."

Charles makes a soft sound, turning a little more towards Erik. "Behind on what? Maybe I can help."

"History, English, and Biology," Erik says. He lodges the Ensure bottle between his knees and holds it there, hands dropping down into his lap. "I didn't learn them the way they're teaching them."

"Hmm," Charles says, the change in mental track steadying him. He lets out a silent breath, something inside him decompressing. "I can definitely help with the Biology and English. History is not my area, though, sorry to say."

"I'll be fine," Erik says, and for a little while he doesn't say anything, just looks at the side of the bottle like the nutrition facts are holy writ. Finally, as if with great effort, he manages, "How was your day?"

Charles clenches up again, breath curdling in his lungs. He'd already decided to be honest with Erik, if it came up -- everyone has lied to him, his whole life, and if he's to trust Charles then he needs to know Charles will always tell him the truth. But it's not going to be fun.

"It was ... challenging," Charles starts, then sighs, settling his feet more firmly on the floor. "I went to interview Mr Shaw today for the CIA."

"What?" Erik moves so quickly he almost spills the Ensure across the floor, and it's only by a stroke of luck that he catches it in time, setting it aside on the end table as he shifts to face Charles more fully, radiating sudden attention and alertness, and something that feels upsettingly like hope. "You did? Is he all right? Did you see the others?"

"He was well," Charles allows, quashing his own distaste for Shaw; it won't be helpful right now. "He was the only one I saw, but the others are all well, too. The CIA won't hurt them, Erik."

He can tell Erik doesn't believe that, but at least for now Erik doesn't argue the point. "What did he say?" he asks, leaning forward a little. "Did he ask about me?"

Charles can see that little boy in Erik, a little -- wishes he couldn't, almost, wishes he hadn't seen that memory at all, because the difference is so startlingly clear to him. Eager, demanding, desperate for love. "I can't tell you about that," he says, keeping his voice calm, in control. "Everything we talked about is confidential between doctor and patient; I couldn't tell the CIA anything he said, either. But I didn't want to lie to you about where I've been. I'll always be honest with you, okay?"

Erik wilts a little, sitting back against the pillow again and pulling his knees in toward his chest. "You can't even say yes or no?" 

Charles detects a wisp of frustration winding through Erik's mind, and even Erik's tone, on closer examination, is slightly accusatory. For a moment, Charles considers telling Erik the truth -- that Shaw never asked about him except in the context of whether Charles agreed that Erik is pathetic, that Shaw doesn't care where Erik is other than to send more men after him. But it would be rank cruelty to do it, and so Charles shakes his head. 

"No, Erik, I can't," he says. "The same way that you can expect that I won't tell anyone else about anything you discuss with me. Our first session was more of an interview, but in future everything you tell me is a private thing that I would never share. It's a professional requirement."

"You didn't even tell me you were going," Erik says. He puts his legs down and gets up, grabbing the half-full Ensure bottle and carrying it over to toss it into the trash can he’d dragged into this room the other day when he started deep-cleaning Charles' apartment. Even from across the room his mounting annoyance is palpable, radiating out from his mind in waves too easy for a telepath to pick up.

Charles stays on the couch, watching Erik's stiff motions and letting him have his space, though he feels exhausted just talking about this. "Oh, of course I didn't, I'm not an idiot," Charles says, injecting a hint of tired, wry humour into his tone. "You'd have followed me and I'd either have to waste half the day arguing with you or mind-control you into going to school, neither of which sounded appealing. You must know by now that my not informing you beforehand would never be malicious."

"I don't even know where they took them!" Erik says, turning around to face him again, his arms crossed over his chest, fingers digging in above his elbows. The effect only serves to make him look smaller though, skinnier still than he already is, eyes large and grey in his pale face. "They're my family, and the humans -- the CIA, all of you just took me away from them and tried to make me turn against them. I should be locked up with the rest of them, but now you won't even let me _see_ them!"

Charles forces energy from somewhere, sitting up a bit straighter; though he stays sat where he is, lower than Erik, he's maintaining that control, of himself and the conversation, through sheer bloody-mindedness. "All right," he says, shifting one knee up onto the couch so he can sit sideways, facing Erik, "before we take this any further, I want you to name one time when I have tried to turn you against the Hellfire Club, or tried to make you change your opinion of them. If you can do that, I will tell you something I talked to Mr Shaw about today."

"You said yourself, when we spoke in your office -- you were recording it, for the CIA. You wanted me to say something incriminating so they would be put in prison. You want to use me to take them down." Erik's shaking, a little, visible even from here. "I figured it out, you know. I'm not stupid. That's why you kept asking me about sex. Because it's illegal, isn't it? And now that I said it, it's evidence."

"That's not the same thing as trying to turn you against the Hellfire Club, Erik," Charles says gently, resting his arm on the back cushion. "Of course the CIA are investigating what the Hellfire Club did, and holding them accountable to the law. But when have I tried to make you say anything that wasn't true, or change your mind about how you feel? You know my opinion of them is not the same as yours; however I have always been very respectful of the way you feel. I just want you to be happy, and safe. That's all." Charles wishes he could go to Erik, hug him, reassure him, but he's more likely to end up with a bloody nose. "If you were in prison, you wouldn't see them then, either; would you prefer that we put you in a cell, rather than staying here and going to school?"

"You don't have to change someone's mind to use them as a weapon," Erik says viciously. "Mr Shaw taught me that every day. So at least the two of you agree on one thing."

"I'm sorry you feel that way," Charles replies, though he feels rather like he's been punched in the kidney, like he might piss blood when he finally goes upstairs to bed. Erik's emotions are so strong, roiling in the space between them like furious serpents, like poison fumes. "Erik, I'm trying to do the best by you that I can, and if that means working with the CIA, then yes, I will do it. And if that means fighting your corner for you, I will do that, too. But I won't lie to you. Or hurt you. Or use you, as a tool against others or against yourself. You are a remarkable young man, and if helping you leads to you hating me for it, then, well. I will live with that."

"I don't need your help," Erik snaps. "There's nothing to help -- there's nothing _wrong_ with me. I was fine before your friends raided the Brooklyn safehouse and ruined everything. Whatever you think you're going to achieve, you're wasting your time."

"Perhaps," is all Charles says. When he gets to his feet he feels like a creaky old man, as if tensing up all over has locked his joints and left him stiff as the tin man, in need of oiling -- or maybe just in need of a heart. "I'm going to bed. Goodnight, Erik."

Charles brushes past Erik on his way out of the room, but Erik does nothing -- Charles' refusing to engage has broken the back of his will and he's looking down now, jaw clenched and shoulders slumped, though his mind still simmers with frustration and thwarted anxiety. Charles, for once, does nothing to abate this; Erik needs to learn to manage these things for himself.

He goes upstairs and falls asleep almost immediately, but when he wakes up at three in the morning in a panic-drenched sweat he realizes Erik is gone.

*  
 _Erik_

The anger doesn't wear off just because Charles walks away. If anything, it makes Erik feel worse, because it's patently clear Charles didn't listen to him. Charles still believes Erik is a broken thing that needs fixing, and the thought of being so ... so _pathetic_ rankles Erik to his core.

He turns the TV off with his power and considers crushing it just to make a point, but then decides against it, even though the metal frame still rattles a little as Erik turns to go upstairs himself, taking the steps two at a time. It's not until he's shut in his room that he starts to feel sick, something ugly roiling in his stomach. He turns on the shower, puts the water as hot as it can go, strips down and gets in, sitting on the ceramic floor with his back pressed against the tile and his eyes shut, water sluicing over his skin and pounding relentlessly at the top of his head.

It's only when the scalding gets so bad that he thinks he might start to blister that he turns the heat down and tilts his head back, eyes opening and staring at the showerhead. However Charles might try to justify it, the fact remains that they both know Erik's right: he's the best tool the CIA has against the Hellfire Club, and if Erik isn't careful he'll let himself be manipulated, sharpened and used against them. Bad enough to admit to letting them all fuck him, now that he knows that was a crime. Worse, if he confirms that yes, it was Mr Shaw who drew up the plans, his stored power that exploded the nuclear power plant in Raleigh. It was Mr Azazel who transported them to Sydney, Miss Frost who used her power to turn man against man and Erik who pulled the Opera House down on all their heads. Mr Essex and Mr Wyngarde who between them drove the people of Siena insane. A thousand and one acts of terrorism, enough to send them all to jail for dozens of lifetimes.

Erik doesn't notice his eyes falling closed again, his heart pounding to the rhythm of the water hitting the bottom of the shower, steam filling his lungs and making sweat bead on his skin only to be washed away a second later. He can feel fingers in his hair, pushing his head back, skin slippery and wet under his hands sliding up strong thighs. The shower water is getting in his eyes and the air is so thick it's hard to breathe, but he inhales through his nose anyway and takes the cock all the way down the back of his throat, kneeling on the hard floor and staying perfectly still while it thrusts in his mouth, the hand in his hair moving his head at the perfect rhythm and Mr Wyngarde's voice says, breathless, "There's a good boy -- "

Erik's eyes fly open and he's surging forward a split second later, gagging and retching over the drain, puking up the nasty supplement drink he'd forced down earlier. It tastes the same coming out as it did going in, and he lets the shower wash it away. He shivers and spits, twisting to wash his mouth out, gagging a little even now. 

The water's gone cold now. How long was he asleep? Erik feels weak and shaky as he pulls himself up to his feet, leaning against the tile wall for balance and shutting off the faucet. His stomach's still queasy from the Ensure but at least for now he doesn't think he’ll throw up again. He grabs a towel and dries off; when he catches a glimpse of himself in the partially-steamed-up mirror he looks grey-green, skin blanched around his mouth and eyes. 

The thought of getting dressed seems like too much effort; Erik grabs his book from the dresser and goes to lie down on top of the bed still naked and damp, desperate now just to distract himself enough that he can't feel his stomach turning. He puts on the headphones Charles let him pick out and plugs them into the music player Charles gave him, lying on his stomach with the world blocked out as he opens the book to the first page of the first chapter.

It's obvious by the fourth page, though, that this isn't the book he remembers.

In the copy of _The Wizard of Oz_ that Mr Shaw gave him when he was a child, Dorothy was a mutant girl living in Kansas, ostracized by her peers for her abilities. But when she escaped to Oz, she discovered a world full of mutants living in harmony, despite the fact that they were ruled by the tyrannical Wizard, who turned out to be a human only faking mutant powers. In the end, Dorothy killed the Wizard and took his place, and ruled over all mutants forever and they all lived happily ever after.

Erik flips ahead to the ending and reads. This book ... this stiff, perfect book the CIA gave him when they kept his copy for evidence … doesn't mention mutants at all.

Erik sits up, pushing the headphones off, and stares in silence at the yellow cover with the picture of the girl and her dog. The Scarecrow and Tin-Man and Lion with their visible mutations. Could he be misremembering? No, it's not possible; Erik has a near-perfect memory, especially for books, and this had been a childhood favorite.

Then, one of the books is wrong. But who lied? Mr Shaw, or the CIA?

They both have more than enough reason to do so. The CIA would want to turn him against Mr Shaw, and Mr Shaw would want him to read about people similar to himself. The thought doesn't stop Erik from feeling ill all over again, though, and weak down to his bones.

He hesitates for several long moments before he can convince himself to get out of bed and get dressed, pulling on his clothes from earlier and adding a hoodie to block out the chill of the air against his wet skin. Tucking the headphones around his neck and the music player in his pocket, he grabs the book and heads downstairs, picking his way through the dark and empty halls to the library.

Charles' books are organized by last name. Erik's pulse beats loud in his ears as he finds Charles' copy of the book and pulls it out, reading the first two pages by the light of the screen on his music player. It’s all wrong, too.

It could be a CIA plant as well, Erik thinks, shoving the book back in place and pushing his second copy in on top of it. They're the ones who sent him to live with Charles -- they're detail-oriented, have to be, with their jobs; they'd think this through.

He needs a third copy. A control. Erik creeps out into the hall and lets himself back into the den. Charles' laptop is on the coffee table where he left it before dinner; the bright light makes Erik hiss a little when he opens the screen. Which button was for the internet, again? Charles said you could find anything on the internet....

Erik manages to pull up a fresh window and types in 'new york city public library upper east side.' There's a map on the first page of results; it's only three blocks away.

Fine, then. Erik shuts the computer and gets up, goes to the closet to pull his shoes on and pulls his headphones up over his ears, pressing play on the music device with his power. The only songs on here are ones he likes, which lately feels rebellious in itself. 

It’s cold outside, and Erik pulls his hood up to block out the wind that tunnels down between the buildings and stings at his cheeks. Beethoven’s Romance No. 2 in F Major sings slow and sweet in his ears, carrying him down the sidewalk and bringing to his mind all the times he’d heard it before -- the first time, on the radio in Prague, Jascha Heifetz playing violin, and Erik lay curled up in the middle of his bed with the radio propped on a pillow next to his ear, eyes shut and his mind far away. The best time, when he listened to it as he sculpted steel into a gut hook for Mr Azazel and the music seemed to move the metal of its own accord, violin-Erik-steel laced together, knotting tight. The worst time, when Mr Shaw placed the needle on the record and this song played while Mr Shaw set his broken shoulder blade; the effort required no more than the slightest tap of Mr Shaw’s fingers but Erik screamed so loud it drowned the music out.

And now this time, in the bitterness of New York winter, when Erik is so far away from everything and everyone he knows. There is no one who can put these pieces back together except Erik, and Erik doesn’t even know where to begin.

No one looks twice at him, at least, as he lets himself into the library, pushing his hood back and stomping snow from his boots on the provided rug. He wanders through the stacks, following the sounds of children’s voices to the brightly-colored area labeled ‘Children’s Literature.’ He avoids the clusters of kids and their parents as best he can, edging around the room until he finds the ‘B’ authors. A little girl and an older woman are at the far end, the girl jumping up and down with a book clutched in both hands, begging to add ‘just one more, please, mommy.’ 

Erik skims over the authors’ names on the spines until his gaze catches on L. Frank Baum. He pulls out one of the library’s three copies of _The Wonderful Wizard of Oz_ and turns it over to the back, skimming down the summary. It only takes four lines for the truth to start to sink in, falling like a weight to the bottom of his stomach. This, the human version -- the CIA version -- this is the way the book was originally written. There are no mutants. No regime of oppression at the hands of humans. Just a girl who goes to Oz. The rest was a lie.

The music swells to a crescendo and he can’t breathe, his ears ringing as the violin climbs a scale. 

When someone’s hand touches his shoulder he startles so badly he nearly drops the book, adrenaline surging hard down into his gut as he jerks away, whirling around to face a woman, a sub, the same one who’d been standing with her daughter at the other end of the row before, whom he hadn’t seen approach and who is now looking at him with her brows raised and her mouth open in a faint expression of shock.

Erik pushes his headphones down around his neck and swallows hard against the bile rising up from his stomach, the music falling away and now just a soft echo underscoring the pounding of his pulse in his ears.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you!” she says, the surprised look fading to a smile. “It’s just, sorry to be a bother, but I have a son around your age, and I never know what kids these days are reading. Any chance you could recommend something?”

He feels seasick, rocked on an angry ocean and threatening to go under. "Here," he says, and he thrusts _The Wizard of Oz_ into her hands. She's staring at him when he turns on his heel and runs off, ignoring the librarian shouting after him before he pushes through the front doors out onto the street. 

Somehow it's even colder than before, now. Erik knows he can't go back to Charles' apartment; the idea of just going home and getting in bed and going to sleep sounds … well. It’s the last thing he wants to do. So he just walks, retracing his steps until he's following the line of the subway tracks far beneath his feet, walking toward midtown. The city is a wordless buzz in his ears but he can't bring himself to drown it out. He lets himself feel carried by it, instead, dazed by the bright lights and the skyscraping steel.

He isn't sure how he ends up where he is, standing out in front of a line of bars with his hands thrust in his pockets, watching the people come and go.

"Hey, kid. Got a light?"

Erik doesn't startle, thankfully. The asker is a man, standing behind Erik in the light thrown from a streetlamp; his hair is an ashy blond, cut as sharply as his pale grey suit. He's looking at Erik's face at first, but then his eyes dip lower.

"Bit young for a neck stripe, aren't you?"

"What?" Erik says, thrown, and then quickly revises, bowing his head and speaking in the most submissive tone he knows. "I mean -- I'm sorry, sir. I don't understand."

The man snorts. "You've got a tan line from your collar. What happened -- your Dom throw you out? Do you have somewhere to stay tonight? Because I could offer you a place to crash, if you need some ... looking after." His tone is nonchalant, but Erik can see his body is taut, ready and waiting for Erik's answer.

Oh. Erik's fingers lift to press at the back of his neck. He hadn't realized -- He hadn't thought he'd spent enough time out in the yard to get much of one, but he must have. He steals a quick glance up at the Dom's face from under his lashes; he's older than Charles but younger than Mr Shaw appears, probably in his mid-thirties. Not that it matters; he's obviously interested.

"All right," Erik says, and his heart shudders in his chest when he steps closer to the man. He wets his lips with a careful flick of his tongue, one he's sure the Dom sees, and says: "You can look after me."

"Come on," the Dom says, mouth slowly curling into a smile. "We can walk to my place from here. For you to get some rest, of course." He puts his hand on Erik's arm, steering him away, and some people outside the bar look but nobody stops them; the Dom is taking care to look solicitous, at least from behind. That, or perhaps whatever's criminal about having sex isn't nearly as bad as Erik's been led to believe.

The Dom lives in Charles' neighborhood but not in his building. Erik trails silently after him as they pass the doormen to go inside, letting himself be nothing more than a shadow, unnoticeable. Erik makes himself take in a steadying breath when the elevator door closes, his stomach still a little uneasy from earlier.

"There are cameras in here," the Dom says casually, leaning against the wall, careless as he drags a hand back through his hair. "What's your name, anyway?"

"Erik," Erik says, bringing his eyes down again to look at the gleaming toes of the Dom's black business shoes. "What do you want me to call you?"

A laugh, then, "Oh, man. I'm going to enjoy this. You can call me Sir." The elevator beeps, and the doors open onto a carpeted hallway, empty in both directions. "Come on, _Erik_. I'm down this way."

Erik follows him. The door to the Dom's apartment looks like it has a gold knob and latch, but Erik can tell it's only gold-plated; the rest is nickel. Not that the Dom uses a key, anyway; he just swipes a magnetized card against a digital reader and the door unlocks on its own. The interior is dark, before the man flips on the lights, and Erik toes both his shoes off just inside the door, pushing them against the wall to stand in stocking feet, and then, to kneel.

The Dom looks down at him, the turn of his head betrayed by his shadow on the floor. "That's nice and all," he says, "but I thought you wanted a bed for the night? My room's through there. Why don't you go and strip out of those clothes, so you can be comfortable."

"Yes, Sir," Erik says, rising up and going, feeling the Dom's gaze on him as he walks down the hall and into the darkened bedroom. He doesn't turn on the light; he hasn't been told to, but his eyes adjust, and he sees that the bed is large and luxurious, more than one or even two people could ever possibly need. 

Erik sets his headphones and music player down on the bedside table and unzips his hoodie, pausing to fold it and set it down on the floor before he strips off the rest of his clothes, doing the same with them until he has a neat pile next to the table and he himself is naked, hair still damp from earlier. He turns to face the doorway, kneeling with his head still downturned, and stays there even when he hears soft footfalls coming along the corridor, then an inhale, then a low, dry chuckle.

"Very nice," the Dom says, coming a little closer and stroking his hand through Erik's hair once, from forehead to nape. "You are a skinny thing, aren't you? Why would anyone throw you away when you're so willing?" His hand is big, his palm a little rough with callus, catching on Erik's skin and scraping, just a little.

 _I wasn't thrown away,_ Erik thinks, but he keeps his mouth shut and leans back into the touch the way he's been taught. There's a buzzing in his ears he can't identify and he closes his eyes, exhales slowly.

"Get up, and bend over the edge of the bed," the Dom says, stroking Erik's hair once more before stepping back a little and starting to work on his own clothes, belt jangling.

Erik obeys. The comforter is cool and soft against his chest and stomach, and he shifts to spread his legs a little, fingers curling and uncurling against the cotton. He opens his eyes enough to catch a glimpse of the Dom over his shoulder, unbuttoning the last of his shirt, but he looks away quickly before the Dom can notice and punish him for it.

The lubed fingers that spread him open are thorough and firm, but not painful; the Dom stands behind Erik and praises him for taking them well even as he rubs himself against Erik's buttock, the thick line of his cock a wet-tipped weight against Erik's flesh. Erik wonders what would have happened if he hadn't -- if he'd screamed, or cried, or tried to run away. If the Dom would have chased him down and broken him so he couldn't, then fucked him anyway. He presses his upper body harder down against the bed and arches his back, deciding to pre-empt what he knows is the next move.

"Good boy," the Dom says, and pulls his fingers out with a squelching sound, taking hold of Erik's hips and tipping him up higher before positioning himself at Erik's hole and pushing in. It's a tight fit; Erik hasn't been getting fucked as often as he's used to and his body doesn't want to take it, fighting the intrusion the whole way. But it doesn't hurt, and the Dom's not doing anything to fix that.

The cock inside of him starts shifting back, pulling almost all the way out; and then the Dom is grunting as he starts to thrust, his fingers tightening on Erik's hipbones as he fucks in and out of Erik's hole, lifting Erik onto his tiptoes to adjust the angle and screw into him deeper from that standing position.

Erik takes the cues when they come, letting himself be manhandled and shuddering a little on the particularly rough thrusts, although for the most part he knows he's just meant to be fucked, not to take pleasure from this himself. He closes his eyes and tries to let his mind drift outside his body, detaching from himself until he can't really feel anything at all anymore. 

At last the Dom comes inside him, folding forward over Erik with a loud groaning sound like "Ungh, unh, unh," animal, mindless; his cock is jerking inside Erik as it shoots him full, and his hands roam Erik's body, petting him roughly as their hips collide over and over, finally slowing to a halt.

"Fuck," the Dom says after a minute, pulling his cock out slowly and letting his come trickle back out of Erik's ass with it. "Jesus, kid. You've got a good hole."

Erik stays like he is for a moment, letting the Dom see whatever he wants to see, before he finally straightens up and turns around, smiling like he enjoyed it. The man's torso is damp with perspiration and that's where Erik keeps his gaze. "Thank you, Sir," he murmurs.

"You're very welcome." A hand comes up to stroke Erik's upper arm; the other moves around behind him, and fingers probe at his ass, stroking him where he's a bit swollen and sore. "Get in the bed, kid. We'll sleep now and I'll fuck you again in the morning before I go to work."

It's a strange concept, the idea of sleeping next to someone else; before, if any of the Doms wanted him in the middle of the night, they would just come in and fuck him and then leave again after. None of them ever stayed, not even if they thought they'd want more in the morning. But Erik supposes it's different when there isn't another room the Dom can send him off to. 

The bed is just as soft as it appeared, and Erik settles in beneath the sheets gratefully, feeling better once he's covered up even if there's still something quivering low in his stomach. The Dom climbs in after him, but he doesn't lie down yet -- instead he picks something up from the bedside table, and Erik only realizes it's a lighter and a cigarette when he lights it, the immediate smell of ignition and burning tobacco reaching his nostrils. It always takes his power a bit of time to come back to him, after sex -- Erik’s so used to letting it drift off, since Mr Shaw never allowed him to use his power when he was with any of the Doms. It was easier just to let it go entirely.

"Want one?" the Dom asks, offering the opened pack of cigarettes to Erik.

“All right,” Erik says, and he takes one, sitting up and holding it between his lips as the Dom leans over to touch the flame to the tip. "Breathe in," the Dom says, and he does, watching the paper flare to life with his inhale. And almost immediately he's coughing, doubled over and gasping for air, feeling like he's burnt the lining of his throat all the way down to his lungs.

A laugh, then a hand patting his bare back. "You'll get there," the Dom says, taking a drag of his own cigarette and puffing out smoke that dissipates only slowly in the still air. "It'll kill you, but you just have to keep breathing it in."

Erik tries again, and this time he still coughs but it's not as bad as before. A few drags later he's actually feeling pleasantly light-headed, dizzy like when he goes a few days without eating. The musky smell of the burning tobacco reminds him acutely of Mr Shaw, who always smelled like smoke, and who would always sit with a lit cigarette held between two fingers while he planned an attack. 'It's like they say,' Mr Shaw used to tell them. 'Makes you stronger.' Then he'd laugh.

*

The Dom keeps his promise, and the next morning Erik wakes up to him tying Erik's wrists to the headboard. He fucks him hard, stays around long enough to ask if Erik wants him to get him off, and then he goes to take a shower and Erik takes that as his cue to leave. It's early: five-thirty in the morning according to the clock on the man's bedside table. Erik considers making himself a cup of coffee but doesn't want to run the risk of still being here when the man gets out of the shower, so instead he just steals the pack of cigarettes and lighter from the drawer and stuffs them into his hoodie pocket, and goes.

It snowed overnight. Already the stuff is accumulated in the gutter and turning grey, slushy underfoot, the sky dumping down sleet. Erik can scarcely keep his eyes open, despite the cold and the ice clumping in his hair. Maybe Charles won't make him go to school today, and he can get some proper sleep. 

But when he gets back, Charles is sitting at the bottom of the staircase, nursing a cup of tea between both hands with his feet drawn up onto the lowest stair. He's pale-faced, and there are dark bags under his eyes like someone's smudged him with an ash-covered thumb, thick sweeps on thin skin.

"Good morning," Charles says quietly, then lifts his mug to take a sip.

With Charles blocking his only way of getting upstairs, Erik just lingers in the gallery, dripping melted snow onto the marble floor. "Hey," he says at last, and strips off the wet hoodie, crossing to the closet to hang it up and push off his shoes. He tries to walk normally but isn't sure how well he succeeds; he can feel Charles watching him, gaze prickling at the back of his neck.

A sigh, then Charles says, clothes rustling as he shifts, "I think we need to talk about this, Erik. What you did last night was very dangerous -- you could have met anyone, and they could have seriously hurt you, or killed you. I won't always know, on your little jaunts, that I need to keep an eye on you and make sure you're safe."

Erik shuts the closet door and says, "I can take care of myself." He's Psi-level, for fuck's sake.

He turns his back on Charles and heads for the kitchen, and when he hears Charles get up and follow, well, at least he isn't surprised. There's a coffee machine; he can feel the mechanism, but has to dig for it in one of the low cabinets to pull it out onto the countertop and plug it in.

"Then tell me -- how do you know that man was clean?" Charles asks, from somewhere near the doorway; he's giving Erik plenty of space, as if he's worried about coming closer. "He could have any sort of disease, and you didn't even pause to ask him to use a condom. It's all very well thinking you could fight him off if need be -- though that is assuming you're capable, and that he's not knocked you out, or a more powerful mutant, for example -- but you don't even know his name. It's Evan, by the way. Evan Godolski."

Erik bites back an incredulous laugh and finds the coffee beans, dumping a good half-cup into the grinder. So Charles was watching, was he? Of course he was. Erik should have known. His lips press tight together. "It's not," he says, plugging the cord into the wall, "any of your business." Then he hits the power button and the sound of the beans being ground is loud enough to drown out any reply.

 _It is my business if you insist on running around the city having sex with strange Doms and risking your safety and your health,_ Charles says, and this voice can't be drowned out, is right in Erik's head, clear and firm. _I'm responsible for you, Erik, and that makes it my business. May I remind you that it's still illegal for you to be having sex at all? That man could go to jail for a very long time if he got caught, and that's his problem, but it's my business to keep you safe, whether you like it or not._

The beans are a fine powder now and Erik rips the cord out of the wall, the spark of electricity surging up his fingertips and getting absorbed by his power but stinging, slightly, nonetheless. He turns around to look at Charles, and this time he looks him in the eye. "And it's not illegal for you to watch? I didn't realize you were into that kind of thing. Maybe I can fuck the next Dom here, to make it more convenient for you."

Charles lets out an irritated huff. "Don't be crass," he says, flicking his fingers to dismiss the accusation in a gesture that's strongly reminiscent of Mr Shaw. "I wasn't watching, I just kept track of your wellbeing to make sure you hadn't been asphyxiated or drugged or cut into small pieces to be thrown into the Hudson. Look."

Charles steps into the kitchen, setting his empty cup down on a clear patch of countertop and folding his arms over his chest, hip leaning into the cabinet as he fixes Erik with a serious gaze. "I'm not judging you, Erik. I can't stop you from going out there and having sex, not without some serious fiddling in your head, and that's not something I do. But I do want you to think more seriously about being safe, and not being a proud, self-aggrandizing _child_ about it trying to convince yourself that you can handle anything and anyone out there." He shrugs, his oversized sweater shifting over his shoulders. "Do you really want to catch HIV? Or gonorrhea? Or some other horrendous venereal disease?"

Erik really, really doesn't want to be having this argument right now, when he'd just as soon curl up under the covers and sleep until four. "Fine," he says, putting a paper filter in the coffee machine and pouring in the grounds. "Are you finished?"

"For now," Charles says, lips pursing in frustration, but after a moment he looks away, towards the door. "And you're going to school, by the way. Staying out all night is not an excuse for a sick note."

"You aren't my Dom. That isn't your decision." 

"I'm your guardian," Charles says, and when he looks back at Erik his face is harder, his voice more forceful than before. "Try me and you'll find yourself at the school gate with no memory of how you got there. You're going to school."

"Make me go, and I'll burst the pipes. Tens of thousands of dollars in damages. You want to bring powers into this? Two can play that game." Erik's tempted to do it either way, punishment for keeping him from the rest of Hellfire. Even so he can feel the heat in his face, some part of himself expecting Charles to close the distance between them and hit him, wondering if this is what it takes to push Charles past that limit.

"I'll never hit you, Erik," Charles says, but his mouth and his voice don't match -- his voice is softer, but the line of his mouth is still hard. "But if you want to play, then, well. I don't need the suppressor bands. You can go to school without your mutation today."

The scariest thing is how immediate it is.

Erik reaches for his power and already it's not there -- he can sense it, but when he tries to grasp it it slips away, always just out of reach. He can still feel the metal in the kitchen, Charles wasn't that cruel, but he can't touch it, can't _use_ it. Something in Erik wants to scream, to break things, but the rest of him's gone numb. Maybe it's the sense of dominance in Charles' voice, even if it's not real Dominance, but he feels tired all of a sudden. Or, more tired than he had been, something he'd not thought possible, like Charles has turned the marrow in his bones to lead. 

"If you force me to act the Dom, I will," Charles says, and he sounds tired too. "I'm not good at this yet, okay? But I will put my foot down if I have to, and so -- no more sex without condoms. Do you understand?"

Erik's glaring at the floor, wondering if it's possible to burn a hole through wood just by hating strongly enough. He doesn't say anything, refusing to speak, but in the end an order's an order, and they both know Erik will obey. 

Erik turns around to cover the burning in his cheeks and pours water into the coffeemaker, then presses the start button, the machinery gurgling happily to life while Erik feels like he's shriveling up inside, dried up like a dead leaf.

"Get dressed for school when you're done," Charles says, and leaves the kitchen, heading upstairs, as far from Erik as it's possible to get in the apartment, until Erik's muted senses lose track of his wristwatch and Charles fades away, leaving Erik with the sense that he is completely, and utterly, alone in the world.

*

_Charles_

After a morning wake-up call like that, it's hard to feel energized for anything, let alone for meeting Ms Haller to discuss the case; Charles isn't sure why she wants to meet up anyway, given that he won't be able to discuss anything more with her than he did with the CIA about Shaw's mental state, but nonetheless he makes an effort to look more like a human and less like a zombie before he leaves, splashing cold water on his face and using too many squirts of his eyedrops.

They're meeting at a restaurant on the edge of Central Park, where Ms Haller assures him she's got them a private room for their discussion; it's only a few blocks from the apartment, so Charles walks, the frigid outdoor air cutting at his bare skin where his scarf and hat leave his eyes and the bridge of his nose exposed, though his hands are thankfully buried deep in his pockets.

He reaches the place without too much difficulty -- the streets are already swept clean of snow here, in the richest part of the city, the sidewalks carefully salted -- and ducks inside with a sigh of relief, reaching up to tug his scarf down from his mouth and looking around. He spots Ms Haller sitting over to one side, and makes his way to her, waving off a server who looked set to follow.

"Good morning," he says, tugging out the chair opposite hers and sitting down.

"Chilly lately, isn't it?" Ms Haller says, but the arch of her eyebrow and the curve of her lips suggest she's well aware of how much an understatement that is. "Do you want to order anything?" She already has a cappuccino cupped between both hands.

Of course, hearing her on the telephone yesterday and seeing her again are two very different things; Ms Haller is very pretty, and Charles isn't too tired to notice. Charles manages a smile back, and waves the server over at last; the woman had been thinking, not unkindly, that she needs to get back behind the counter to organize the tables for tonight, and wondering when she'd be done with the two of them. He's happy to oblige, and orders a pot of Earl Grey before turning back to Ms Haller. "So. How can I help you?" he asks, settling a little as he shrugs out of his thick coat. "You were very evasive on the phone."

"My apologies for that," Ms Haller says, and she leans over to pull a file folder out of her satchel, setting it on the table with her hand resting atop it. "But first things first: how have things been going since the move?"

"Oh, you know," Charles hedges at first, concentrating on tugging off his gloves one finger at a time; but then he sighs, fed up with putting on a false front. "Difficult, if I'm honest. I may be a psychologist, and a well-respected one at that, modesty aside, but having a teenager all the time is ... exhausting." The mild effort of maintaining the suppression of Erik's mutation is nothing compared to the energy required to stay calm in the face of Erik's acting out. "It's a very different relationship than doctor-patient, and I don't think I'd entirely grasped that when I offered."

He looks up at her and makes his mouth into a rueful smile, something a bit warmer than the way it wants to sit. "I'll be all right, though. I still think Erik is best off with me instead of in a group home."

"He's settling, then?" Ms Haller asks. "I'm no expert like you are, but just from what I know of his background, that's surprising."

Charles winces. "Settling might be a strong word."

"Oh? Has something happened?"

Charles isn't sure ... well, Ms Haller is almost a stranger, and he's not quite sure that sharing the details with her would be ethical. But he doesn't have anyone else right here and now to talk to about it, she's already involved in the case, and it's still very much in the front of his mind: the sharp sting of Erik's rejection this morning, his anger and frustration. "We had a bit of an argument this morning," he says after a long pause, glancing down at the tabletop before meeting her eyes again. "Well, last night, really, stretching into a rematch this morning. Erik was unhappy that I'd been to see Shaw without telling him first. He still sees Shaw as being his Dom."

Ms Haller covers up any expressive reaction with a sip of her cappuccino, but he can still sense the twinge of disappointment-pity-disgust in her mind. "I suppose that shouldn't be a shock," she says, "but it's nothing to do with you. Not really."

"Oh, I know," Charles says, and turns to the server as the woman comes up behind him, accepting the pot of tea and the cup gratefully then waiting for her to leave before continuing. "Intellectually I know that," he says, pouring himself a first cup slowly, with a hand he forces to be utterly steady. "But it's still difficult when I only want to help him, and he wants nothing to do with me. Especially hearing it in full surround sound. I'm having to be rather firmer than I like with him, just to make sure he helps to keep himself safe."

Ms Haller nods, and then she tilts her head toward a door past the bar. "Shall we go on to the more private room, now that you have your tea?"

Charles nods and gets to his feet, collecting his outerwear awkwardly over one arm and juggling with the teapot and cup, sipping at the latter to keep from spilling. "Of course, please, lead the way."

Ms Haller collects her things carefully, neatly folding her coat over her arm, and leads him across the crowded shop and into the back room, which has a little sign labeled 'Reserved 8 am' taped to the door. She closes it behind them and they settle down at one of the two-person tables, Ms Haller pushing her cup aside and opening the file she'd pulled out of her bag earlier.

"The Hellfire Club is going up for arraignment in front of the International Criminal Court next week," she says. "This is the current list of charges." She slides a piece of paper across the table to him. "And these are the charges I'd like to add." A second piece of paper, next to the first. "But our evidence for these," she taps the second sheet, "is circumstantial. How many of them we can formally charge will depend on what we could convince Erik to corroborate."

Charles pulls the charge sheets towards himself and scans through, though none of them are surprising; when he reaches the list of secondary charges he makes a doubtful sound, tapping his finger against the page. "At the moment at least, there is little to no chance of your getting Erik to corroborate anything," he says, and takes another sip of his tea. "He accused me last night of manipulating him into turning them in; he's very wary of saying anything that could be remotely incriminating now. If it's not on the interview tape then I think it's unlikely, for the time being, that you'll be able to try it."

Ms Haller's mouth twists. "That's disappointing," she says. "Well, such as it is, we did get a positive result on the rape kit: semen from recent intercourse matched the DNA sample we have for Azazel Rasputin. We don't need Erik to verify that. The bedsheets also had samples from Shaw, Essex, and Wyngarde, as well as three unidentified males, but unless Erik says so, that doesn't prove they raped him. Just that their DNA somehow magically ended up on his sheets." She sighs. 

Charles reaches across the table and lays his hand on her forearm, tilting his head to meet her eyes. "These cases are going to take years," he says, trying to sound as if the thought doesn't make him want to curl up in a corner and die. "Erik has only been separated from them for a matter of what, a fortnight? Give him time. Maybe he'll start to consider what happened and think differently than he does now, and maybe not. They had him from such a young age that it's not surprising he defends them, the same as any child defends their parent."

Ms Haller's gaze flicks down to his hand on her arm, but she doesn't pull away. "I know. You're right. I suppose it's just the subs' rights activist in me that doesn't want to believe anyone would voluntarily defend their rapists. Surely he realizes what they did to him was wrong?"

"No more than any person brought up in a particular culture from infancy thinks their culture is wrong," Charles says, and doesn't remove his hand, either; it's a nice thing to be distracted by, the background interest in Ms Haller's mind when he's touching her, filed away while she's working but there, gratifyingly, nonetheless. "You can't think of it in the way that the you you are now would think of it, put in that situation -- Erik doesn't have your background. He's been raised to think subs are trash, and to be treated as any Dom wishes. It'll take time for him to decide if he agrees with the rest of society that that's not true."

"Mmm." She glances down at the charge sheets still sitting on the table. "Well, those copies are yours to keep, at any rate. If Erik decides he'll testify, see if he can verify charges one through seven on the second page for everyone to whom they're applicable. I'll go ahead and charge everything now, and -- I think twenty per charge per defendant for the abuse claims. We can drop any extraneous charges if necessary."

Charles finally lifts his hand so he can take up the papers, folding them neatly and tucking them into his satchel. "All right," he says, "but I'll warn you now that I won't be asking Erik about it for at least a few days. All it would do now is aggravate an already tenuous emotional state in him, and I don't want to push him too far."

He sips again at his tea, which is finally at the perfect temperature. "Do you have time to finish your coffee? It seems a shame just to run off when you're finished with me."

Ms Haller gives him an assessing look, but then she smiles, closing the file folder. "I think they can spare me a little while longer, don't you?" she says. "Besides, if I abandon you here with your tea, how would that look?"

"Terrible," Charles says, with a small, warm smile over the rim of his cup. "Can't have people saying the UN just uses its consultants and doesn't provide any aftercare."

"Certainly not," Ms Haller says, and when she crosses her legs the toe of her shoe brushes his shin. Were Charles not a telepath, he'd have no way of knowing if it was an accident or not.

*

He almost -- _almost_ \-- makes it to his office before he gets the call.

Charles' cell phone rings in his pocket as the taxi turns the corner onto his street, and he fumbles it out, tugging off one glove with his teeth so he can hit the 'accept' button. "Hello?"

"Hello, Dr Xavier?"

"Yes, this is he," Charles says as they pull up to the curb, and he hands over his card to the driver to swipe. "Who's speaking, please?"

"This is Robert Simmons, Vice Principal at Trinity. I'm calling regarding an incident here at school with your child, Erik. I'm sorry to disturb you in the middle of your day, but is it possible for you to come and pick him up?"

"What kind of incident?" Charles looks forward at the driver. "I'm really sorry, but I have to go fetch my ... kid, from school. Could you take me to Trinity School on West 91st Street instead? Obviously I'll pay."

"Sure," the man says, and pulls away again, a sense of surprised pleasure radiating from him at catching such an easy next fare.

"He and another student were caught smoking out in the courtyard."

"Oh, for pity’s sake," Charles mutters. "I'm on my way. It'll be maybe ten minutes in this traffic." He'll need to cancel his morning appointments, too, since he doubts this will be over with quickly.

"Thank you, Dr. Xavier. Just check in at the front office when you get here."

The ride to the school feels both short and endless; the brief call to Jocelyn to ask her to let his patients know he's had a family emergency and to reschedule, one red light after another, the song going round and around in the cabbie's head, stuck on the same few lines over and over. Charles is tempted to reach out for Erik, to check in before he arrives, but he's a little worried that once he finds him he won't be able to refrain from telling Erik off all over again.

More than anything else, Charles is afraid of being too strict, too harsh, of getting frustrated and losing his temper. Bad things happen when he loses his temper, which is why he learned as a child never to allow himself to do it. But this morning ... this morning he felt the specter of Kurt standing over his shoulder, like a heavy hand resting there, pressing him down into the earth.

He pays the driver and gets out of the car at the school gates, grits his teeth, and walks across the swept concrete to the steps and goes inside.

It is, at least, warmer in here than it is outside; Charles unwraps himself and glances up at the sign on the wall, then follows the sense of Erik's mind towards the main office, which is deeper inside the building.

Erik is sitting just inside; Charles can see him through the glass windows, reading; he has a copy of _A Clockwork Orange_ propped up on his knees and his mind is all words and the blurry images they conjure; there's a little discomfort, too, from the absence of his mutation, but Charles isn't about to let that drop when Erik is misbehaving _again_.

Charles lets out a silent breath and steps into the office, pausing beside Erik and looking down at the bowed top of his head. "Hello," he says, taking in Erik's coat and satchel where they're set on the floor by his feet; not a good sign. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Erik says, not looking up from his book. "You're supposed to check in."

Charles turns and goes to the desk, where the receptionist hands him the visitors’ log and a pen. Once that's done Charles asks, "So where do I need to go to pay his bail?"

"I'll go ahead and let Mr Simmons know you're here," the receptionist says, reaching for the phone.

"Thank you." Charles turns back to face Erik, and makes a decision; he sits down next to him, hands clasped loosely in his lap. He doesn't say anything further, but he knows Erik is very aware of him sitting there, can hear him wondering how Charles will punish him for this.

If Charles learned one thing from his mother, it was the punishing power of silence.

"Dr Xavier?" The door to the adjoining office has opened, and a thin balding Dom approaches, extending his hand toward Charles. His mind is all business, no real rancor in it despite the circumstances. "I'm Robert Simmons, we spoke on the phone. Would you and Erik like to come into my office for a chat?"

"Of course, thank you." Charles follows Mr Simmons into the other room, Erik shuffling after him. "Firstly, I'm very sorry that this has happened so soon after Erik joined the school. I can assure you that we'll be talking about it when we get home."

"Well, that's good to hear," Mr Simmons says, a bit dryly. He sits down behind his desk and clasps his hands atop the blotter, looking between Charles and Erik, who is standing next to his chair and eyeing it warily, wondering if he should kneel.

 _Just sit on the chair, kneeling would be inappropriate. We'll talk about that later too,_ Charles says silently, and Erik sits. Out loud Charles continues, "I understand of course that we need to have a discussion about it here and now, but if we could limit it to the necessities then I would be very grateful. I've had to cancel two appointments with patients this morning to be here and I'd prefer not to cancel my afternoon as well."

"Of course," Mr Simmons says. "One of our instructors confiscated this." He pushes an open pack of cigarettes and a lighter across the desk toward Charles. "The other student has already been dealt with. Mr Lehnsherr, do you have anything to say that could help us ... better understand the situation?"

Erik shakes his head.

"If Erik apologizes, will that be sufficient?" Charles asks; he suspects probing Erik further on the matter in front of the Vice Principal would not win him any brownie points.

"Well, he'll be suspended for two days," Mr Simmons says. "We have a zero-tolerance policy toward tobacco, drugs, and alcohol on school grounds. I would hope this will be the first and last time I see you in this office, Mr Lehnsherr; it is certainly not an auspicious start."

Not surprising, but disappointing, nonetheless. Charles wonders what he's going to do with Erik for two days -- he can hardly take him to the office. "Very well," he says; the man is doing his job, after all. "Is that two days including or excluding today?"

"Including, considering Erik's not been able to make it to any classes thus far." Mr Simmons stands behind his desk, cueing them to do the same. "Thank you again for taking time out of your day, Dr Xavier. Mr Lehnsherr, please consider your actions carefully over this period, and I will see you on Monday."

"Thank you," Charles says, reaching across to shake Mr Simmons' hand before looking at Erik, who has the same unaffected expression on his face; however, on the inside Charles can feel Erik's embarrassment at being told off like this, and a growing anxiety, too, over how Charles will punish him -- what, Erik is thinking, is going to be the next step up from having his powers suppressed? "Get your things and we'll head home," Charles says to him, electing not to reassure him just yet. There'll be time for that later once they've talked things through.

Erik follows him out of the office, not bothering to put on his coat -- not that it matters, since they only have to walk a few steps to the waiting taxi, though given how skinny he is he must be cold. Erik doesn't speak at all the whole ride home, and it's not until Charles is unlocking the door to the apartment that he says, in a soft voice, "Are you really angry?"

Charles sighs, and holds the door open for Erik to follow him inside, shutting it behind them and closing out the rest of the world. "I'm sad," he says, meeting Erik's eyes. "Because I want you to be happy here, and you're very clearly not. And that's okay, you feel how you feel, but your behavior yesterday and today has been very disappointing."

He goes to the closet and hangs up his coat and scarf; Erik follows, hanging up his own but keeping his satchel slung over his shoulder. "Okay," he says, closing the door with the toe of his boot. Inside he's a rumbling mix of uncertainty and resignation, half-convinced Charles will send him back to the group home.

"Let's go sit down in the den," Charles says, wondering tiredly how this discussion is going to go.

Erik sits on the couch, but Charles takes a seat in his favorite armchair, leaning forward and resting his clasped hands on his knees. He draws in a breath, and tries to banish the heavy sensation from this morning, to maintain his own calm instead of breathing in the memory of Kurt's cold anger, having to try and keep himself separate from it at the same time as deciding what to say. "So. What brought on the sudden urge to smoke?"

Erik shrugs, rubbing the side of his thumbnail against his knee and staring at it like it's the most interesting thing in the world. 

"There must have been something," Charles presses. "I can't imagine you just picked up a packet of cigarettes on the street and thought, what the heck."

"You were watching," Erik says. "Didn't you see me steal them? From that Dom?"

Charles huffs. "I wasn't _watching._ I kept tabs on you, but my power doesn't work like CCTV unless I choose to look through someone's eyes, and frankly there are websites for watching things like that. I suppose my question really is, why would you want to smoke? You must know that they're seriously bad for your health. They're essentially a risk factor for any disease it's possible for a human -- or mutant, if you prefer -- to catch."

"I guess I just like the smell," Erik says, and now he's clasping his hands together, twisting his fingers a little. 

Charles doesn't have to press deep; the memories are right up at the forefront of Erik's mind, the warmth and strength of Shaw's thumb clicking a silver lighter, the glow of the tar, the way the smell of smoke always clung to Shaw's clothes and skin, the association strong and long-lasting in Erik's memory.

"Hmm," Charles says, but how to approach it ... there's such a deep connection there that telling Erik to stop is likely only to make him rebel more, want it more. "Never in the apartment," he says after a long pause, trying to sound calm, not like he's making a bad compromise between Erik's health and his mental state. "Honestly I would far prefer it if you never smoke, because the things it does to your lungs are horrendous. I won't order you, but please, seriously think about it. This is not something without consequences."

There's a flicker of surprise in Erik's mind in reaction to that, and Erik even glances up from his knees at him, just for a second. "All right. Can I go now?"

"Not just yet," Charles says. "We also need to talk about when it is and isn't appropriate to kneel."

Erik slumps into the sofa with his legs stretched out under the coffee table, arms hugging his waist, and is silent. 

"To boil it down to its simplest form, you don't have to and indeed shouldn't kneel for anyone in a social setting," Charles says, settling back himself and consciously mirroring Erik's posture. "Unless you are acting as their submissive then you don't have to kneel. If you do it's more likely that people will either think it strange or take advantage of you. Does that make sense?"

There's gratitude for that, at least, even if Erik doesn't express it verbally, Charles having finally put to rest the ongoing debate in Erik's mind over the etiquette of it all. "Yes," he says, finally meeting Charles' gaze across the room. 

"Good," Charles says, with a small, private sigh of relief. Of course it doesn't fix the issue of Erik's suspension, which he knows he should be angry about -- but at this point he just doesn't feel it, and he's not going to force it to fit his mental image of how a good guardian should think. "Now, we need to sort out what you're going to do for the next couple of days. I’m not giving you back your mutation today; the punishment still stands until I get home tonight. I have patients booked in all afternoon today and all day tomorrow, so I can't stay at home with you."

"I can stay here by myself," Erik says. "I'm fourteen. I'm old enough."

But is he reliable enough? Charles wonders, lips pursing for a moment, torn; it _would_ solve the problem, and show trust in Erik, to allow him to stay in the apartment, but given the past ... not even twenty-four hours, it's hard to feel secure about it. "I'd need you to promise me you'd stay here, or if you go out only go to the store and come straight back," Charles says. "And not to invite anyone in."

"All right," Erik says without contest, and Charles is pleased to notice a flush of positive regard from him at Charles' acquiescence, and relief at being trusted, even if he is frustrated by the withholding of his mutation. "Can I use your computer?"

"Sure. Just don't tell the school, okay? You're supposed to be sitting in a corner and thinking about what you've done," Charles says, with a small, wry smile to let Erik know he's joking. "Okay. Now, I cancelled my appointments up until two this afternoon which is when I usually come back from my lunch; it's only ten now, so I have some time before that. Is there anything you want to do before I go back to work?" Given that Erik didn't throw a massive tantrum over being disciplined, Charles has some unexpected time to burn.

Silence for a long moment, and then Erik says, suddenly and with a sense of being shocked with himself for saying it at all: "Have you ever read _The Wizard of Oz?_ "

What a weird thing to ask. "Yes," Charles says, a bit bemused. "Why?"

"They're not --" Erik starts, and then his cheeks bloom red and he hesitates, crossing his arms over his stomach. "Are they mutants?"

"Are who mutants?" Charles asks, then takes a look in Erik's head to see what he means. Oh, he thinks softly. He obviously missed this last night. "No, they're not," he says, with a brief smile, not pleased but instead ... sympathetic. "They're all very strange, but they're not mutants."

"Oh." Erik's cheeks blaze brighter, and Charles can see his fingers digging into his sides all the way from across the room. "I read a ... different version, I guess."

Charles can hear Erik wondering how many of his books were 'different'; it's not an unreasonable fear, and though Charles feels for him, he can't help but see it as another tool helping to pry the scales of Shaw's deceit from Erik's eyes. "If you'd like," he says, "we could go and sit in the library for a while and take a look at some of my other books that you've read before, to see if they're the same or not." He has the time, after all.

Erik nods. "Okay. ...All right." For Erik it feels like bargaining with himself, trying to convince himself it's acceptable to want to know the truth, that it doesn't make him disloyal, that it's only natural.

"Let's go then," Charles says, and together they find that sixteen out of nineteen of the books Erik's read before are different now.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Shaw is present in the first scene and there are brief references to fantasy rape and past abuse. Brief flashback to child sexual abuse. A scene of "consensual" statutory rape. References to past child sexual and physical abuse.


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to **baehj** for betaing and to **arisu** for her gracious help with German!
> 
> See notes at the end of chapter for content warnings.

_Erik_

"Jesus fuck, Lehnsherr, you've got a mouth like a vacuum cleaner," Lucas says as he zips up his pants, reaching for his belt buckle. "You could charge."

If he did charge, Erik thinks, he'd probably be rich by now. He feels a little dizzy when he stands but he lets Lucas have a half-smile, anyway; when he doesn't smile, some of the Doms here tend to get touchy about it. "It was my pleasure," he says instead, reaching for the gold pin on Lucas' satchel and rubbing his thumb over the four gold beads there. He flicks a look up at him from beneath his lashes, figuring Lucas could do with the ego boost. 

"D'you need a hand?" Lucas places his hand on Erik's hip, stroking his thumb over the hollow there through Erik’s trousers; the question seems genuine, but Erik shakes his head and pulls away. 

"I'm fine." That's not what this is, and that's not what Erik is offering. The sooner people realize that, the easier all their lives will be. "I'll see you in class."

Erik pushes out into the corridor, letting the door swing shut behind him, and finds Madelyne waiting for him there, leaning against the wall. Her eyes flick down to his swollen mouth then roll exaggeratedly up to the ceiling, and she lets out a sharp snort. "Really? Really. I've been waiting here for like ten minutes, Erik. Do you even want lunch now that you've already eaten?"

"It wasn't ten minutes," Erik says, and he starts walking toward the cafeteria, letting her hurry to catch up and loop her arm through his. "Five minutes, at the absolute most."

"You know you have a bit of a reputation, right?" she asks, though it doesn't seem to bother her very much; she hasn't withdrawn her friendship, anyway. That they're friends at all is rather startling when Erik thinks about it, given that while he knows pretty much everything about her, she knows next to nothing about him -- quite aside from the fact that she’s human, which he only remembers from time to time, as if it doesn’t matter, which he knows it should. 

Madelyne jabs her finger into his side. "I don't want to get a reputation myself as, like, keeping watch for you or something. I'm not your pimp."

"I didn't ask you to keep watch," Erik says. "You could have gone to lunch without me."

"I wasn't keeping watch, I was waiting because I'm your friend, asshole," she says, and this time she pinches his forearm. "That's what friends do. They wait and walk to lunch together and don't make their friends look like pimps. Or madams. Would this make me look like your madam? Can you get lady pimps?"

"I suppose," Erik says, even if he doesn't really have any idea. "I can keep watch for you, too, if that's what you want. For equality's sake."

Madelyne blushes. "Not my thing. But ... um ... thanks for the offer."

In the cafeteria she heads for the deli sandwiches and Erik takes his cue from her, getting a chicken salad wrap from the refrigerated selection and a can of Diet Coke. Madelyne's commented on it before, that he always chooses the same thing she does, but without a Dom to choose for him Erik would spend hours trying to pick between Thai and salad bar and sushi and pizza and sandwiches and Indian and end up not getting lunch at all. It's not that he _can't_ pick for himself -- and he has, before, when he got lunch while he was suspended and Charles wasn't home. Choosing for himself, like his power, comes more easily when he's angry, but he prefers not to choose at all if he can help it. It feels disrespectful somehow, even if the Doms he's disrespecting are no longer around to see it.

"Let's go sit over there," Madelyne says, pointing at a table over to one side where Sonia, Evan and Petra are sitting. Sonia is talking with her hands while Evan swallows his meatball sub whole. She leads the way across the cafeteria, dropping into a seat beside Petra and leaving the one opposite for Erik. "Hi."

"Hi," Petra says. Sonia just keeps on talking.

"Don't you think it's crazy though that there aren't more charges? There should be more charges!"

Erik sits and unwraps his sandwich, folding the paper over into a neat rectangle to use as a makeshift plate. Sometimes he wonders what Madelyne's friendship says about him as a person. He likes Petra all right. Evan's a Dom. Sonia's a Domme, too, but she's also got the kind of unpalatable personality that makes Erik wonder why other Doms put up with her. Even though Madelyne's a sub, it still seems an unlikely choice.

"I mean, hello! They blew up, like, everything, with all the people inside it," she continues, fingers making a sort of explosive gesture near her head. "What the hell. Just because they're mutants doesn't mean they shouldn't get the book thrown at them, Jesus. Why is the UN trying them anyway? They blew up, like, half of London, can't we send them to London?"

"It wasn't half," Evan says quietly, in his habitually soft tone. "And they did a lot of things in a lot of countries so they decided to share. It makes sense really."

“Whatever, _most_ of London, okay?”

The pieces fit themselves together, then, with staggering ease.

"You're talking about the Hellfire Club." Erik doesn't realize he's said it out loud until they're all staring at him. He's never spoken at lunch before, not unless it was to ask for a napkin or for someone to pass the salt. He feels dizzy again, worse than before.

Sonia nods. "Yeah, they put out the charges in the papers this morning. My Dad said that it was sickening how much wasn't on there, and that some of the stuff that was made his stomach turn. It's so stupid, everyone knows they did all that stuff. Why can't we just send them to jail or death row or whatever already and skip the whole pointless charade?"

The charges. They've charged them. Erik's abruptly keenly aware of the copper pipes in the walls, the stainless steel cutlery all around them moving from table to mouth, the magnetic thrum of the earth's power through the air. It’s really happening -- and this is how he finds out about it, sitting at a table surrounded by humans? Erik's on his feet a second later, pulling his satchel to his hand by the buckles on its strap.

"Um," Madelyne says, " _Where_ do you think you're going?"

“I’ll be back later,” he says, even if he isn’t sure that’s true, and ignores the exasperated sound Sonia makes. He just goes, quickening his steps when he's in the hall until he's half-running, breath burning in his chest, past other students and a teacher who entirely fails to stop him, all the way out the door and down the stairs to the sidewalk. 

Newspaper. Where's a newspaper? He walks south, then runs, dodging tourists and dog-walkers and mid-day smokers until outside a storefront he finds a set of machines where you can buy the paper for $1.75. Metal machines; they open for him and he grabs a copy of the _Times_.

The first thing he sees is their picture. It's blown up to cover half the front page, in full color, the six of them going up the stairs of the International Criminal Court at the Hague. If Erik didn't know better, he'd think nothing had changed; Mr Shaw is even wearing a new suit. He flips the paper over, hiding the image to read the headline underneath: _HELLFIRE CLUB ARRAIGNED IN INTERNATIONAL COURT_. 

He skips the text; he knows it will be biased, but he'll read it later, anyway. For now he's only interested in one thing. The charges are listed on the next page, long columns below each of the six mugshots. The charges being filed under the Rome statute are genocide and crimes against humanity, for all six of them. Mr Shaw is also being charged with war crimes, for things Erik had never heard about; must be something he did in eastern Ukraine during the Russian occupation. And then the standard murder charges, assault, and -- Erik's stomach flips -- dozens of charges for rape in the first degree, predatory sexual assault against a child, endangering the welfare of a child, kidnapping in the first degree, coercion in the first degree ...

Erik stops reading. He feels empty, like someone has scooped out all of his insides and left him filled with nothing but air. It doesn't seem real. It should, but it doesn't. No one was ever supposed to get caught.

He folds the newspaper back up with shaking hands. The very ground beneath his feet feels unsteady, like the city’s nothing more than the setting for a nightmare. He doesn't remember the walk home: an entire forty-five minutes of his day, plucked from his mind as if it never happened, and he feels as if he wakes again only when he's dropping his satchel on the floor and lying face-down on his bed, pressing his face hard against the mattress and sucking in a lungful of air then expelling it all at once, screaming until his throat's raw and his face is wet and he's gulping against his own too-warm air and snot. 

It isn’t fair. It isn’t _fair_. They do everything for mutants, they sacrifice _everything_ for the cause, and is anyone grateful? No. No, of course not. They’ll drag this out as long as possible, kill them all as slowly as possible. Until Erik’s the only one left. And for what? He didn’t earn this exemption. He’s a traitor, he should be with the rest of them, he should martyr himself with the rest of them.

The silence when he stops screaming is thick, his own pulse throbbing hard in his ears. After a second, there's a buzzing sound. Silence. Then the buzzing sound again. Erik lifts his head and pulls his satchel up onto the bed, digging through it until he finds the iPhone Charles gave him. The screen's lit up, Charles' name glowing white against the black background.

Erik stares at it for a second, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. It buzzes again, and he exhales, slowly, clenching his eyes shut just for a moment before he makes himself swipe right on the screen and answer.

"Hello?"

"Hi," Charles says. His voice sounds different on the phone. "Do you want me to come home?"

Erik rubs the wetness from his cheeks and looks at the clock on his bedside table. It's still only quarter 'til two. He wills himself to sound steady. "No. I'm fine." It's an obvious falsehood but he tells it anyway, rolling onto his back to stare up at the ceiling, still holding the phone to his ear.

"Mmhmm. All right, then." A shifting noise. "Well, I have another appointment in fifteen minutes, and two more after that. I finish at five today. Are you going to still be fine for the three hours until I leave the office?"

"Yes." He knows his voice is thick and stuffy, and that it's undermining his point, but there's not much else for it. He sniffs again, ineffectually, and scrubs at his left eye with the heel of his hand.

"Okay," Charles says, and then Erik can _feel_ his mind there where it must have been all along, becoming a palpable presence, like a soft blankety feeling, or a familiar scent. He can feel, too, Charles’ concern, his awareness of Erik’s emotional state and decision to hold back, to just be there until Erik wants to talk. "I'll keep an eye on you, all right? You won't be alone. I can split my attention between you and my patients, so I can stay with you. Is that okay?"

Erik's used to having a telepath sitting in his mind; between Miss Frost and Mr Essex, he was never really alone. "Yeah." He blinks his eyes back open. There's a tiny hairline crack on the ceiling toward the wall behind him. He wonders if there are spiders. "I'll see you later." 

"Okay. I’ll see you then." A beep, then the line is quiet. Charles is still there though, settling around him. It's strange, being so consciously aware of his presence even if Charles' phone call in itself was proof enough that he's always got a line in Erik's mind, whether Erik notices him or not.

Erik drops his phone onto the bed and reaches for his headphones, plugging them in and shuffling through the albums to find Yo Yo Ma's recording of the Bach Cello Suites. The score is easy and familiar, which helps make him feel a little more grounded, anyway. He digs the pack of cigarettes Lucas gave him out of the bottom of his satchel and goes to push open his window, sitting on top of the edge of his desk and leaning out toward the open air as he lights his cigarette. There’s a mild pulse of disapproval from Charles, but that fades after a moment, withdrawn.

The cigarette helps, more than anything else. Scent memories are strong. There are lots of different emotions tangled up with his memories of Mr Shaw, everything from pride to anger to fear, but at least it's something he's used to. And it makes it easier to hate the humans for stealing everything _normal._

The smoke still makes him dizzy, and a little nauseated, though Lucas said both sensations would fade with time and experience. For now he likes it. Those are familiar feelings, too. Maybe not positive ones, but they feel like anchors all the same, settling him down.

When the cigarette's nothing more than a filter and ashes he flicks it out the window and watches it drop down to the sidewalk far below, where it undoubtedly gets crushed under someone's foot a second later. He wishes, in retrospect, that he'd thought to go up to the roof. View would have been better. 

He gets down off the desk and finds the paper again, opening it back up to the main article on the arraignment. This time he reads it all the way through. Then a second time, getting out scissors and clipping the article out to tape it to the wall above his desk. The list of charges and mugshots he tapes at eye level. Not that he thinks he's likely to forget anytime soon.

When Charles comes home Erik is downstairs on his new laptop, having mostly figured out the essential functions of the internet and used it to search for everything he can find involving the case, a dozen tabs open on the browser and a video interview playing on screen, a wingèd girl being filmed in front of the ICC building talking about the impact of the case on human-mutant relations.

Charles sits down on the couch next to Erik, peering at the screen. "I see you've been busy." He looks tired, the skin under his eyes thin and translucent. "Have you found out anything interesting?"

"Nothing I didn't already know." Plenty of unsubstantiated rumors, but Erik knows what to expect from human news networks. Plenty of speculation on what the media's been calling the 'auxiliary charges,' as well, but Erik hasn't seen his name anywhere. Yet. 

"You seem calmer," Charles says. "This really is an aside, because I do understand why you were upset, but you can't just leave school whenever you feel like it, Erik. You need to go to your classes. If you're upset or angry or you have a good reason you can ask me and if I agree then you can come home early. Not otherwise. Okay?"

Erik just nods and clicks a link to open a new page. This one claiming to be an aggregation of all the crimes committed by the Hellfire Club since its inception, matching them up with the charges filed. He's curious to see what, if anything, they've missed. "How long until the trial?"

"Oh, years, most likely. These things always take a long time to come to court." Charles leans back against the back of the couch, head tipping back though his eyes stay open, watching Erik flick between tabs. "There are a lot of factors to consider, and a lot of people and countries have a stake in the case. I wouldn't want to be Ms Haller or anyone else on the prosecution team right now."

"If they're found guilty," Erik says, and he turns to look at Charles more fully, tilting the cover of the laptop down, "will they be executed?"

"Mmm, no. The International Court's highest sentence is life imprisonment."

Erik feels a rush of satisfaction, at that. He doubts the humans are capable of inventing a prison that can keep high-level mutants in place for long, especially when Erik reaches omega-class and can break them out from the outside. He can find out where they're keeping them. People will say anything with a gun to their heads. And once he knows that much ....

"Uh-huh," Charles says, his eyes closing. "At least catch up with your grade-level first before you go breaking people out of prison. For me. I got a call from the school again and now I look bad in front of the vice-principal."

Irritated, Erik reaches for the pipes in the walls and rattles them just enough to shake dust down from the ceiling, the shudder of the building making the coffee cups clatter on the table and a few books slide off the shelf to fall, half-open, on the floor. Only then he immediately feels bad about it, the tiny flecks of plaster in Charles' hair in particular making something clench behind his sternum. He looks away, mutters: "It's not my fault I'm behind."

"I know," Charles says, his eyes still closed, and he reaches out unerringly for Erik's hand, patting it with his own before clasping it gently. "That's why I'm tutoring you in the subjects I can. And why it's important to go to your classes. I know you like learning."

Erik does like learning, is the thing. And he's _good_ at it. He soaks up languages easily and math comes intuitively to him, as does the elegant simplicity of physics. It's harder having to revise half of what he'd been taught to match the school's version of history and biology, but Erik still feels pleased when he scores well on a test, and when he finally manages to see the threads that connect facts and string them together to make even English or history as perfectly straightforward as an algebraic proof.

"Your hair," Erik says after several seconds. The dust makes Charles look like he's far more prematurely grey than he actually is, the silvery glitter of it making him appear even more tired. He hesitates for a second, then reaches out with his free hand and brushes the dust and plaster from the dark strands, biting down on the inside of his cheek.

Charles opens his eyes to look at Erik when he touches him, but he smiles, a small quirk of the corner of his mouth. "Thanks," he says, glancing down at his shoulders. "I look like I have dandruff."

Erik's cheeks feel warm, but he swipes the dust off Charles' shoulders as well, quickly and efficiently before drawing his hand back safe into his lap. "There."

"Thanks," Charles says again, and sighs, letting his eyes close once more. "It's been a long day. Would you mind if we had delivery for dinner? You can pick."

"I can cook something," Erik suggests. Charles' hand is still on his, fingers curled around Erik's palm, warm and weighty. "I always cooked, for the others. It’s … well, it’s edible. And it’s healthier than having delivery all the time."

"Oh? If you'd like, then."

It's not very enthusiastic, but Erik resolves to change Charles' mind on the matter. He makes all his favorites, the things he liked whenever he was sick or injured -- comfort foods, bread dumplings and crispy roasted chicken and a lime-beet salad. A little more simplistic than he otherwise might have done, but he doesn't think much of Charles' patience. At any rate, it will be better than another night of Chinese take-out, and he doesn't want to waste the spices he carefully organized in Charles' cabinet while he was cleaning the rest of the apartment during his suspension, or all the groceries he bought.

Charles wanders in once the smells have started filling up the kitchen, and he pauses in the doorway, eyebrows rising as he takes in the moving pots and pans. "Wow," he says, coming further into the room and sitting down at the kitchen table, just watching as a metal spoon stirs the gravy. "This looks incredible, Erik. I didn't realize you were so accomplished."

"It's easy, if you do it often enough." Of course, Charles has never had a Dom to expect him to cook as far as Erik knows, which likely explains the take-out habit. "You should practice. Otherwise, one day you'll embarrass yourself serving your Dom burnt toast and watery eggs."

Charles just snorts, resting his chin on the heel of one hand. "If I ever get married my Dom will just have to live with it. And what are you saying about my cooking? I'm not that bad!"

"The other day," Erik says, plating the chicken and carrying it over to slide it onto the table in front of Charles, "you tried to hard boil an egg, left the pot on too long, and all the water evaporated and the egg exploded. I was scrubbing black stuff off the floor and ceiling for an _hour._ "

"Well you didn't have to," Charles says, looking down at his plate with interest. "I tend to think those things will wear off by themselves after a while. Erik, this looks delicious. Take a seat and have some of this."

Erik obeys, making himself a plate and sitting across from Charles, waiting for Charles to take a bite and declare it good before he eats himself. There's a chance, Erik thinks, that he can be a good influence on Charles. Get him to stop eating trash and letting hard boiled egg rot in the corners of the kitchen. Charles' mouth twitches hard at that and he almost chokes on his chicken, but he assures Erik that the food is fine and he just swallowed it the wrong way.

*

That weekend Madelyne tells him they’re going to a party. It’s not so much an invitation as a demand, and Charles encourages him to “go out and socialize,” so Erik goes. Madelyne spends an hour in his bedroom with him, digging through all the clothes Charles got for him and declaring them all too androgynous, not submissive enough, finally throwing up her hands and thrusting black jeans, black shirt, and a maroon hoodie into his arms and telling him he might as well wear what he always does -- “What do I care,” she says, “if you look butch? Though I wish you’d wear something to show off that waist. Have you been tightlacing?”

The party's at a penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side, and despite the soundproofing in the walls Erik can feel the bass vibrating through the floor as soon as they step off the elevator. Once they're inside, the music is all but deafening, loud enough that Erik feels like his teeth are rattling in his jaw. He only recognizes about half the people there, but the apartment is full of people dancing, and drinking, eating cheese cubes and snorting lines of white powder off a mirror-topped coffee table.

"Ugh, cokeheads," Madelyne says, rolling her eyes; she has to raise her voice for Erik to hear her over the beat. "It's probably half talc anyway, so who cares, right? Want to go get a drink?"

He says, "I'm not sure," but Madelyne must not have heard because she just grins and says, "Great!" and tugs him through the crowd toward the kitchen, where someone's arranged two or three dozen bottles and a large selection of plastic shot glasses. 

She gives Erik an assessing look, panda eyes narrowing. "Have you ever had alcohol before?" she shouts.

"Yes," he says, even though it was only one time. He reaches for the bottle of Grey Goose and pours a shot to underscore his point. It burns when he throws it back, but he gets it down without coughing and sets the shot glass back on the table, lifting one brow. "Have you?"

"Oh please, I'm the daughter of a senator and a socialite." Madelyne picks up three different bottles and mixes up something that's a disturbing shade of green, then stabs an olive on a cocktail stick and drops it into the shot glass. "Tiny apple martini?"

This one tastes sweet, and three more shots later Erik's feeling pleasantly buzzed. By now the kitchen is getting as crowded as the rest of the apartment, so they have to shove past people as Madelyne drags him along into another room, pressing through between strangers’ bodies and ignoring the heat of other people’s flesh. Madelyne just hustles him along, and when they reach what he assumes is their destination she says, "Let's dance!," grabbing both his hands and trying to make him move with her while they cram in between the other partygoers.

"I really don't dance," Erik says, trying to tug his hands away. The thought of going out into that crowd, more people on all sides, makes him feel queasy -- or maybe that's the alcohol on his empty stomach, already making him feel too-warm all over. "Sorry."

"Don't be a partypooper," Madelyne says, wagging her finger in his face. "Come on, it'll be fun!"

"You go ahead." Erik manages to get his hands free and pulls back until his spine hits a wall. He smiles at her, hoping to look reassuring. "I'll be fine. I'll watch."

"Fiiiiiiine. I guess you just don't know how to handle aaaaaall this," and Madelyne laughs, stepping back into the crowd and starting to dance -- at first on her own, but quickly joined by a couple of Doms, who are more than happy to take her hands and move with her as her skirt sways around her hips.

The beat of the music is strong, and Erik lives up to his word and watches her, but after a while his attention starts to wander, lingering a little overlong on a submissive who's dancing against a Dom like they're fucking, grinding his hips and tossing his head back to expose the slim line of his throat. He looks like he wants someone to bite him -- put their mouth right there, above the jugular, and leave a lasting mark. The Dom drags his fingertips along the sub's neck and Erik shivers a little, involuntarily.

A hand closes on Erik's shoulder, and he jumps, head jerking around to look at a stocky boy standing next to him, looking at him with a steady, intense gaze. "Hey," the boy shouts over the music, stepping in closer. "You're Erik, right?"

"Yes," Erik says. The boy still has his hand on his shoulder. Erik glances at it, then back to his face. Dominant? Erik hasn't met him before, and he's drunk enough that it's hard to tell. He errs on the side of caution and doesn't say anything else.

"I'm Lewis," and the hand squeezes, just a little. "You don't look like you're having a good time. Want to go somewhere else? I heard you like to have a bit of fun."

He looks, Erik realizes through the weird pounding sensation in his own mind, like Charles. A young Charles. A lot younger. Obviously. And Charles isn't a Dom, of course. But they both have the same clear blue eyes. Same slightly-floppy brown hair. 

"All right," he says, pushing aside the sense of déjà vu. It's easy to give over to the flow of old familiar patterns, turning more fully toward Lewis and ducking his head, smiling slightly. "Where do you want to take me?"

"Upstairs? It's my friend's parents' place. I know where we can go," Lewis says, his hand sliding down from Erik's shoulder to the small of his back, then pressing there. "Follow me."

This apartment isn't as fine as Charles' (or clean as Charles' is now, after Erik's cleaned up all the mess), but it still reeks of wealth, the stairs lushly carpeted with a handrail carved from a smooth dark wood that Erik’s sure he’d recognize if his head wasn’t so woozy. Upstairs is more empty than down: just a few people sitting in the hall sharing smokes, a couple kissing energetically in an open doorway. Lewis' hand nudges Erik along past the others, his pace easy and unhurried. They reach the end of the corridor, and Erik wonders where they could be going, but then Lewis tugs a cord hanging from the ceiling and a hatch unfolds, stairs on the inside that settle at their feet, leading upwards.

"Den in the attic," Lewis says, grinning at Erik and nudging him again to go up first.

Erik places his hands carefully on the wooden rungs, wary of splinters, and climbs up it like a ladder. He can sense the lights in the ceiling fan and in several lamps around the room; he just turns on the lamps, a quick flick of his power that sends electricity swarming to the bulbs and casting the room in an amber light.

It's a warm, plush room filled with teenage creature comforts, a huge bean bag couch surrounded by cushions in front of an enormous television, which looks to be hooked up to every electronic system known to man; there's even a mini-fridge to one side which Erik can feel is stocked with cans of soda. Lewis comes up after him and closes the trapdoor, then immediately strolls over to the bean bag couch to flop onto it, legs splayed wide as he looks back at Erik. "Come sit," he says, and in the dim light it's like seeing Charles in a funhouse mirror.

Only Erik wouldn't walk up to Charles like this, slowly, letting him get a good look at his body before he pushed his knee into the couch beside his hip and straddled his lap, leaning in to kiss him on the mouth. 

Lewis is older, seventeen or maybe even eighteen or nineteen; old enough that his cheek is rough and stubbly when Erik smooths his fingers along it, just his fingertips sliding into Lewis' hair. He knows better than to push his hand further back. He's a good sub. Good enough that when Lewis' hands immediately go to his ass and squeeze he doesn't even jump, just presses his hips down against Lewis' groin, encouraging.

"What do you do?" Lewis asks when the kiss breaks, looking up at Erik with dark eyes. "With Doms, I mean."

"Anything," Erik says immediately, grinding down hard and slow. Lewis' breath is hot on his mouth and Erik's dizzy, a little. The alcohol. He'd be up for anything, anyway, but tonight especially, with his limbs feeling warm and lax and his mind just-fuzzy-enough, he thinks he'd not only do anything, but he'd do it easily, too, and wouldn't even scream.

Lewis' hand is creeping down lower, slipping his fingertips along Erik's crack and pressing against the fabric of his pants. "Do you do blow?" he asks, legs splaying a bit wider. "It makes it better if you do the blow first."

"Of course," says Erik, who had been thinking Lewis would want something much kinkier than that given his question, but then Lewis shifts under him and reaches for his pocket, not his fly, tugging out a little clear plastic bag full of pearly white powder.

"Let me rack this up, hold on," Lewis says, and tips the powder onto the coffee table, using a playing card he finds there to crush a few rocks and then start drawing the powder into lines.

Oh. _That_ kind of blow. 

It's on the tip of Erik's tongue, to open his mouth and say he'd misunderstood, but he _did_ say he'd do anything, and it's not his place to question what a Dom wants. Besides. If it makes it better .... Well, why not? Erik's always wondered if there were a pill or something he could take to just sleep through it, but no matter how tired he is he always gets woken up. He's never done blow, has no idea what it's like. Mr Shaw used to kick Mr Wyngarde out of the house the nights he railed up.

Lewis rolls the playing card into a tube that he sets to his nose before bending forward over the table and plugging his other nostril with a finger to inhale strong and slow, running the card along the first line until it's all sucked up into his nose. "Damn," he says, leaning back and handing the card to Erik. "That's good shit."

Erik mimics what Lewis had done, though he has to lean half-off Lewis' lap to get low enough. The first thing he notices is the smell: potent and chemical, enough that he blinks quickly, eyes watering. "Wow," he says, dropping the card and touching his nostril, half-expecting to find powder on his fingertip when he draws it away, but it's clean. His nose is numb, and there's something cold dripping down the back of his throat. Other than that, though, he doesn't really feel anything. "Is that it?"

"That's it," Lewis confirms, tugging Erik back down into his lap and grinding up against him. "Give it a sec to kick in. And take off your pants."

Considering Erik's expectations, that Lewis would want something hardcore, possibly something involving Erik's blood and a world of pain, it's a bit of a relief when all Lewis wants to do is fuck his ass. The coke kicks in after less than five minutes, around the time that Lewis is putting on the condom and shoving his cock into Erik's lubed hole. The first thing he notices is that he feels -- wild, hyped up and alive in a way he's never been before. He can feel his heart beating through his entire body, and he just ... his mind feels _clear_ , like all the dust has been wiped away. It's like he's up for anything. Could _do_ anything.

He can't entirely believe himself when he pushes hard against Lewis' shoulders, forcing him onto his back on the sofa so Erik can ride him, grinding down hard on his dick.

"Yeah," Lewis pants, staring up at Erik and digging his fingers into Erik's thighs. "Ride it, bitch, ride my cock -- "

"Shut up," Erik says, and forces Lewis' shoulders down again, holding him there as he picks up the pace, clenching himself around Lewis' cock. He feels euphoric, in-charge and in-control, and no small part feverish even if the fuzziness from the shots is long gone.

"Don't be shy, it's okay if you like it," Lewis says, grinning as his hips buck and shove him harder into Erik's ass. "Sitting on my dick -- "

Erik rolls his eyes, and this time he lets go of one of Lewis' shoulders to press his hand over his mouth, silencing him. There's a strange rush of satisfaction that comes from that, something in his stomach curling up, warm and pleased, and it throbs inside him in concert with the sense of raw power that feels like it's surging through the very air around them. 

Only then Lewis reaches up to lock his forearms around Erik's shoulders, immobilizing his arms and rolling them right off the beanbag onto the carpet, pinning Erik on his back and fucking into him harder, rough now, making him take it. "I'll show you who's boss," he's saying, grinning like it's a game, balls slapping against Erik's ass. " _Fuck_ you're hot. Clench down on me."

Erik doesn't, and for some wild reason that seems okay, feels forgivable. He grins sharply and tries to push Lewis off, to roll them again, but Lewis is three times stronger than he is, and heavier. He's got Erik pinned and they both know it. And Erik knows the loser's price, too. He submits, and clenches down at last, even as he digs his nails hard into Lewis' upper arms.

"That's right, good." There are lips on Erik's neck now, kissing, going up to his earlobe to suck, like a reward, and suddenly and unexpectedly Erik comes, all over Lewis' chest and stomach, breath catching on a surprised gasp. Lewis pulls back enough to stare at him, blue eyes wide, before he comes too, with a groan that Erik can feel vibrating through his gut where they're pressed together.

"Fuuuuuuck." Lewis groans again and rolls off him, cock dragging out of Erik's ass, and flop next to him on the carpet, staring at the ceiling. "That was hot."

Erik pushes himself up, reaching for the rolled-up card on the coffee table. He still feels amazing, but he's certain he could damn well feel _amazing-er_. "Do you mind?" he says, gesturing with it to the remaining lines.

"Go for it, you deserve it." A hand flaps towards the table. "Just owe me one another time, okay?"

Erik hums his agreement and bends forward to snort a line and, after a second, decides to snort another as well. His pants are crumpled up on the floor under the table; he drags them toward himself and pulls them on, but his fingers are shaking too badly to do up the fly without his power. And _that's_ still gone, drifting somewhere, slow to flow back. He leaves the button undone and gets up on trembling legs, wanting to laugh from the absurdity of the feeling, like he's just run a marathon. Fuck, at the moment he feels like he could run two or three back to back! 

"See you," he says to Lewis, who's still sprawled out on the floor with his cock hanging out. Lewis just flaps his hand again, careless now.

Downstairs the party's only intensified. Somehow they've fit even more people into the room, and when Erik looks for Madelyne he doesn't see her. His heart's racing, much faster than before, and it’s starting to make him feel a little nervous. He pushes his way through the crowd, tells himself to breathe through it and it’ll all be okay, only … only as the seconds pass it’s just getting worse. His head’s pounding and he can feel the edge of his euphoria crumbling like sand into an ocean, losing his grip on that sense of power and agency he’d had just a moment before. Surging up in its place is a strange sense of disorientation. The crowd seems dangerous, now, more foreign than it really is, an endless sea of bodies. He can pick out the individual members in the crowd but can't seem to ground himself with them. They're like a roiling beast, a sea of people with faces he doesn't recognize.

Too many people. Erik's mouth is dry, and he elbows his way past a pair of Dommes, for once not caring when they yell after him. He has to get outside. He'll feel better when he's -- _away_ , from this, from all this. He reaches for his power, and it's close enough for him to grasp. He sinks it into the metal frame of the building, trying to steady himself, but only succeeds in making himself anxious, abruptly terrified he might lose control and bring the whole thing crashing down on all their heads.

He stumbles down the hall toward the door, falling into someone and mumbling an apology when he makes them spill their drink on their shoes. He feels like he's on the verge of crawling out of his skin, anxiety tingling up and down his spine.

"Erik?" A hand grabs hold of Erik's sleeve, tugging. It's Madelyne, looking a little the worse for wear but with her eyes wide and concerned. "Where -- are you okay?"

"Ich muss hier weg," he says. His voice sounds too loud to his ears. He pulls his arm away and lurches toward the door, half-dragging himself with the magnetic pull of the knob until his sweaty palm grasps it and pulls it open. He can hear her saying something behind him, yelling at him, but he can't pick apart the words and she doesn't follow.

He takes the elevator down, power yanking the lift to the ground too quickly; he can feel the sparks flying from the cables, the metal shuddering all around him. But he's desperate to be out of there, racing out onto the street where the open air is cold, falling snow pricking at his upturned face. 

Home. He has to go home. The city's like a strange beast, steel and copper alive all around, the edges blurred together. His heart feels like it's going to explode. It hurts. It hurts -- he presses a hand to his chest and makes himself breathe in even though his lungs feel too tight to hold the air. Magnetic north feels just out of grasp, like the world is spinning too quickly even though the ground below is still. But he manages to locate east, and then it's just a matter of walking, blind to the traffic when he crosses the street except for his power, which catches a taxi before it can hit him and redirects it to crash into a streetlight.

All Erik can think of, the desperate demand pounding in his own head, is getting home.

*

_Charles_

 

"Don't be ridiculous," Raven is saying on the other end of the phone, the sound of crunching popcorn punctuating her words. "Tyra is totally right about Janice, she can't strike more than two poses without looking like a mannequin and her attitude is terrible. Louisa is way better."

It's their weekly ritual, one Charles was a little relieved Erik would be out of the apartment for. Raven calls him up on Friday night and they watch that week’s _America’s Next Top Model_ together, Raven at her place and Charles curled up under his favorite old afghan, trying to pretend he's not a twenty-six-year-old man judging amateur models on TV with his baby sister instead of going out on a date. Given that Erik is only going to a school party Charles hasn't been keeping too close an eye on him; he doesn't need to know if Erik is having sex, but as long as it's somewhere relatively safe then he's sure Erik will be fine. He needs to learn to socialize with people his own age without feeling observed all the time.

"Janice has potential," Charles says, watching as his second-favorite model gets put through the wringer and settling deeper into the couch, kicking his feet up on the coffee table. "I think she's just putting on a tough front because she's scared of failure; she was great at smizing."

"She's just a bitch, Charles. We both know you can't read faces for shit."

"Not true -- " Charles starts, and he's about to make his argument when he hears the front door open and shut, far earlier than he would have expected. "Hang on, I think Erik's home."

Raven snorts. "At ten? He's even more boring than you are, Charles, if he's already home at ten."

But Charles -- Charles is already pausing. Erik's mind brushing up against his own is a torrent of unhappiness, discomfort and fear, and Charles swallows hard, getting up from the couch and letting his afghan fall away. "I'll call you back."

He hangs up and heads for the foyer, but before he gets there he hears the crash of Erik tripping on the bottom three stairs and falling and the sound of a muttered _"Scheiße!"_

"Erik?" Charles calls, walking faster, and he reaches the foyer just as Erik is wobbling back up to his feet, can see the way Erik is wavering. Charles’ heart stops. "Erik! What's wrong?" he asks, starting forward again; God, please don't let Erik have been beaten up, or worse. Erik's mind feels woozy, unstable, and Charles realizes as he gets to Erik's side and takes hold of him that Erik is totally sloshed.

"Nichts," Erik says, but it's belied by the way he's shaking and the thin sheen of sweat on his brow. And the way he says, a second later: "I don't -- I don't feel good."

Erik's pupils, when Charles turns his face to the light to get a better look, are enormously dilated.

"I should say not," he says, feeling like a lead weight is sunken in his stomach, biting the inside of his lip hard enough to taste copper, and he picks up Erik's arm to sling it around his own shoulders. They're much of a height, so at least he doesn't have to bend. Charles' heart is beating fast in his chest, and he feels a bit panicked himself, though it's hard to know how much of that is Erik and how much is himself. "Come on, let's get you upstairs. What did you take?"

But Erik doesn't answer. He just shudders and turns his head to press his face against Charles' shoulder, his mind a frantic storm of agitation and quickly-mounting anxiety. Desperate times call for drastic measures, Charles thinks, and he reaches into Erik's head, flicking backwards through his memory like rewinding a film as he tugs Erik awkwardly up the stairs towards the upper floor, images of dancing and alcohol and an attic room all seen and dismissed until Charles finds the lines of white powder on a tabletop, the ace of spades, the burn of inhaling. Cocaine. Shit.

"Oh, you silly boy," he mutters, dragging Erik further up despite Erik's toe catching the edge of a step. "Come on. You're okay now. Just a bit further."

"I think I took too much," Erik says, and he's trembling so violently it's hard to keep him in grasp. He's breathing quick, shallow little breaths, anxiety pouring off him. "I can't --"

"Sssshhh," Charles says, and they reach the landing, finally stable enough that Charles can reposition one hand to stroke Erik's hair in nervy little jerks as he directs them like some strange three-legged race along the hallway to Erik's bedroom. "You're okay. I've got you, Erik. You're safe with me."

He pushes the door open with his foot and ushers Erik inside where he sits him down on the edge of his bed, settling him there and wincing once he's relieved of the weight -- for a skinny kid Erik certainly weighs more than you'd think. "You're okay," Charles repeats, putting his hands on either side of Erik's head and making him meet Charles' eyes. "See? You're home with me and you're safe."

Erik grabs onto Charles wrists with both hands, clinging to him, Charles' words echoing through his mind and catching on the implicit association Erik's built, between _Charles_ and _safe_ , between _Charles_ and _home_. "I'm hot," he says, tugging on Charles' arms, staring at him beseechingly, his tone lilting up with rising panic. "I'm so hot, it's a thousand degrees in here -- _Gott_ \--" Erik lets go of Charles' wrists to reach back, grappling at the back of his shirt and yanking it up over his head, hurling it across the room. 

Charles takes a shaky breath, then another, and says, "Let's get you in a cold shower then, does that sound good?" He's not sure if this is even the right thing to do -- if he should call an ambulance, maybe, or Raven, or someone who knows what to do when your ward has taken drugs and is having a bad reaction. "We can cool you down in the bathroom."

"Ja," Erik says. "Je veux dire, oui -- no, yes, yes, okay." He's clenching his hands in his lap, then unclenching, over and over again, breathing hard like he's trying to steady himself, but only succeeding in making it worse. Charles puts his hands back on Erik's shoulders and he can feel the heat burning from Erik's skin, feverish and shocking, as he tugs Erik back to his feet.

This close, Erik reeks of sex, and a little of alcohol. Charles takes a shuddering breath before stepping backward to start guiding Erik into his little ensuite, tugging Erik along behind him like a small child.

If it weren't for Erik's toiletries on the counter Charles would think nobody ever used this bathroom. It's so neat and clean. There's only just enough room for the two of them to stand there comfortably, and Charles has to step back from Erik for a moment to reach in and turn on the water, testing it with his hand to make sure it's cool but not freezing. Behind him Erik whimpers, anxious, and Charles says, "It's okay. We'll cool you down, Erik. You'll be all right. You'll see. It’ll be fine.”

When he turns back around Erik is pacing in and out of the bathroom, rubbing both hands furiously through his hair leaving it sticking-up and tousled, his eyes huge and bright. "I want it to stop," he says. "Give me something to take to make it stop. Anything."

"I'll make it better," Charles says, reaching for Erik and taking hold of his arm, stopping his pacing. "Now hold still while I get these off, we don't want to get your jeans wet." And he starts on Erik's belt buckle, trying not to imagine the court hearing if Erik ever tells anyone Charles took off his pants when he was off his gourd on drugs.

For a long moment Erik does stand still, and Charles can feel an ominous silence between them, like all thought has stopped. It's only when Charles is starting to unbutton the top of his fly that Erik suddenly bows his head, making a soft, high keening sound as Erik reaches for him again -- only this time Erik's hands are at Charles' hips, his power tugging Charles' zipper down so quickly that Charles can't do a thing to stop it before Erik's sliding his hand down Charles' pants and palming him through his underwear.

"Jesus Christ!" Charles _leaps_ back away from Erik and almost falls into the toilet, thighs crashing against the seat; his heart is pounding hard and fast in his chest as he stares at Erik, disbelief and horror vying for pride of place in his mind. "What the -- no, Erik! I'm undressing you _for the shower_ , that was not a come-on!" He's not even remotely hard, too shocked to react.

It's only after a moment when _Erik_ doesn't react -- even to blush, or cry, or turn away -- that Charles realizes Erik is feeling _nothing_ , his mind on total lockdown. Charles can see his own expression in the mirror and he looks wild, afraid, but Erik just looks like ... nobody's there.

"Erik?" he says in a coaxing voice, trying to calm his own wild pulse. "Erik, get in the shower for me please."

Erik doesn't respond, just slowly sinks down to the floor and curls up against the wall, his knees drawn tight up to his chest and his arms around his legs, face hidden. _"Geh weg,_ " he whispers, and he's rocking back and forth, both hands in tight fists. "Geh weg, geh weg --" In Erik's mind he's a young child, four, or five, hiding in his bedroom closet -- there's a sense that something horrible is going to happen, but what, Erik has no idea, but he has to hide, must make himself very, very small -- he hears footsteps --

Oh, God. Charles wants to hurt -- himself, wants to hide, because it's all too much a mirror of feelings he knows all too well. His breath is coming in hard gasps as he sits down in front of Erik, not touching him even as he reaches into Erik's mind and says, _You're okay, it's not real, not any more, you're safe,_ and projects those feelings to Erik directly, trying to soothe him -- and himself, as well. He wraps Erik up in a warm blanket of thought, insulating him from what has to be a flashback to his prior life. 

It's not clear if this is a memory or some nightmare amalgamation of dozens of incidents, but nonetheless Erik needs him, and only once Erik starts to relax does Charles move to sit beside him, wrapping both arms around Erik and drawing him in to rest against his chest, more like a teddy bear than a child.

The tiles are cool against Charles’ back. The boy in his arms is overly warm. Charles makes his mind a blank, clean slate, and tries to let everything flow past him, and somehow he manages not to panic. After a while his ass starts to hurt from sitting on the floor, but he ignores this, too, like everything else, just holds Erik and does not let himself break down.

It's a very long time until Erik's anxiety starts to drain, his mind sliding past baseline and to something lower, sinking into a darkness as perfectly black as the high he remembers, still, had once been perfectly bright. Erik's lucid, at least, though his mind is clicking back and forth between wanting to pull away, and wanting just to stay here a while in Charles' arms, taking a strange solace from the closeness.

"You're all right," Charles says, stroking Erik's hair and trying to stop his own trembling, closing his eyes where Erik can't see him; his head tips back against the wall and Charles just breathes, in and out, muscles twitching with adrenaline. "You're okay. They can't get you any more. They're not here. You got away. And it's all okay now."

He's not sure, when he speaks, if his words are for Erik -- or for himself.

The shower is still running, and Erik still smells, still feels hot and sweaty in Charles' arms, but he doesn't dare move, not when Erik has finally calmed down. Charles stretches out one arm into the shower and wets his hand in the hard spray, then brings it back to wipe the water across Erik's brow and down the back of his neck, hoping it will cool his fever. "You're okay," he says again, voice half a whisper.

After a few minutes Erik sits up, still breathing shallowly, shifting out of Charles' arms but not moving so far as to stop touching him entirely; he settles next to him instead, leaning back against the wall, tilting his head away as if that could hide the mess of embarrassment and self-loathing his mind's projecting.

"It's all right," Charles says, drawing up his knees so that he can rest his arms on top, hands dangling at the wrists. He still feels rather shaky, but he can keep it from showing up in his voice at least. "How do you feel?"

"I'm fine," Erik mutters. He looks -- and feels -- uneasy, but that can be attributed to coming down from the high as much as anything else. 

Charles hums, then reaches carefully over to smooth Erik's damp hair away from his forehead with the tip of his thumb; Erik closes his eyes, letting him. It would be gratifying, seeing how much Charles' presence is putting Erik at ease, if Charles weren't still so on edge himself.

"It really is okay," Charles says, withdrawing his hand and letting it rest back on his knee. "You had a flashback, Erik. It happens to a lot of people who have been through scary things. Sometimes your brain remembers them like they're happening now, and it can be frightening and confusing."

Erik's voice is thin and taut when he says, "I haven't been through anything like that." But it's clear he's not sure if he even believes that, himself; his mind is thrumming with anxiety and doubt and the overwhelming desire to just forget this ever happened. It's understandable, of course. Erik's reality isn't something he wants to accept.

Charles just nods, slow and measured, showing none of that knowledge on his face. "Of course. Well, the shower is still running, if you want to clean up a bit and cool off -- you still feel a bit hot to me. I can wait outside."

"No," Erik says quickly, looking back at Charles, one of his hands grabbing at Charles' ankle for a brief moment before Erik seems to catch himself, and let go. "I want you to stay. Will you stay?"

Oh, God. It's entirely inappropriate, and Charles has to swallow hard before he can say, "Of course, Erik. Not a problem." His heart is pounding again, the memory of Erik touching him between his legs a sickening lump in his throat when he tries not to think that Erik is going to be naked in a moment, and that if anyone knew about it Charles would probably be investigated himself. None of it is arousal -- it's fear, pure and simple, though of what Charles can't really say. "I'll just stay right here and turn my back so you have some privacy."

"Okay," Erik says, and Charles feels some of Erik's anxiety draining away with his acquiescence. He grabs onto the edge of the sink to pull himself up, reaching for the towel that's hanging on the rod on the back of the door. 

Charles turns his back, as promised, and behind him he can hear the clink of Erik's belt buckle as he strips off his jeans, and the movement of the shower curtain when he gets into the tub. 

"Make sure to wash behind your ears," Charles says. The sound of the water has changed, its thunderous downpour different when it hits a body instead of the floor. The joke is a little weak, being one he used to use on Raven when he helped her shower during their childhood, but he continues, "I'm sure I saw something growing there earlier."

He gets a small laugh, at least. Erik's silent for the rest of his shower, the quiet punctuated by the open-shut of his shampoo bottle and the occasional sounds of movement. When the water shuts off Erik reaches past him with one wet arm to grab his towel, then says: "Will you bring me my pajamas?"

There's a part of Charles that wants to ask Erik what the magic word is, but that part seems to have been battered down by worry and stress enough that Charles just says, "Sure. Just a moment," and gets to his feet almost without conscious thought, going out into the bedroom to fetch Erik's pajamas from where they're resting folded under Erik's pillow. The air out here is dryer, cooler out of the humidity of the bathroom, and Charles feels a bit calmer, too, can take in a deep breath and take the pajamas back to pass around the bathroom door, careful not to look. "Here."

"Thanks." Another few moments, and then Erik emerges back out into the bedroom, looking tired but much more sober, at least, raking one hand back through his sodden hair. He looks thinner than ever, even though Charles knows for a fact Erik's gained weight since coming to live with him, his collarbones sharp lines below his t-shirt and the tendons visible in his forearms when he crosses them over his stomach. "I still don't feel well. I'm going to go to bed."

"Okay," Charles says, but he doesn't move, just watches as Erik walks past him and climbs slowly into bed, pulling the covers up over himself. It's so strange to compare this moment -- when Erik looks like nothing so much as a child, waiting to be tucked in -- to half an hour ago when Erik ... _groped_ him, suddenly and awfully a sexual being. Charles swallows and says, looking at child-Erik, focusing on that innocence in the situation as it is now, "What were you thinking, taking drugs? Of all the silly things you could do, Erik, _cocaine_?"

Erik turns onto his side in the bed, facing Charles more fully, his hair a dark stain against the while pillowcase. "I wanted to see what it was like," is all he says.

"Well, now you have," Charles says, heart beating fast as he lets anger drown out that sickening worry. "It could have been laced with anything, Erik, who knows where it came from -- you could have been snorting anthrax for all you knew. After the last talk I gave you about stranger danger I'd hoped you'd be a bit more sensible."

"The Dom I was with brought it," Erik says, as if that explains everything. "He said it was better if you did blow first. And it _was_ , only -- " Erik breaks off all of the sudden, his cheeks going bright red.

"If only it wasn't for the horrible crash and burn of the bad trip afterwards," Charles says, folding his arms across his chest, lips pursing tightly. He hopes Erik can’t see his hands shaking. "You know I don't put my foot down about a lot, Erik, but I'm doing it now: no drugs. They're illegal for a reason and I don't care if a Dom wants you to take them, you're going to say no. Do you understand?"

Charles can see it's on the tip of Erik's tongue, to argue that a Dom's Will supersedes Charles', but the only thing he ends up saying out loud is, "All right." 

"Good," Charles says, trying to sound calm now that Erik has agreed, and he steps forward to take hold of the blanket's edge, tugging it up a little higher around Erik's shoulders. "Good. Okay. Now, go to sleep, and you'll probably have a wicked hangover in the morning, just to warn you. Come wake me up if I'm not up already and I'll make you my patented cure."

"And what's that?" Erik asks, one eyebrow lifting up.

"One part olive oil, a raw egg yolk, salt and pepper, a tablespoon of tomato ketchup, a dash of Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce and some lemon juice," Charles says, stepping back towards the door. "Something to look forward to. Now go to sleep, Erik."

When Erik doesn't reply Charles turns off the light, and says, "Good night," before closing the bedroom door, taking in an unsteady breath and then heading off down the hall to his own room where he can freak out in privacy, hopefully far enough away to keep Erik from noticing.

In the end Charles curls up in a nest of blankets and pillows on the floor on the far side of his bed, his knees tucked in close to his chest and his face pressed between them, blocking out the rest of the world. It's dark there, and quiet save for the sound of his own lungs, his own heart, thudding fast and irregular in his chest as he tries not to panic.

The _vidheyatva_ meditation is supposed to help submissives calm themselves, put _themselves_ into subspace without the aid of a Dom, but it never seems to really work for Charles, no matter how long he spends trying to count his breaths and focus on the image of being caught in a spider's web, of giving in. He knows it works for other people, but right now when he really needs it to work it's even more agitating that it doesn't, that he can still feel himself freaking out.

Erik took _drugs_. Erik took drugs and was out on his own on the way home and anything could have happened, and Charles didn't even _know_. Worse still, that touch, inappropriate and awful, making Charles' heart stutter and chill in his chest, the nausea of Erik groping his soft cock as if that were something Charles wanted, something Erik had to do, no choice, just robotic, blind obedience to someone not even there --

It reminds Charles all too well of other unwanted touches, and in the end he has to roll forward onto his face to bury it against the carpet and pretend he's not there, drawing the blankets up over his head and finally blacking out in his own thick and sluggish air.

*

_Erik_

 

Erik wakes up to a pounding headache, nausea, and a taste in his mouth as if something small and furry had crawled in there to die. Opening his eyes makes it worse. The sunlight streaming in from his open windows makes him wince, swearing -- and the sound of his own voice makes it worse still. He drags himself out of bed only because the taste in his mouth really is that unbearable, stumbling to the bathroom to brush his teeth, half-gagging over the sink. 

So this is what a hangover feels like, he thinks, as he splashes cold water on his face. His only frame of reference was Mr Azazel’s grumpy headaches after a night of too much vodka, or Mr Wyngarde’s stumbling around and vomiting in the kitchen trash bin. If the others experienced hangovers, they never showed it.

He brushes his teeth a second time for good measure and catches a glance of himself in the mirror when he lifts his head. He’s pale and slightly greenish-skinned, dark circles under his eyes. He looks like Charles on a particularly early morning.

Speaking of Charles. He’d said something about a hangover cure last night, if Erik recalls correctly -- everything after he left the party is blurred together, but that memory, at least, is clear. He tries to stretch out his ability to see if Charles is up yet but even the slightest flex of his powers is enough to make his stomach churn. 

Squinting his eyes against the daylight Erik goes back out into his bedroom, then down the hall. Charles’ door is still closed, and all’s quiet in the apartment. It must be early still. Erik hesitates just outside the door, half-expecting Charles to catch his presence telepathically and show up with a soft smile and a firm hand on Erik’s shoulder, but he waits at least three minutes and Charles never does. He’d said when Erik first came here that his bedroom was off-limits, but then he seemed to take it back last night. In the end Erik has to make an executive decision, and so he knocks quietly on the door and enters only when there’s no answer.

Unlike the crisp, photo-perfect room Charles gave Erik when he first moved in, Charles’ bedroom is obviously occupied, and reminds Erik of the study downstairs. The furniture here is comfortable and old-looking, not new, and it only matches in that none of it does, chosen more for function than looks. It feels a little like a nest, warm-colored and very much like Erik imagines the inside of Charles’ head to be. There aren’t any visible toys, but Erik expects Charles keeps them in the cedar chest at the foot of the bed; Charles has managed thus far to keep any sex life he has remarkably secret from Erik, and hiding away all the whips and dildos would fit with that pattern.

The bed is wide and soft-looking, but for some reason there’s no blankets on it at all, nor are there any pillows. There’s no Charles, either. The narrow bands of light streaming in between the blinds fall on an empty bed. 

“Charles?” Erik says, stepping gingerly closer. He has his eyes on the closed door to what he imagines is probably Charles’ bathroom, although he has to skirt the bed to get there. The light in the bathroom seems to be out. Could Charles have left the apartment altogether? Maybe. It seems out of character for him ….

The mystery of Charles’ missing bedsheets is solved, though, when Erik edges past Charles’ bed. They’re piled up on the floor in a massive heap, duvet and all, pillows and cushions poking out from underneath in all shades of brown and gold and red, and it takes Erik a minute to realize that Charles is under all that too, only his hand showing where it’s loosely curled out from under the edge of the duvet, every other part of him hidden in the tangle on the rug, only the sound of his soft snoring to give him away.

For a second Erik just stands there, feeling awkward and like he’s intruding on something immensely personal, even if Charles is doing nothing but sleeping (on the floor, suffocating in blankets, like a small child). He says Charles’ name again, more loudly this time, but the bundle doesn’t respond. Erik crouches down on the floor and pauses for a second, chewing on the inside of his cheek, before he reaches forward and pokes Charles’ exposed hand.

“Nnnnnrrrr.” The pile shifts, and the hand retracts under the duvet. “Ughhhhh.”

Charles sounds how Erik feels. He smiles a tiny bit before he catches himself, and takes a breath, grabs the edge of the duvet and tugs it up to reveal Charles’ torso, curled up on his side with his head nearly tucked down to his knees, dark hair a tangled shadow against one of the pillows. He’s still wearing the same clothes from last night, Erik notices, the smile fading more toward a frown.

“Charles,” he says, as firmly as he can, even though speaking at all is making his head feel like it’s being split open with a pickaxe. “Charles, are you okay?”

There’s a sense of something unfolding, like reverse origami; Charles’ eyes creak open slowly, blearily, and he makes another of those groaning sounds before turning his head to look up at Erik, a foreign feeling of confusion in Erik’s mind that he knows instinctively isn’t his own. Charles’ mind is still unfurling. Erik can almost hear the thoughts Charles is hearing growing louder and louder as more and more join them, until he wonders just how many people Charles can hear at once. _?_ Charles says, and it’s not even a word, just the feeling of a question. _Tired/what/Erik/where/floor why?_

Erik spends a second trying to translate the second one, but it seems less of a question than an amalgamation of Charles’ thoughts, pushed across the space between them. “You said to come wake you in the morning,” he says. “Why are you sleeping on the floor?”

Charles blinks, so, so slowly. _Don’t know,_ he thinks, and his expression is puzzled, too, not fully awake. _Erik, okay? Worried …_ He hasn’t even moved yet from where he was when Erik uncovered him, just curled up on his side reacting at a glacier’s pace, like he hasn’t fully booted yet. _Something happened …_

He doesn’t remember last night, Erik realizes suddenly. He stares at Charles in silence for a moment, not sure if he ought to remind him or wait for Charles to figure it out on his own. It’s -- bizarre, and concerning, the way he feels like he ought to be taking care of Charles, wrapping him back up in the blankets and bringing him a cup of tea. Charles is usually so … _composed._ This isn’t that. It’s not much like any version of Charles that Erik has encountered before. 

Maybe, he thinks, Charles just isn’t a morning person.

“I’m hungover,” Erik says bluntly. “Do you want me to bring you coffee, or something?”

 _Hungover?_ Charles says, frowning, then something comes over his face like a shadow and he grimaces, finally moving to brace his hands on the pillows under him and push himself slowly upright, looking away from Erik, hair falling across his face. “Oh. I was … ” a yawn, a palm smearing across his mouth, “hmm, going to make you the cure, wasn’t I,” Charles says aloud at last, his voice as creaky as his movements. “Ugh. Did I sleep on the floor? No wonder I’m stiff.” Everything about Charles’ body is awkward, angled in on itself and clumsy.

“You’re still wearing what you were wearing last night,” Erik points out. It might embarrass Charles, but the whole situation is strange, and Erik can’t quite get rid of the niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach that tells him to keep pressing. Or maybe it’s just dissonance: he’s seeing Charles as Charles is around himself, not the Charles that Charles puts on for Erik’s sake. The Charles of empty coffee mugs and dirty countertops, not the Charles of pressed suits and Rolex watches.

The whole thing is making Erik feel, frankly, even more nauseated than he already was, a sort of anxiety settling itself, tar-like, in his gut.

Charles frowns. “Am I?” He looks down and the grimace deepens, a hand coming up to cover his face for a moment. “Lovely. I’m …” -- another wide-mouthed yawn -- “... God. I’m sorry you found me like this, Erik. It’s not the way I’d usually like to present myself. Shall I … ah … get changed and we can go down and do something for your headache?”

The thing is -- the thing is, if Erik took him at face value Charles’ voice is so normal, his tone so measured, that it could almost seem whimsical, funny even. Except he can still feel Charles’ mind washing around them, unfettered in the early morning, and Charles is embarrassed and concerned and somehow exhausted, despite having only just woken up, a dragging feeling like wading through thick seas.

He feels a little sad, actually, and he isn’t sure if that’s contagion from something Charles is feeling or something native to Erik, himself. Maybe it’s just the simple fact that he knows Charles has seen him under some less than flattering circumstances, and now that the situation is on its head, Charles feels, for whatever reason, that he can’t trust Erik with himself like this. Likely he thinks Erik will think less of him, or consider him weak, or less grown-up, or that it will undermine his authority. 

Erik wouldn’t, of course. He doesn’t say that out loud, though. He doesn’t have to: he can feel the edges of Charles’ presence in his head, either because Charles is letting him or because Charles is too tired to hide himself. 

Instead he says, again, “Why are you on the floor?”

“Oh,” Charles says, and pushes himself slowly, mechanically up to his feet, looking down at himself instead of at Erik, “Well. I was meditating before bed last night, so I suppose I must have fallen asleep. It’s nothing to worry about, in any case.” He turns to smile at Erik, and it’s the same familiar warmth as always now, everything else covered over as Charles offers him a hand up. “Come on. Let’s go sort out your hangover before you’re too awake to stomach the cure for it.”

Maybe Charles would get away with the lie if Erik were anyone else. He’s not the worst liar Erik’s ever met, but Erik learned the hard way how to detect -- and fake -- the tiny quirks of deception. The only way Charles could hide that would be if he went into Erik’s mind and plucked out his memory of seeing them. The problem with knowing someone’s lying, of course, is that then the choice is between pushing the issue and pretending ignorance. And the only thing the former ever got Erik is a world of pain.

“All right,” he says instead, burying his disappointment and getting up. He goes out into the hall to let Charles change, and with every second that ticks past he starts to feel more and more certain that the real reason Charles was on the floor, and wearing last night’s clothes, and acting so … so strangely, is because of him. Because Erik came home high, and drunk, and ruined Charles’ evening alone. If he’d stayed at the party long enough, he might have been able to find Lewis again and staved off the comedown with another line, but he’d felt so sick, had been so afraid that someone else would want something from him, that he left. 

Guilt isn’t a useful emotion. Erik tries not to feel it, as much as he can. But it’s sinking through his body all the same, making him feel heavy and tired. The part of him that wants to say it’s not his problem, that he could take care of himself, could and should walk out the front door right now and not stop walking until he finds someone Hellfire, feels especially small and unpersuasive at the moment.

The door behind him creaks, and then there’s a hand on his arm, an arm around his shoulders, squeezing him in against Charles’ side. “It’s really not your fault,” Charles says, and he’s warm and comfortable, the old sweater he’s wearing cushioning Erik’s body against Charles’. “There’s nothing for there to be a fault of. I just fell asleep in a silly place. Now come on. You’ll feel better once your head isn’t pounding.”

Charles takes Erik downstairs and mixes him up a tall glass of something horrible-looking, something to do with eggs and tomatoes and tabasco and who knows what else. Erik drinks it, declares it worse than Ensure, and Charles looks satisfied after, all of that worn-down exhaustion Erik saw in him earlier tucked safely away until Erik has to wonder if it was all just himself projecting his feelings onto Charles, if it was maybe never there at all.

When Erik’s headache has improved Charles puts on some music and cooks them breakfast, shuffling and singing along to something called _Daytripper_ and bobbing his head, and Erik sneaks out his iPhone to record a video for the fifteen seconds he can capture before Charles catches on and tries to make him delete it. Erik doesn’t, though. He likes having it there: a reminder that Charles is human, in the end.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drug use, underage drinking, underage sex, impaired judgement and traumatic flashback but with no details of rape.


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the esteemed **Baehj2915/Jabletown** for betaing this for us!
> 
> Thanks as well to the incredibly skilled **asix-oud** for making the Purgatory website screens!  <3 
> 
> Click images for full-screen versions.
> 
> Content warnings are in the end-note.

_Charles_

The problem with having posted once about the Hellfire Club is that now everyone wants to talk to Charles -- to “Cerebro” -- about them, and his opinion, and the charges and the case, and his feelings both as a mutant and as a well-known integrationist. Charles stares at his computer screen, and the six hundred comments stacked up there, and can’t quite believe it.

[ ](http://imgur.com/2TBZY57.gif)

He’d started his blog as a sort of diary, talking about being a mutant in New York and about the experiences of other mutants he knows in a place where he could vent anonymously and without anyone wondering if he was talking about this patient or that patient. But things snowballed from there, and now he runs one of the most popular mutant-centric single-runner blogs on the English-speaking web. People want to know what _he_ thinks about things like the rape charges on the Hellfire Club’s docket and whether he thinks they should be executed for their crimes.

Charles sighs and starts typing out his answers, sipping at his tea as he works through the ones it’s worth responding to. It’s not so much that he doesn’t think he has good opinions, but … he’s been spending more time than he’s used to answering questions and replying to comments and blocking trolls, and all in all he’s feeling a bit overwhelmed by it. If it weren’t for the subject matter and the fact that absolutely nobody can know that it’s him he would seriously consider asking Erik if he wants to earn some more pocket money helping Charles with it.

The responses range from the violently hostile -- “The HC are just trying 2 lok out 4 muties and if you hate them then u hate urself and all of us” -- to the violently supportive -- “I agree 100% with you and they should all be put down fast and humanely before they can kill any more innocent people. I don’t understand why we let mass-murderers like the Hellfire Club live when we all know what they’ve done and we’ve all seen it on TV. If they were black or transgender then we’d have electrocuted the lot of them by now, given the racist elitist society we live in, so really it’s just because they’re mostly white and good-looking that apparently they get special treatment - wouldn’t be surprised if they blame it all on the red Russian one and the rest get let off.”

These Charles answers, in the end, with a standard response he copies and pastes; he gave up trying to answer them individually a few days in. It’s the moderate ones where there’s room for discussion that he spends more time on, people asking questions and looking to discuss things seriously, who maybe don’t know how they feel about the issues being raised. Many of them admit to not knowing enough about it, to feeling misled by the media hype or friends or coworkers with strong but ultimately hollow, soundbite opinions.

It’s tiring, but in a good way: something that distracts Charles from the problems of his own everyday life and lets him just think about something else. Even though the Hellfire Club is something immediate and relevant to his ‘Charles’ life, when he’s writing about them on his blog he’s disassociating himself from that, making himself into someone else, someone who doesn’t know any inside information, who hasn’t met Sebastian Shaw in person. When he’s Cerebro it’s easier.

Charles takes another sip of his tea and flicks down through a few more emails, deleting the ones that are just hate mail or junk. Then he opens one that makes him pause, dropping his feet from where they were resting on the edge of the opposite kitchen chair.

_Dear Mr Cerebro,_

_I hope you will excuse me using your internet handle, but as it’s all I have to go on. I thought it would probably be all right! My name is Michael Goldstein and I am writing to request an interview for_ The New York Post. _I work in the editorial department and we’re looking to cover the mutant perspective on the Hellfire Club case from a variety of different viewpoints. A friend of mine pointed me towards your blog. Just from reading it I can see that you’re a well-informed, eloquent and intelligent person who has a lot to say about mutant issues. I’ll be honest, it can be difficult to find a moderate view in this area, so I would be very keen to include your opinion in the piece!_

_I know you must be very busy, so please do not feel obliged to respond. However if you have some time to spare could we talk by phone next Thursday, May 12? I expect to need about 30 minutes of your time. If that time is not good for you, I’m available any weekday between 9AM and 11:30AM and can be flexible around your schedule. Please, if you could respond by this Friday, it would be much appreciated, as I have a deadline to meet._

_Some information about me: I’m not a mutant myself but my younger brother is, and I’ve been covering civil rights and social justice topics for newspapers and online institutes my whole career. You can see my work here: mgoldsteinjournalism.com._

_Thank you for your time. You can reach me at (212) 555-4322 or at this email address, mgoldstein@nypost.com._

_Sincerely,_  
Michael Goldstein  
Correspondent, The New York Post

Charles reads through the email twice, eyebrows rising higher with every line. It’s clearly written to be flattering, and he knows it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not effective. At the same time … it’s risky, speaking to a member of the press directly. Certainly telephone is out of the question.

He reaches out for Erik in his mind, confirming that Erik is fully engrossed in reading _The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle_ on the couch in the den before going back to the email.

Charles thinks, and thinks, and in the end he lifts his hands to the laptop keyboard and replies,

_Dear Mr Goldstein,_

_Thank you very much for your email and for your interest in talking to me. As you note, I don’t disclose my identity on my blog, which is for personal reasons. As a result I wouldn’t be willing to speak to you on the telephone. However, if you would like to email me a list of questions, or alternatively to use an instant messenger program, then I would be happy to answer these for you or talk to you that way._

_Kind regards,_

_Cerebro_

He sends it with a strange, mixed feeling of bravery and anxiety. But once it’s gone it’s gone, and there’s nothing more to be done about it. Of course, that does nothing to help him with the more pressing task for the day, the one he’s been putting off since Erik woke him up this morning.

Charles sighs, and takes a moment to finish his cup of tea, alone in the sparklingly clean kitchen that his newly-acquired fourteen-year-old put in order for him. The same fourteen-year-old who found Charles sleeping in a heap on the floor this morning and clearly didn’t believe Charles’ excuses about meditation. Erik is too smart not to notice sooner or later that Charles isn’t as together as he pretends to be -- he’s not stupid, or blind, and Charles’ only hope is that Erik’s own problems keep him occupied long enough for Charles to get out of his slump. For the time being they’ll just have to keep going, and Charles will be fine. Momentum is all he needs. He just has to keep on going. That’s all.

Now that he’s stopped typing the ticking of the kitchen clock is louder than ever, and Charles sits in silence just listening, breathing through it.

He waits until he feels Erik nearing the end of a chapter, then gets up from his chair, pouring himself a new cup of tea. Then, with that prop in hand, Charles wanders into the den right as Erik gets to a stopping place, leaning against the back of his armchair and keeping his gaze on Erik until Erik looks back.

Erik lowers his book, but keeps it open on his knee. “Do you need something?”

Charles wonders, but doesn’t want to find out, if Erik is so composed because he feels more in power now that he’s seen Charles so disarrayed. “I think we need to talk about last night,” he says, keeping his voice calm. “I know we spoke about it a little before you slept, but I suspect you don’t remember much of that. Am I right?”

Erik pauses for a long moment, and then nods. “If you just want to scold me and tell me not to take any more drugs, you can save your breath. I know.” He’s a little irritable, still, from the coke comedown; the worst might be over, but Charles read online this morning that the flu-like symptoms and depression can last up to two days after using.

“Well,” Charles says, shifting his feet, “that was part of it, yes, though I suspect you’ve learned your lesson on that. I more wanted to have a talk about your reaction while you were having your bad turn. Do you remember any of that?” Charles can’t forget it, and not in a good way -- the phantom touch of Erik’s hand feels like a brand between his legs, and he has to work not to shudder again now.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Erik says, and while his tone is firm Charles can tell it’s evasive. Erik might not be sure exactly what Charles is referring to, but he obviously doesn’t want to talk about any of it. The book falls closed in his lap, his hand still caught between the pages.

Hmm. Well. Charles knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get Erik to open up, and not having a set therapy schedule won’t be helping. He’ll need to do something about that. “Let’s go sit in the study,” he suggests, standing upright again and cupping his mug in his hands. “It’s better to keep the den for relaxation, I think, and my study for serious. Keeps things delineated in the mind. It’s cleaner.”

Erik sets the book down on the sofa, the corner of the page folded over, and gets up, following Charles into the study. Erik’s cleaned here, too, but since then it’s gotten messy again; Charles has to move a stack of books and papers off the other chair for Erik to sit down, and even then Erik sits almost gingerly on the edge of the seat, like he thinks it might stain him.

“It’s just paper, it won’t bite,” Charles says. In the kitchen he can understand Erik being a bit touchy about the mess, but his study should be safe enough. “Thank you, Erik. I’m fairly certain I’ve said it before, but thank you for cleaning. You really don’t have to, but I do appreciate that I’m not always the easiest person to live with. So.”

Erik doesn’t relax very much, but he does shrug one shoulder when he says, “It’s fine. I like things to be in order.”

Charles smiles, settling into his chair and crossing his legs, placing his right ankle on his left knee. He takes a slow, deep breath, calming himself before he says, making himself dispassionate about it, “Now. I really just wanted to talk to you about the flashback you had last night, and the reactions that came with it. It was a bit alarming at the time. Do you remember any of that?”

Erik’s expression goes suddenly still, kept perfectly blank, as if it were carved from stone. “It was the coke,” he says, the answer clearly (or clearly to Charles, anyway) as rehearsed as it is convenient. “I hallucinated. That’s all.”

“You hallucinated something that really happened though, didn’t you?” Charles asks. “I felt how scared you were, Erik. And it started when I was helping you undress to get in the shower. You were upset before that, but that triggered a memory. Can you tell me what happened?”

It’s interesting, and informative, the way Erik has completely dissociated from his emotions -- he isn’t feeling fear, or shame. The strongest feeling emanating from him is the desire to start picking at a loose thread on his jacket. He’s obviously avoiding feeling anything at all, a coping mechanism Charles knows from experience is usually maladaptive.

“It wasn’t one memory,” Erik says. “It was two or three, mixed together. Do we have to talk about this?”

His voice is a bit stronger on the last, all that restlessness refocused into decisiveness. Charles has to admit that it’s probably easier for Erik to see himself as bored or annoyed, rather than anxious. Erik must find it preferable to the truth, which is … reassuring, in its way. It means some part of Erik, however small, recognizes the negative emotions tied up with these memories for what they are.

Charles leans forward a little, setting his mug aside and clasping his hands on his thigh, his heart beating faster in his chest. “Erik, you were really scared that I wanted to have sex with you, but you touched my crotch anyway, even though you didn’t want to. That’s why we need to talk about it, because I’m not sure you understand that if you don’t want to have sex then you don’t have to, with anyone. We call that rape, and it’s illegal to force someone to have sex. You were remembering times, I think, where you’ve been raped in the past. Am I right?” Charles feels a little dizzy, but he folds up that feeling and puts that aside to deal with later, concentrating on here and now.

 _This_ , at least, gets a response: there’s a sudden tide of resentment coming from Erik’s mind, all colored with a defensive sort of anger. “I’ve never been raped,” Erik says forcefully. “I know what rape is, and I haven’t been.”

Charles hums, a nothing sound, vague enough to be neutral. “All right. Tell me how you would define rape.”

“It’s like you said. It’s when someone forces an innocent person to have sex when they don’t want to.”

“An innocent person? What would make you guilty, then?”

Erik’s hands are gripping the seat of his chair, white-knuckled, but he manages to sound almost dismissive when he speaks. “If you’re asking for it. If you seduce someone.”

Charles raises an eyebrow, then drops it, because that’s not helpful. “So if you seduce someone -- I assume by being attractive in their vicinity? -- and they force you to have sex that you don’t want to have, then that’s okay? It’s not rape?” God, what excuses Shaw and the others must have made to Erik and to each other to explain their own sins. It makes Charles nauseous. “So if I thought you were attractive, and forced you to have sex with me even though you didn’t want to, then that would be okay?”

“That isn’t what I’m talking about,” Erik says flatly. “You don’t understand. I didn’t just let it happen. I sought it _out._ If Essex is in my room, and I seduce him, knowing what will happen, how is that rape?”

Erik has a specific memory in mind he’s drawing from, of Nathaniel Essex letting himself into Erik’s bedroom late at night. Essex was talking about the color of Erik’s walls, and needing to repaint. Erik was a seething ball of anxious anticipation and irritation (and self-loathing, for being irritated at all); he got out of bed, picked up the bottle of lubricant from his bedside table, and walked across the room to press it into Essex’s hand, cutting him off mid-sentence.

“I knew what they liked,” Erik continues, “and I made sure I did it. To make them happy. If Essex wants me to cry, I cry for him. If Shaw wants me to worship his cock while I’m sucking it, then that’s what I do. If I were being raped, you’d think I wouldn’t be so _accommodating_.” Erik all but spits the last word out.

Charles can feel something inside of him breaking, over and over, like once isn’t enough. There’s a tremble in his leg that he stops with his hands, bracing himself together so he doesn’t shake apart. “And what would have happened if you didn’t do those things?” Charles asks, keeping his voice so steady, level, his gaze the same. “If you didn’t make them happy, what would they have done?”

“No one ordered me to do it, if that’s what you mean,” Erik says. “But you figure out what people like, after a while. Isn’t it in my best interest to keep the people I live with happy? The same way it’s in my best interest to keep _you_ happy.”

It’s an evasive answer; Charles nods slowly, as if he’s taking Erik’s point. “I see. So if you hadn’t gone out of your way to have sex with the other members of the Hellfire Club, or if you’d said no, they’d have just left you alone?”

“No,” Erik admits, “but I’m just trying to say, _this_ is what I was like. Am like. I can’t help myself. I acted excessively submissive, and I made them want me. So why should anyone believe me, if I say no? What would be the point? I’d only be sending mixed messages.”

“Erik,” Charles says, very gently, and he’s in control, he is, he’s calm, he _is_ , no matter what Erik is remembering, no matter how Charles feels underneath … he says, keeping his voice soft, firm, “being trained to protect yourself by acting first isn’t the same thing as consent. If no isn’t an option, then it’s rape. If you don’t have a choice, choosing to make it less bad is completely understandable, and sensible, but it’s still rape. No matter who it is or what the circumstances, that is always and always will be rape.”

“Stop it,” Erik suddenly snaps, and Charles’ wristwatch goes hot against his skin. Wherever that invisible line is in Erik’s head as to how far he’s willing to allow Charles to discuss this with him, Charles must have crossed it. Erik leans forward in his chair, the line of his shoulders tense. “You don’t get to label my experiences like that just because it fits your dogma. You think if you convince me it’s rape, I’ll testify? I won’t.”

The study feels small, claustrophobic all of a sudden, and Charles takes a deep breath.

“I don’t care if you testify or not,” Charles says, a part of him going on alert in case he has to take action; Erik’s mind is heating up too, furious, tangled emotion rising inside him and making Charles nervous. “That’s up to you and always has been. I’m telling you a fact, Erik, though I understand it’s an unpleasant one. You can look it up online, if you want. I can provide you with some links on the topic. But it won’t change just because you don’t want it to be true.”

“If you really knew me,” Erik says, “if you used your telepathy and looked, actually _looked_ , you’d know that’s not true.” In Erik’s mind he’s hearing what a Dom said to him last week -- _you want this_ and _slut_ \-- Shaw’s voice, from deep well of memory, echoes, _cockwhore._ But Erik’s pushing both memories aside almost immediately, making room for the anger that’s swelling to fill the empty space. “But you don’t. And you won’t. Because you’re scared. You couldn’t even get through our second interview without wanting to be sick -- you think I didn’t notice?”

“I know you were scared last night,” Charles says, refusing to take the bait even though his gorge is rising again, a sick feeling coming up through his very bones, like every cell in his body is nauseated. But he has to push through this, now that he’s started it there’s no backing down -- if he does he’s lost Erik to this topic forever, he can feel Erik walling it away already even as they speak. “You didn’t want it, Erik, and you can’t pretend you did. Not to me. Even if you can pretend to yourself. I don’t think you’ve ever wanted to have sex with anyone for yourself, for real. Can you think of even one time you’ve wanted to have sex with someone because you wanted to have sex? Just one.”

He feels pale, almost trembling, and he knows Erik must see it, can’t help but feel ashamed to react like this when he’s supposed to be a therapist, Erik’s therapist, but this subject always makes him feel so --

“What do you want from me?” Erik all but yells; he’s on his feet a second later, the chair he’d been sitting in clattering back against the floor and nearly tipping over. “Why is this so important to you?” Some of the pens on Charles’ desk roll off the surface and his watch constricts around his wrist, tight enough to bruise. “Can’t you just leave it alone?”

Erik stamps his foot and shouts something in French, something sharp and frustrated. Charles doesn’t know French well enough to translate, and his grasp on Erik’s mind is tenuous at best. The pipes are rattling in the walls, and overhead there’s a loud BANG and the room is plunged into darkness.

Charles _screams_.

The sound is -- it’s -- it’s a gun, he has a gun, there’s a gun and it’s firing and things are exploding and Charles is screaming, terrified and he can’t see, he’s blind, maybe this time it hit him and he -- he can’t -- he’s on the floor and there’s a gun he has a gun he _shot the gun_ \--

There are hands on him, and Charles screams again and tries, tries to -- his heart is pounding like it’s going to explode too, like it’s going to burst him open, like he’s been shot from the inside, _in like a grape and out like a grapefruit._ He smells gunpowder, burning high in his nostrils.

Clumsily he scrabbles at the floor, shoves himself back and away and under -- there’s a desk, under the desk, under the -- in the space where, where the legs go --

“Charles,” a voice says, tight and urgent. “Charles, are you -- it was an accident, it’s okay, I didn’t -- _scheiße_ \-- ” A quick sound, like a chair being dragged across a floor, and then the hands are back, light and hesitant on his shoulders, more patting than touching. “Charles, listen to me, calm down.”

Charles only realises after a moment that he’s crying, his cheeks wet and running with it, and in the dark it could be -- it could be anywhere, he could be anywhere, and he says, urgently, “He has a gun, he -- there was a gun, Erik, you have to -- I can’t see, I think Cain -- don’t, don’t let him shoot you. If he sees you, he’ll shoot you.” It’s hard to speak, his throat so tight that the words come out in harsh gasps between sobs. It’s dark, pitch black, no light at all.

“What are you talking -- “ Erik starts, but then seems to change his mind about whatever he was going to say, says instead, “There’s no gun. It’s just -- the lightbulb exploded, it’s nothing. There’s no one here but you and me, I promise. Okay? Do you believe me?”

His hands are firmer on Charles’ shoulders now, and then there’s a thin, warm body crawling under the desk next to him. Erik’s arms wrap around him and pull him close until Charles’ face is pressed against Erik’s neck, Erik’s fingers combing back through his hair over and over and over again. This close, Erik smells very faintly of cigarette smoke. “He’s not here. I have you. You’re okay.”

“He’ll find us,” Charles says, shaking all over now like he has a palsy, feeling cold flushes rinsing through him, head to foot. Maybe he’s going into shock, maybe that’s why it doesn’t hurt yet. “He always -- Cain was angry, he was so angry. He has a gun again, I heard it fire. And then I went blind.”

“You’re not blind, it’s just dark in here. I told you, the light bulb exploded. No one has a gun.” Erik pulls at him and Charles goes with it, until he’s half-in Erik’s lap, his weight pressing against Erik’s skinny frame, which is shivering slightly with the effort of holding him up. “If there’s a gun, I won’t let you get shot. I’ll disarm him and I’ll shoot him with it. Yes?”

“Okay,” Charles says, and abruptly he goes limp against Erik like all his strings have been cut, then just shakes, and shakes, fear still rattling through him as he waits and listens for footsteps, but nobody comes. He can feel that Erik is really freaked out, too, but that’s normal, that’s good. It’s the right response to a bad time like now.

After a while Charles remembers that Cain went away to the army and never came back, and he thinks, oh. Right.

The space under the desk is narrow and cramped, too hot, Erik’s body angular and digging into him in strange places where they’re crushed together; Charles’ voice is dry and creaky, rustling out from a throat that’s sore from screaming.

“I think I can get up now,” he says, trying to sound rational, like he didn’t just have a massive panic attack in front of Erik. Like he isn’t trembling from the adrenaline and the still-urgent if irrational expectation that Cain is about to find them.

“I think you should sit for a while,” Erik says, but he lets go of Charles anyway, pushing himself out from under the desk and offering a hand to Charles to help pull him out after. “Maybe in the den. Where it’s light.” He’s nothing but a dark silhouette.

Charles swallows, and says, “... I don’t really want you to look at me right now.” It’s probably the most honest thing he’s said to Erik since he moved in. “You go -- you go read, and I’ll. Sweep up in here, maybe. There’ll be. Glass.”

Charles has never seen anyone disappear so fast in his life; he’s no sooner got the words out of his mouth than Erik is gone, vanishing into the outer rooms and leaving the door to the study open behind him, streaming light inside. It’s abrupt, and even though -- even though it’s what Charles offered, what lets Erik get away from all of Charles’ … all of Charles’ _this_ , it still feels a bit like a slap in the face. It’s completely unfair -- it’s not Erik’s job to deal with … _this_. But.

Turning on the lamp reveals a glittering starscape of broken glass and overturned furniture, papers scattered everywhere. Wonderful. Lifting the trashcan in one hand and tugging his sweater sleeve down over the other, Charles starts carefully knocking flecks of glass off the top of his desk, and the chairs, and the shelves, into the trash, shaking them out when they get caught in the knit and trying not to think about just how badly he’s blown it with Erik today. After this morning with the floor thing, and then now with the light bulb -- Charles has to pause to lean his forehead against the wall, and just breathe through his newest wave of self-loathing, just wait for it to pass.

In here, too, a clock is ticking, steady and cutting, like the edge of a knife slivering away his life.

“Charles?” Erik’s voice says from behind him. When Charles looks around Erik is standing in the doorway, skinny and pale with a cup of tea held between his hands, radiating uncertainty and a deep sense of guilt. “I -- I’ll go, again, but I thought you might want ….” He shakes his head, and sets the tea down on the desk, his mouth gone thin. “Here.”

It’s a reminder that Erik is worth fighting for, underneath all of Sebastian Shaw’s slime -- a good boy, even if saying so aloud would be a poor choice of words. Charles smiles, small and tight but real, and reaches with one hand to squeeze Erik’s shoulder before he can step back, hoping it’s reassuring. “It’s fine,” he says, picking up the tea with the other hand and taking a sip; it’s very sweet, probably just what he needs. “I just -- I didn’t want you to -- I’m just … embarrassed. Please don’t feel that I’m banishing you.”

“You don’t have to be embarrassed about anything.” Erik moves inside the study, and then, unexpectedly, he’s angling around the tea in Charles’ hand and wrapping one arm around Charles’ neck, hugging him. It’s a little awkward, but it’s -- good, a kind of physical affection he didn’t think he’d earned, Erik’s body a slim warm pressure against his chest. When Erik takes a step back again his gaze is carefully lowered. “It’s okay to have. Memories. Sometimes.”

Charles’ smile twists, but he says, softly, “It is. Thank you, Erik. I guess I need reminding from time to time, too.”

Erik lingers there in silence for a moment, his hands thrust into his pockets, and at last he lifts his eyes to look at Charles again to say, “I want you to know that you don’t have to put on a front for me. Maybe you think that if I find out you’re a real person I won’t see you as an authority figure. But you don’t have to pretend you’re all right if you’re not.”

It’s … almost funny, really, because Erik has _no idea_ , but it’s sweet, too, for the same reason. So Charles just keeps smiling and sips the tea Erik brought him, lets himself sink down into the chair he’d cleared for Erik earlier, giving in to the weakness in his knees. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he says, letting his gaze fall away. “I’m sorry, anyway, that that happened. There aren’t many things that set me off like that but loud bangs are … difficult.”

Erik nods, and pulls his hands out of his pockets, folding them around his chest instead. “It was my fault. I lost control.” He doesn’t apologize explicitly but the sentiment is there all the same, throbbing through his mind and weaving in and out between the words. A second’s hesitation and then Erik asks, very delicately, “Who is Cain?”

Charles winces, shoulders drawing in towards his ears, just a twitch before he controls it. “He was -- is, perhaps -- my stepbrother. He … I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, now, but … he was, shall we say, difficult to live with.” Understatement, by a factor of twenty, but the whole sordid history of Cain is one Charles tries to avoid entirely, even in the privacy of his own thoughts. “Cain is, or was, a Dominant. My telepathy didn’t come in until I was nine, so until then I was a solid -5S. Our parents married when I was four. Cain was seven.”

Erik holds his gaze, but he doesn’t ask any more questions. Charles gets the sense that Erik feels there’s nothing more to say. In Erik’s mind, all Dominants are alike, and that makes it easy for Erik to construct what would seem, to him, to be the obvious narrative. It's not something Charles wants to discuss, anyway, the similarities or differences between their two experiences. In the end, really, they’re both scarred in the same way: by violence beyond their control, regardless of the type.

“Do you want to eat ice cream and watch some terrible movies?” he asks, aiming for levity. At least, he thinks, he doesn’t put on a fake smile, this time.

“I’d like that,” Erik says, and Charles leaves the study as it is for now so that they can settle on the sofa in the den to watch _G.I. Joe_ , tugging an afghan down over his lap so he can hide his trembling hands beneath it. Erik sits close to Charles, enough that their arms brush whenever one of them gets up for more popcorn or to use the bathroom, and Charles gets better at pretending he remembers how to breathe.

 *

_Erik_

That night Erik takes his pack of cigarettes and lighter up to the roof of the building. There are balconies on every other floor with wrought iron railings, and he sits on the ledge with his feet dangling over the city, power latched onto those railings for additional security even though he’s certain if he fell he could slow his descent by charging a field below his feet in opposition to the geomagnetic field. He left after Charles had already disappeared into his bedroom for the night, the sound of water running in the master shower, even though he doesn’t think Charles would stop him smoking either way.

The city that never sleeps. That might be true in Times Square, but on the Upper East Side the lights go out at nine, the buildings on the next street over almost entirely dark now. Even the light from the streetlamps seems dim and washed-out, the sidewalks peppered with only one or two people per block.

He lights his cigarette and inhales, breathing out smoke that dissipates in his line of sight between here and the horizon. The lights in Midtown glitter like a million fireflies, much brighter than the stars so far overhead. He wonders how many of those lights belong to mutants. How many belong to humans. How many are Doms, are subs, are Hellfire-aligned. If any of them belong to the possibly-dead Cain, represented in Erik’s mind as a dark and child-sized figure with no face: featureless but somehow brutish, all the same.

The reaction Charles had, after the lightbulb … Erik doesn’t think he can ever forget it. It’s burned into his mind, the way Charles screamed, fell, how his body felt trembling in his arms. He has never seen Charles like that. Never thought him capable of it. Knowing Charles has weaknesses and fears of his own was not the same as witnessing them like this, made more palpable than the low hum of suspicion that developed after finding Charles sleeping on the floor that one morning.

He wonders, if he peeled back the layers of Charles’ clothing, if he’d find that Charles’ skin bears the same marks and scars his does or if it would be miraculously smooth and flawless. Wonders if there’s the shadow of a gunshot wound somewhere, a twisting star of white flesh. Charles didn’t say exactly what happened, but he doesn’t have to. That he hates Cain for it is obvious. Is that why he expects Erik to be so -- wounded? Because that’s what he, Charles, is?

A very small part of him wonders if maybe Charles is the one who’s right, and Erik the one who’s wrong. If something deep and fundamental in Erik is broken because he can sit here on this rooftop and smoke a cigarette, the smell of which reminds him so strongly of Shaw, and miss the person who broke his bones and gave his body away.

He doesn’t realize how much time has passed until his cigarette has burned down to the filter and he tosses it over the edge, watching the bright coal spin down through the air for a few yards before it vanishes from sight. Erik pushes himself around and goes back inside, down the narrow maintenance staircase, turning the lock back how he found it and returning to the apartment.

It’s silent now, the water pipes cool again. Erik doesn’t turn on the light but heads up the stairs in the dark, going to his own room only to turn on the light and toe off his Converses. In stocking feet he pads back down the hall to Charles’ room. He doesn’t hesitate this time, but still he touches the knob but lightly as he turns it, more with his power than with his hand, opening the door just enough to look inside at the dark lump curled up under the covers on the bed.

Erik gets the sense of something large and unseen rolling over a moment before Charles shifts, head lifting sluggishly from the pillow to look back over his shoulder at Erik, eyes just a glimmer in the dim light. “Nngh … Erik? Is every … ” -- a yawn -- “is everything okay?”

“Yes,” Erik says. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t sleeping on the floor.”

A long pause, then Charles snorts and lays his head back down on the pillow. _Go to bed,_ he says, dragging the duvet up and over his shoulder. _It’s late._

Erik smiles, slightly. “Good night, Charles,” and closes the door behind him.

*

The next day is Monday.

Erik can’t pay attention in class, which isn’t much of a problem in Mandarin, where he already half-knows the spoken but not the written language, or math, where he learned everything they’re teaching when he was eight, but he’s fairly sure he’ll live to regret it when he’s writing his English essay and can’t remember what was talked about in discussion group. His mind is still on how he felt by the end of last night, turning the same thoughts over in his mind, still fighting that deep and unsettling feeling that there’s something fundamentally wrong with him. He knows his and Charles’ circumstances are very different. That Erik deserved every beating, that he made -- still makes -- himself a sexual and seductive creature to every Dom he comes in contact with. But still it itches at something inside him, somewhere deep where he can’t scratch.

It doesn’t matter for History, either, that he can’t keep his thoughts on-topic. He’s learned to keep his mouth shut in this particular class. While three-quarters of what the teacher is saying is consistent with what he’s learned in the past, the remainder often isn’t, and he’s made a fool of himself too many times already speaking up.

They’re still in the medieval period, but that hasn’t stopped more than one student from drawing thematic comparisons between some of the topics of interest and contemporary politics. Erik understands that while there is certainly disagreement between his classmates as regards the Hellfire Club and mutant issues, none of them agree with _him._ Not that he’s said anything; he has the wary sense that speaking his mind would out him immediately as Hellfire.

Having to stay silent is the hardest thing Erik’s ever done -- the arguments well up hot and rash in his throat and press against his closed lips. He can come up with the perfect counter-attack to everything they say. He wants to scream it out, is perpetually amazed that no one else ever says anything, that no one sees what to him is so obvious.

He feels so strongly about some things -- that mutants should fight back, of course, and that humans will destroy them if mutant militias consent to demilitarize or agree to national registration (whether slowly or quickly doesn’t matter, just that the destruction, then, would be inevitable). But these are not controversial opinions. Well, they are, but Erik doesn’t think they would earn him suspicion or horror. It’s even an official debate position, when students take a devil’s advocate approach. But no one takes Hellfire’s official position, which supports drastic measures, not just in defense of mutants but offensively, as well -- to eradicate humans and bring the world into a new order under mutant rule.

Erik’s so sure that’s an inevitability, anyway, if humans don’t manage to kill all mutants off first. But all the arguments he has to support going ahead and achieving that goal now, by force if necessary, feel … he can’t explain it. They feel constructed. Old and worn-out. He has been away from Hellfire too long -- for fuck’s sake, his only real friend is human! The Erik of a year ago would have called the Erik of today a blood traitor, just for that. Worse, if he knew how Erik was feeling right now, or that Erik was hearing all that integrationist bullshit and not speaking up. If he found out Erik had at all questioned his place in the organization. The Erik of a year ago would not understand this Erik at all.

He’s let himself get complacent, he thinks. He hasn’t been thinking about the issue like he should. He hasn’t been able to, if he’s honest, because he’s been thinking so much about school, and the trial, and whatever’s happening to Charles, and wanting to convince Charles to buy them season tickets to the New York Philharmonic. His mind is like any muscle, and without using it, it has begun to atrophy.

So when he gets home from school that afternoon, while Charles is still at work, he gets out the laptop Charles bought him and pulls up the internet browser. He’s mostly figured the internet out by now and has used it several times for class. Most notably, he’s discovered reddit, where there’s a forum for nearly everything.

Nearly. One of the first things he did, when he made his account, was subscribe to all the mutant issue subreddits he could find. There was everything from /r/mutants (a general forum) to /r/mutantrights, /r/mutantprivilege (an anti-mutant forum, which seems to believe mutants are oppressing humans on a societal level already), and even /r/mutantsgonewild (which is full of mutant porn). But there’s nothing that explicitly supports the Hellfire Club.

He spends a while clicking through the FAQs on the relevant subreddits and finds a disclaimer, in small print, at the bottom of the /r/mutantuprising FAQ page.

_At /r/mutantuprising we support discussion of all different types of viewpoint. Free speech is encouraged: say what you want, but don’t be surprised if you get downvoted. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences._

_That said, there are some topics of conversation that are banned on /r/mutantuprising. This list is very short and only includes one thing: no buying, selling, or trading of weapons and ammunition on this subreddit. If you’re into the more violent flavor of mutant uprising, there are onion sites for that, and if you PM the mods we’ll be happy to direct you to them. Just don’t be an idiot -- reddit’s anonymous, but not THAT anonymous. Cheers!_

Erik sends the PM.

He gets a reply eleven minutes later, while he’s browsing /r/cooking for dinner recipes.

 _Hey man. You can find what you’re looking for at kdi29alzz0rxyavxx1.onion/purgatory/home/ You’ll need Tor to access. There might be some other sites on the Hidden Wiki, but afaik that’s the most active board. Good luck._ \-- /u/pm_me_ur_mutation

He has to download a browser bundle to access the site: Google informs him that Tor is an anonymity network, routing your data circuit through a series of relays to conceal your IP address, your destination IP, and the kind of data that’s being transmitted. He gets a little distracted reading the Wiki page on Tor and following links to flesh out his knowledge of what exactly an IP address is and has to force himself to minimize the windows for the time being.

He gets the basic gist, anyway. It keeps what he does on the internet private. If he uses Tor, not even the government will know what he’s doing online. Onion sites are sites that are only hosted on the dark web -- on websites you can’t access at all unless you’re using a service like Tor. In other words, ideal for anyone who wants to buy or sell drugs, or weapons, or talk about blowing up the White House.

Erik figures he’s getting a pretty good sense now of what the Doms were always using their laptops for.

The link the other redditor gave him brings him (very, very slowly, but Erik figures that’s the price of having your IP filtered through an international relay) to a page with a black background. The title of the page is in large red letters, nearly filling his screen:

PURGATORY  
Free. Powerful. Supreme.

He clicks through to the forum, his heart beating faster in his chest and his breath coming shallowly now.

There’s a series of subforums, it looks like, including “Current Events,” “Riot Report,” “Market (Weapons, Bombs, Materials).” Apparently you have to go through the mods and a verification process to view the forums that pertain to actually planning attacks, but that’s not what Erik’s looking for.

Under “Current Events” there’s a sub-subforum. “Hellfire Club Trial.” He clicks the link and leans back against the sofa, closing his eyes and trying to construct a surface level thought that isn’t … well, this. Charles will only be fooled if he isn’t paying much attention, but it might keep him from looking closely if he’s distracted with patients.

So it’s with half his mind still thinking about what he wants to make for dinner that Erik looks back at the screen of his laptop.

WHICH HELLFIRE MEMBER IS YOUR FAVORITE the first subject reads, closely followed by HELLFIRE TACTICS 101 and NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF PROSECUTOR PIGS.

Erik lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, and smiles, even if it feels a little uneven on his mouth. There’s a flashing link in the bottom right hand corner. CHAT - 17 ONLINE NOW

He clicks.

_> >Name:_

He hesitates for a second, then types in: _Magneto._

[ ](http://i.imgur.com/k4dNN5C.gif)

A box pops up that fills half his screen, and immediately several lines of text pop up, apparently written live by other people browsing the site.

 **mutantpower:** srsly tho we should send them stuff in the mail to make them reconsider  
 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** liek what  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** anthrax  
 **mutantpower:** dude i don’t know what your power is but mine is not surviving making anthrax, jesus fucking christ  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** like even send them white powder and shit and make them realise we could send them anthrax  
 **mutantpower:** i was thinking more like a bomb or wtv  
 **mutantpower:** tho it seems kind of lame to do something so baseline when we’re fucking mutants  
 **mutantpower:** new guy, magneto, who are you?

Erik pauses, hands hovering above the keyboard, uncertain. He had thought he’d get away with just reading -- obviously 13 other people are managing that at the moment -- but he supposes he can’t fault them for being suspicious of newcomers.

After a few seconds, he types:

 **Magneto:** Just a sympathizer. New to this site.

It’s a bit misleading, he supposes, but a hell of a lot less misleading than the face he puts on at school.

 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** name 10 mmbers of hellfir. 0 points for shaw frost rasputinn quested essex or wingard their all over the news

Erik almost rolls his eyes. If it’s a test it’s painfully easy, and not just for him, he expects. If he were CIA or Homeland, surely he’d know ten names to type out to maintain his cover, at the very least. He spares a few seconds to consider the possibility that this is some kind of sting operation, and the whole thing is an elaborate trap, but decides he’s not giving them any information they don’t already know.

 **Magneto:** Trevor Fitzroy, Elias Bogan, Friedrich von Roehm, Donald Pierce, Selene Gallio, Harry Leland, Amara Aquilla, Manuel de la Rocha, Jesse Aaronson, Devon Alomar.  
 **mutantpower:** dude any fuckhead with google can name ten members jfc this place is full of shitheads tonight  
 **mutantpower:** magneto, what’s your power? assuming not magnetism unless you’re The Kid come to play with us  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** lol as if actual hellfire members come here, we can talk all we fuking want but if any 1 of us graduated into big boy class we’d be right out of here

It stings, to think that they’re right -- that actual Hellfire members wouldn’t come here. They obviously are including Erik in that (though, ‘the Kid?’ -- really, he’s _fourteen_ ), but it is still far too potent of a reminder that while they’re wrong, while Erik might be here now, he isn’t sure he counts anymore. If he did, wouldn’t he be in jail with the rest of them? If he’s free, he should either be fighting or martyred. Not lurking on some website _talking_ about fighting.

Erik pushes the thought away before it can swell into anything darker, anything that might get Charles’ attention across the city, and vows to deal with it later.

 **Magneto:** Electricity.

He smirks a little to himself, even though he doesn’t get the sense any of the regulars in this chat room are well-versed enough in basic physics to get the joke.

 **Magneto:** That doesn’t prove anything either, though. Anyone can claim to be a mutant. Try harder. Ask me something only a real supporter would know.

It was too much to hope, Erik supposes, that he might find any of the others lurking on this site. His only real shot would be if he could somehow get to DC and check the safehouse there. This is more the place for lone suicide bombers and what Wyngarde, not disparagingly, called “amateurs” -- people who served the cause, but either weren’t devoted enough, powerful enough, or Dominant enough to be full Hellfire members.

Irrelevant, Erik decides. The site is an invaluable resource, just being what it is. It’s the closest he’s come to making contact since the raid, and this is _exactly_ what he needs to clear his head.

 **mutantpower:** how many hc members have died or been imprisoned for the cause

The answer has been drilled into Erik’s head a thousand times.

 **Magneto:** 18 including the 6 imprisoned after the Brooklyn raid. 19 if you include the kid.  
 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** name them al  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** what they got The Kid wtf i did not hear that  
 **mutantpower:** wait what  
 **mutantpower:** is this real info or are you guessing

Erik almost closes the computer, his pulse jumping. Only …. Only, if he really wants to rejoin, this may be the best way to go about it. Let the rumors percolate a bit. See if anyone comes looking for him. He has to be careful, though; if he implies he’s working with the prosecution, it won’t end well for him.

 **Magneto:** Didn’t you read the charge sheet? Endangering the welfare of a child, coercion in the first degree? He goes where Shaw goes, I thought everyone knew that. And now Shaw’s captured.  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** yea but he wuld have to go to juvie or something  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** they’re not just going to let him wander around  
 **mutantpower:** so it is guesswork then. human pigs might have him might not. they’d probably have to have said if they did though.  
 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** stop makin shit up man fuk  
 **Magneto:** You have a better explanation for those charges?  
 **mutantpower:** making up bad shit to get them all shanked in prison before they make it to trial springs to mind. everybody hates a kiddyfiddler and the Pigs hate muties so qed

Erik feels like there’s something hard caught in his throat. It’s not why he came here, but ever since the raid he’s … well, he knows Charles’ opinion on the matter, and the opinion of the humans who make the laws, but where all of this seemed so straightforward to him just a week ago, ever since last night his own feelings have been … tangled.

 **Magneto:** You think they didn’t do it, then?

He draws his hands back from the keyboard the second he’s finished typing, clenching them into fists against his stomach, staring at the screen and waiting for a response, breath caught in his chest.

 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** i’d fiddle with frost  
 **mutantpower:** dude Hellfire is all about honor and like defending mutants who can’t defend themselves, no way they’re all doing The Kid he’s like Robin to their Batman, Bruce Wayne doesn’t kiddyfiddle Dick Grayson  
 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** idk dude batman’s pertty gay

Erik wants a glass of water, suddenly desperately thirsty, but he can’t bring himself to move away from his screen long enough to fetch one.

 **Magneto:** Who said anything about kiddyfiddling? If he’s a sub and they’re all Doms, could be consensual. We all know how the human swine like to twist the truth.  
 **mutantpower:** dude eww he’s like 12 if you want pedo go to /b/  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** idgaf i just want them to blow up the white house  
 **mutantpower:** you’re an idiot CCS jfc clearly your mutation is somehow surviving without a working brain  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** look dude it’s none of my business if they bum him every night  
 **mutantpower:** is this a forum about mutant supremacy or a wank tank i s2g

Erik regrets bringing it up at all. He feels sick to his stomach somehow, paranoid that they’ve all figured it out, that they all know who he is. Quickly, he types out:

 **Magneto:** So what have all of you done for the cause? Besides sitting in front of your computers talking about all the shit you’d do if only you were 5D and Sigma class.  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** fuk u  
 **mutantpower:** what have you done first, we know _we’re_ not feds but don’t know about you, pedobear

Great, Erik thinks -- shall I tell them about destroying the Flatiron Building? The bridge in London? The Sydney Opera House? Maybe that I was responsible for ensuring the assassin’s bullet killed President Palmer.

 **Magneto:** I’ve killed people.  
 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** yeh rigt  
 **mutantpower:** deets or it didn’t happen

Well, Erik figures after a moment’s hesitation, it _is_ anonymous. If any of them are undercover feds, it’s already perfectly clear that they aren’t interesting in throwing any charges at Erik. But who has he killed who wasn’t traced back to Hellfire, and which didn’t involve using his powers in any obvious way?

 **Magneto:** Ever heard of Patrick Lukin?  
 **mutantpower:** that lobbyist guy? seriously?  
 **Magneto:** I did my part. Now you. Or are you nothing more than a bunch of amateur, lightweight sympathizers?  
 **EMMAFROSTSBOOBS:** fuk this guy srsly  
 **mutantpower:** burned down my local mutant help center, such bullshit they just want to neuter us. made the news  
 **Magneto:** Fuck integrationists.  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** esp since they only help the ‘pretty 1s’, shoud kill them all  
 **Magneto:** We don’t hurt our own.  
 **Magneto:** Blood traitors are just brainwashed. They need to learn, but we don’t need to kill them.

Charles is an integrationist. He’s misguided, of course, but he doesn’t need to _die_ because of it. Erik frowns at his laptop, and almost continues typing, starting in on a long diatribe about the ethics of killing fellow mutants, but restrains himself.

 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** if u want an omelette u have to break some eggs, can’t just sit and wait for only Pigs to be in there or they all go home and ur one lonely bomber  
 **Magneto:** Mutant collateral and mutant targets are not the same thing.  
 **CardCarryingSupremacist:** dude not bombing the pretty 1s bombing the centers i want to have someone to breed with when all the Pigs r dead

Erik slams his laptop closed, his cheeks gone hot. He sits there for a long second with his computer in his lap, gripping the case, before he finally tosses it aside on the sofa cushions and makes himself get up and go into the kitchen. He pours himself a glass of water and drinks it all in a few gulps, setting the empty cup down too-hard on the counter.

Whatever aim he had going into the site, it hasn’t made anything clearer. If anything he only feels more irritated and boundless now, torn between frustration with the other users for misunderstanding so much about Hellfire, and a sick sense of self-consciousness, knowing how they talk about _him_ , what they think he is, or was. Or was supposed to be.

It’s after five, now. Charles will be on his way home, and when he gets here Erik needs to be thinking about something else. He wants to keep mulling this over, maybe turn off chat and go back on the site to read the other threads, but he can’t afford to do that with a telepath around, no matter how accustomed he was to Frost and Essex.

He pours himself another glass of water and takes it upstairs along with his satchel, and by the time he feels Charles’ key in the lock he’s already halfway through his math problem set, issues of Hellfire and … everything else, pushed deep down and locked away.

[ ](http://imgur.com/O6hMlTg.gif)

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: panic attack without flashback detail, rape apology, discussion of past child abuse.


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to **baehj** for her lovely beta work! Also, **bourbonss** did [this AMAZING fanart](http://bourbonss.tumblr.com/post/95245279488/you-dont-understand-fanart-for-spicy-tah-of) of poor Erik, which both of us have been in conniptions about all week! Please go and give her so much love for this beautiful art <3

_Charles_

It's been around four months since Erik came to live with him, and Charles feels like things have finally settled enough that he can introduce a new element into the apartment without it destroying Erik's hard-won equilibrium. It's not so much that he doesn't think Erik can handle difficult things -- he proves that every day, but so far Charles has kept the apartment to just the two of them, simple and uncomplicated after the difficulties of everyday life for someone raised so far outside of ‘normal’. He’s pretty sure that Erik can handle a small change now.

Even so, it's not without a little nervousness that he says to Erik one day after school, "My sister is going to come over for a visit this weekend, on Saturday."

They’re sat in the den together, Erik on the couch and Charles in his favorite armchair, the radio on quietly in the background; it’s nice, how relaxed they can be together now, and it feels almost a shame to break the quiet, like Charles is disturbing something precious by bringing up Raven’s visit.

But all Erik says is, "Oh," barely looking up from reading _Night Film_ by Marisha Pessl, and licking his thumb to turn to the next page. "All right."

Charles blinks, nonplussed at the casualness of it, and shifts a bit in his chair. "Just to make sure you're aware,” he says, trying again, “Raven is a Domme. She would never do anything sexual with you anyway, but there's absolutely zero expectation or requirement there. I'd suggest not offering, either."

Erik does look up at this. "Is she an integrationist?"

"Why don't you ask her on Saturday?" It probably shouldn't be amusing, but he's trying to be more casual about Erik's encounters, so that Erik doesn't feel he's being judged. "Why, would that make a difference to whether you made her an offer?"

"No," Erik says. "I'm just curious how much the two of you have in common, that's all." There's something strange about the way Erik says it, but when Charles peers into the surface layer of Erik's mind his thoughts are all about the book he's reading, nothing more.

It takes Charles a moment to think what Erik would be most interested in. "Well, we're not blood-related. Raven is my adopted sister. She's also blue, and a shapeshifter. She likes trashy reality television but she doesn't like music much. She prefers the theater."

"I look forward to meeting her," Erik says, and he smiles, the expression startlingly genuine, even if it crosses his lips only briefly.

It's easier than Charles had worried that it might be, and none of his other fears come to pass over the rest of the week, either. Erik doesn't have a panic about a strange Domme coming into the apartment, or fret about sharing Charles' attention, or start making elaborate plans (as far as Charles can tell) to recruit Raven for the Charles' Apartment chapter of the Hellfire Club. Instead everything carries on disturbingly as normal, and on Saturday Raven even remembers to ring the bell instead of just letting herself in the way she normally would.

"Hey," Charles says, stepping aside to allow her into the apartment, and as soon as he turns to close the door Raven hugs him from behind, wrapping her arms around Charles' torso and squeezing him, her feet lifting off the floor as she kicks them up.

"Hey," she says, grinning with her mouth pressed against the back of his neck, teeth brushing his nape as her lips part. "Carry me inside. I want to make an entrance."

Charles laughs and reaches behind himself to slap her on the ass, which makes Raven squawk and let go. When he turns around she frowns at him and steps forward to link her arm through his instead, tugging him closer.

"Don't pout," Charles says. Raven never wears shoes, so no need to put them or any imaginary coat away. "I thought perhaps we'd try _not_ to give Erik a weird first impression of you."

"Partypooper." Her voice is sour, but she's deliberately projecting a kind of soft pleasure at him, something she knows is soothing to Charles' nerves; she knows how much he wants them to get along. And she's thinking, too, that he looks more relaxed, that he's less tense than he was last time she saw him. That’s reassuring. "Where is Erik?"

"In here," Charles says, and he leads her into the den.

Erik is in one of the armchairs pretending to read. He'd be doing a good job at the pretense, too, if it weren't for the fact Charles' telepathy makes the wariness and anxious alertness in his mind all too obvious. He gets up when he sees them, setting the book aside and -- well, at least he doesn't kneel, although the total silence isn't much better. Erik isn't meeting Raven's eyes, his head submissively downturned and his hands clasped behind his back.

"Erik, this is my sister, Raven," Charles says instead of mentioning it, and prods Raven when she seems about to say something. "Raven, this is Erik Lehnsherr, my cat substitute."

That earns him a quick, darting glance from Erik, who manages to appreciate that he should find the joke funny even if his apprehension over Raven's Dominant presence has short-circuited his capacity for humor. It's better though than confusion, or worse, if Erik had taken offense.

Raven just smiles and says, "Hi, Erik. It's nice to meet you." Her eyes flicker over the seating options, and she chooses the couch, walking over and taking a seat tailor-fashion, legs folded up under her on the cushions. "Charles, come sit by me?"

Charles goes, taking the seat next to Raven. The tall windows are open to let in some of the warm May air, and the noises of traffic and people and plain old city life come in with it, dampened a little by the altitude. "How've you been?" he asks her, letting Raven take his hand and play with his fingers, casually affectionate. "How's Hank?"

"He's good," Raven says, drawing a line across the back of Charles' knuckles with her thumb. "And I'm well, thanks. The new show is opening off Broadway next Friday; you should come. Bring Erik, if he likes theatre -- do you like theatre, Erik?"

"I don't know," Erik says. He's sat back down again, looking at his knees, and all his thoughts are presently dedicated to trying to ascertain the right answer to that question. "... Yes?"

"Cool," Raven says, lacing her fingers with Charles' and squeezing his hand. "I don't know if Charles has told you I'm an actress?"

"Raven's made quite a name for herself." Charles smiles at her and squeezes back. "She's a very talented actress, of course, but her mutation has really helped too."

"Oh, for sure," Raven says. "It's cool to be able to use it for something constructive."

Charles can tell that Erik very dearly wants to suggest a number of other ways to use her power for what he considers politically and socially constructive ends, but at least for the time being his caution about Raven is overwhelming his urge to start all but recruiting her to the terrorist cause. Erik doesn't say anything at all, in the end, just nods and shifts very slightly in his seat.

There's a flicker of mischief in Raven's mind before she says, "It's fun, too," in Charles' voice. The hand in Charles' shifts, changes, becoming a twin to his own as Raven ripples all over and looks at him with his own twinkling eyes, a duplicate even down to Charles' rumpled cardigan, the third button down hanging by a thread. "You have to have fun with your mutation, otherwise what's the point?"

This, at least, has caught Erik's attention. He's looking up now, glancing between the two of them even if his gaze does linger longer on Charles. Leave it to mutation to finally drag a few words out of Erik. "Impressive," he says after several long seconds. "Can you do that for someone you've never met in person before?"

"Depends," Raven/Charles says, folding her arms and giving Erik an exaggerated -- what Charles hopes it exaggerated -- version of Charles' disapproving face. "Are you asking for the purposes of fun or for infiltrating the Pentagon?"

Erik might have taken it better had the question been from the real Charles; as it is he just goes silent again, the tiny glimmer of interest and personality he'd shown instantly retreating back inside his shell, his expression shuttering.

Raven winces and looks at Charles. He's starting to feel a little concerned, because this is rather a backslide for Erik, who's been more confident lately -- this sort of submissive behavior is more in line with how he was when he first came to live with Charles, months ago. So Charles says, casually, "This one time when I was fourteen and Raven was twelve, she impersonated our mother so we could visit MoMA after hours."

Erik’s face may stay downturned but his mind perks up, the bait catching his interest; he doesn't ask for more information, but he's obviously waiting for it all the same, thoughts tuned in even if by all appearances he's very interested in the state of his (extremely well-kempt) fingernails. So Charles continues, "I really wanted to see a Klimt exhibition that was only going to be here for a few weeks, and our stepfather wouldn't bring us -- we were living out in Westchester at the big house at the time. So Raven decided she would impersonate Mother, book a taxi and bring me into the city for my birthday."

Raven has clearly caught on to Charles’ ploy; "The part where we got locked inside the museum overnight wasn't my fault," she says with realistic indignance, flickering back to blue. "I disclaim all responsibility."

"You weren't caught by security?" Erik asks, head lifting a little.

"Oh, no, that was the problem," Charles says. "The guard was the one who let us in -- Mother had donated a lot of money the year before -- when his shift ended he forgot to tell the next guard we were there, and the man locked up with us inside the exhibit. We spent the night huddled together on the floor underneath the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer."

"By the time the night guard reached us in that part of the museum it was better to stay there than to leave and end up having to wander the city all night until the trains were running back out to Westchester, so Charles made him not notice us when he came by later," Raven says. "Better to be out all night and claim we were at a sleepover than have Kurt catch us sneaking in in the wee hours."

Erik smiles, a small expression but there nonetheless. "I know people who would be jealous of that. I don't know if you've read _From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler._ "

Charles smiles back, relieved. "Yes. And I can assure you that museums are much less comfortable to sleep in than the book would have you believe."

"To answer your earlier question," Raven says suddenly, gaining both their attention, "I can do voices if I've heard them, people if I've seen them, but the mannerisms only if I've seen them directly." She ripples and changes into a perfect copy of Scarlett Johanssen, tossing her newly-blonde hair over her shoulder. "See?"

It’s typical Raven, changing the subject as soon as Erik re-engaged; she has no patience at all, and so Charles prods her in the side and says, "What's wrong, were we not paying you enough attention?", his mouth curling up at the corners despite himself.

"No," Raven says, and laughs, grabbing his finger and pinning his hand to the back of the couch. "Now do your duty as my brother and adore me and laugh at everything I say."

"I forgot the tea," Erik says abruptly. He gets to his feet so quickly he accidentally knocks his book to the floor; he has to pause to pick it up and set it on the table. "Excuse me." He vanishes out of the room without waiting for a reply, quick footsteps retreating down the hall toward the kitchen.

Oh dear. Charles sighs and tugs his hand gently free from Raven's grip, getting to his feet. "Damn. Okay. I’ll be back soon, just give me a minute to go check on him."

"Sure," Raven says, shifting back to herself again. Her real face looks concerned, brows drawn together to form a dark wrinkle on her forehead. "Charles, he seems really jumpy. Is everything okay?"

Charles can feel Erik worrying in the kitchen, and he wants to go to him, but he needs to assuage Raven first; it’s difficult to balance the two, makes him feel impatient, almost unnerved. "It's fine, Raven. Erik isn't very good with Dominants, and you're the first person I've brought here since he moved in. He's just not used to other people being around in this space, that’s all."

"Hmm." Raven lowers her feet to the floor, her frown not lifting. "Are you sure that's all it is? I mean, you've not told me much, but I can put two and two together and make Hellfire Club trauma baby -- everyone knows you’re covering the case just from the nightly news, and everyone knows they had a kid, so, well -- it’s not rocket science, Charles. I know you love making a pet of every tiny wounded animal you can find, but he comes from serious bad news. I have to admit that it worries me."

If Raven felt less concerned Charles might snap at her, the urge to defend Erik flaring up inside him like a lit match -- but he can feel her worrying, her careful control of the emotion doing nothing to hide it from a telepath. And so he sighs and says,

"Erik is a deeply wounded young man, that's true," lowering his voice to make sure it doesn't carry, "but he's an intrinsically good person and he's settled in really well. He's just uncomfortable because you're a Domme and he feels he should be submitting more. And because he's not used to affection between other people. So let me go talk to him and we'll be back in a minute, okay?"

Raven pauses long enough that Charles almost starts shifting from foot to foot with the urge to go to the kitchen, but then she finally nods, sitting back on the couch and letting her chin dip a little, conceding. "Okay."

“Thank you,” Charles says, and breaks away to head after Erik, finding him standing over the sink filling up the kettle with tap water, two empty mugs already sitting out on the counter. He doesn't look around when Charles enters, just keeps doing whatever it is he’s doing, despite a slight tremor in his hands.

"Black tea or herbal?" Erik asks, over the sound of water hitting the metal bottom of the kettle.

"Black for me, herbal for Raven," Charles says, taking a seat at the kitchen table and watching Erik take the kettle to the hob, setting it atop the burner. "Is everything okay?"

"Fine," Erik says, flipping on the gas and only barely sparing Charles a look as he crosses the kitchen to reach up into the tea cupboard, pulling down the basket of tea. The stiffness in his gait belies his words, though; his whole body is tensed up, like he expects a fight. "She's a guest. You shouldn't leave her alone."

Charles hums, settling his chin on his hand, elbow on the tabletop. Erik is a far better housekeeper than Charles will ever be; if he decides to keep presenting as submissive for the rest of his life then he'll make some lazy Dom very happy, provided they can get past all his other issues. "Raven's fine in there,” Charles says, keeping his tone neutral. “She practically lived here during college when she was avoiding her roommate."

Erik makes a soft, amused noise, suspiciously like a snort, and sprinkles chamomile petals into a tea ball to place in the bottom of Raven's mug. "All right.”

"Can I help carry anything?" Charles gestures towards the mugs.

"Yes," Erik says, and somehow even that sounds surly, which is, frankly, starting to become alarming. He turns toward Charles, sliding the empty mug across the table toward him, followed by the basket of tea. "Here's your tea."

"Do you want to talk about whatever it is that's bothering you?" Charles asks. He’s a bit taken aback -- Erik is often withdrawn, shy even, but he's rarely _sulky_ about the behaviors he feels are necessary when in the presence of a Dom.

For a second he doesn't think Erik's going to answer, but then Erik crosses his arms over his chest and turns his face away, toward the window, and it's only after a long moment that he snaps, "Here's what I don't understand. You said I shouldn't submit to her. You said that's not my place, but _you're_ submitting to her. She's your Domme -- you should be the one making her tea."

What the ... Charles blinks, opens his mouth, shuts it again. Finally he says, slowly, "Erik, Raven is my _sister_. She's not my Domme. That would be incest, at least emotionally." Just the thought is disturbing, makes him feel a little sick.

"Would it?" Erik says. The kettle's whistling on the stove but Erik doesn't move an inch. It floats over of its own accord to pour boiling water over the little metal ball of tea in Raven's mug. His mouth presses into a thin line before he speaks again. "I suppose if she's not _your_ Domme, then she's just _a_ Domme, yes? And she's Dominating you." The kettle returns to the island and the cutlery drawer is pulled open by its brass handle, a steel spoon coming to start stirring the tea, clinking violently against the ceramic mug in weird contrast to Erik's inward-curling thoughts, shoulders hunching even as the spoon attacks the tea. "So where do you get off on judging Shaw, or Frost, or Azazel, or any of them for Dominating _me?_ "

Ah. _That's_ the problem, then. Charles nods, staying in his seat while Erik stands there fuming. "Raven is my sister," he says, keeping his voice slow and calm. "It's pretty normal within a family for Dominant members to Dominate submissive family members some of the time. It doesn't mean I have to serve her, but it's a form of family bonding -- there are social and chemical benefits to familial Dom/sub dynamics."

He takes a breath, trying to decide how best to explain something that was, at best, rather shaky in his own family when he was growing up. Out of all his relatives Charles only had a healthy relationship with Raven, which is ironic, given their total lack of shared blood. "It's entirely different to a sexual or complete Dom/sub relationship,” he continues, “which is what you had with the Hellfire Club -- Raven is just asserting her Dominance in small ways that let her be reassured that we’re close enough for me to allow her to and that let me be reassured that she's there to care for me when I need her."

Most of Erik's antagonism seems to be slowly draining out. He turns away, walking across the kitchen to close the cutlery drawer even though he could have done it with his mutation. He's angry, still, but it's not focused at Charles anymore. It's become a more nebulous thing in his mind, a manifestation of a deeper frustration with the situation he's in and the contrast between what he's always been taught is true and what he's slowly coming to understand.

"Come here," Charles says, getting to his feet and spreading his arms, holding them out towards Erik. They've never really hugged before, but if Erik's feeling jealous, too, of Charles' relationship with Raven, then it can't hurt. "It's okay. You'll get there. It just takes time."

He can sense that Erik resents that, a little, that he wants to claim he doesn't know what Charles is talking about. But there's the blunt fact that Erik can't even pretend to himself anymore that he's not considering it -- that even if he's afraid the answer may constitute betrayal, he is actively starting to question whether he's allowed to be upset about what happened to him. That all of these things Charles tells him are normal, are necessary, were denied him and replaced with something far more painful and unloving,

Maybe that's the reason he goes to Charles, circling one arm around Charles' back and tilting his brow against the top of Charles' shoulder. Erik is warm, still lean but no longer worryingly skinny. He's taller, too, than when he first came to live with Charles, the better nutrition showing itself in the coltish, almost gangling length in his limbs, promising height to come. Charles wraps his arms around Erik's back and wonders how long he'll still feel like the adult here.

"It's okay," he says again, one hand going to the back of Erik's neck and holding him there. "You're all right. And I'm all right. Raven loves me and she's not going to do anything to hurt me. She's not going to hurt you either, okay?"

"I know that," Erik says, defensively, but he doesn't pull away either, wrapping his other arm around Charles' body and splaying long fingers against Charles' spine. He lets Charles hold him there longer than Charles had expected, pulling away only after Charles starts to wonder if he ever will, their slow breaths moving in synchrony.

When they go back out into the living room Raven is playing a game on her phone, her heels propped up on the coffee table. She looks up at them as they enter, eyes meeting Charles' for a moment, examining his face, his expression. He can hear her analyzing it, reading the tiny cues he doesn't even realize are there himself, and when she finds what she's looking for she smiles, warm and relieved.

"Hey guys," she says, dropping her phone into her lap. "I was thinking we should go out and do something outside, since the weather's so good today. Charles can buy us ice cream."

"I can, can I?" Charles asks, raising an eyebrow, but the corners of his eyes are crinkling, amused. "Surely the one asking should be the one who treats."

"Yeah, but you're minted and I'm a starving artist. Have pity on a poor actress. I can barely afford my garret as it is."

Charles snorts. "Your two-bedroom loft garret in the Village?"

Raven nods solemnly. "Yes, that garret."

"I don't know," Charles says, turning to look at Erik beside him, who is setting the two mugs of tea down on the coffee table. "What do you think, Erik? Fancy some ice cream? My treat, apparently."

"All right," Erik says, straightening up. "Do you want me to put the tea in travel mugs?"

"Tell you what, I'll do it," Charles says, squeezing Erik's shoulder with one hand. "Why don't you go and grab your sneakers and we'll get ready to go."

It's beautiful outside, albeit rather busy in Central Park as they walk through to get to Raven's favorite ice cream parlor. Between Charles and Raven they manage to keep up a steady stream of conversation on topics that at least tangentially interest Erik, even if he doesn't contribute much. His mind is quieter now though still wary, concern spiking whenever Raven does anything casually Dominant. However even that fades when faced with the enormous sundae Charles buys for the two of them to share, Raven attacking her own knickerbocker glory with gusto before Charles has even handed Erik his long-handled spoon.

"We'd better start on this before Raven finishes hers and gets ideas," Charles says, and Erik smiles just a little, and tucks in.

*

The next Thursday Charles is sat at his desk in his work office feeling rather nervous; it's not every day he's interviewed by _The New York Post_ , after all. He'd considered doing it at home one evening rather than at work -- more privacy -- but then the risk of Erik interrupting and Charles having to explain his blog and his viewpoint more directly would be too great. It's important that Charles stay relatively neutral talking to Erik about mutant issues and the Hellfire Club, at least at the moment, so instead he's doing it here, sitting in front of his PC with the gchat window open, waiting for the reporter to arrive.

It's warm outside. People are enjoying the sunshine. Erik is at school and everything is in its place -- and yet. Charles can't help but drum his fingertips on the table, adjust his posture, bite his lip. What if he says something stupid? Or offensive? Or, worse, gets found out?

He's on the verge of getting up to go and make a cup of tea when the chat window _pings_.

> **michaelgoldstein:** Hello, this is Michael from the NYP. 

Oh. Right. No time for tea, then. Charles settles on the edge of his chair and types back.

> **Cerebro:** Good morning.
> 
> **michaelgoldstein:** Good morning to you, too! Thank you for meeting with me.
> 
> **Cerebro:** The pleasure is all mine. I have around forty-five minutes before I have to get to an appointment - will that be enough time?
> 
> **michaelgoldstein:** Not a problem. If you're ready then we can go ahead and get started.
> 
> **Cerebro:** Of course. Fire away.

Shaking out his hands to try and rid them of the shakes Charles takes a breath, then lets it out slowly, very glad that nobody can see him this freaked out about a damn _instant messenger_ conversation.

> **michaelgoldstein:** Six prominent members of the Hellfire Club - including Sebastian Shaw, their likely leader - were captured in a raid in New York this past January. They've recently been arraigned in front of the International Criminal Court for charges under the Rome statute as well as a number of assault-related charges. There's quite a bit of controversy about this right now, particularly among the mutant community. What can you tell me about the existing points of view?
> 
> **Cerebro:** Well, I think it's fairly widely known that there are two main 'camps', if you will, among mutant activists. Integrationists, who see us as members of the same race as non-mutants, who think we should be a part of existing society and all pull together. And separatists, who see mutants as an entirely separate species and think that we should form our own segregated society, looking down on non-mutants as being 'less evolved'.
> 
> **Cerebro:** Most mutants fall somewhere between these two points of view. It's not black-and-white but a spectrum. The HC are not only separatists but they do unspeakable acts of tremendous violence and try to justify these acts as being 'for mutants'.
> 
> **Cerebro:** The vast majority of mutants, much like the vast majority of any group with an extremist faction, want nothing to do with this. We have non-mutant friends, families, coworkers. We live in this society and don't want to tear it down -- or no more than any other citizen. We may want to affect change in our country for a variety of reasons but not because we think non-mutants are inherently bad, and we certainly don't want to do so violently.
> 
> **michaelgoldstein:** And what is the position that you advocate in your blog, Cerebro?
> 
> **Cerebro:** There are things that are difficult about being a mutant in modern American society. As a telepath I often have to deal with people rejecting my abilities, who judge me because of them and automatically believe that I will invade their privacy -- I’ve talked before on my blog about many similar cases, for instance of pyrokinetic mutants being refused work on the grounds of company insurance not covering their presence on the premises.
> 
> **Cerebro:** But we have to learn to live together in the world we're in, not burn it to the ground, salt the earth and then expect something new to grow. Killing people does not make them think better of mutants. Destroying buildings does not make parents support their mutant children more, or improve mutant support services. All it does is make people afraid and more likely to judge and attack other mutants. Less likely to provide vital services that help young mutants get through their manifestations safely and in a supportive environment.
> 
> **Cerebro:** Personally, I think the stated purpose of the Hellfire Club is bullshit, if you'll excuse my french. They just enjoy killing, and 'mutant rights' are a convenient excuse.
> 
> **michaelgoldstein:** Our current integrationist government, however, has been criticized for perceived lack of progress on mutant issues. Mutant high school graduation rates are down from 81% to 62% since desegregation, and anti-mutant sentiment is on the rise. What does this say about the future of integration? What should we be doing to fix this problem?
> 
> **Cerebro:** Well, in the first place, stopping groups like the HC from causing said anti-mutant sentiment and from spreading their poisonous message through our mutant communities. Is it surprising that people don't like mutants when mutants go so far out of their way to kill thousands of people simply to make a statement?
> 
> **Cerebro:** Secondly, we need more funding to go into those support systems I mentioned to make them really functional, something that can help not just a few but every mutant to understand and control their mutation. Thirdly, more mutant voices in the halls of power, working in the mutant centers, working in schools. It's all very well being told your mutation is a part of you, but if it's a debilitating or disfiguring mutation, being told that by a non-mutant who has never faced that kind of prejudice is like pouring oil on a fire.
> 
> **michaelgoldstein** You write a lot on your blog about how your own mutation, telepathy, has impacted your life. Can you tell me some about that?

Charles pauses, hands hovering over the keyboard. He'd almost forgotten that this is an interview, but the personal question is like a pinch to the ear, startling and sharp. It's not as if he doesn't skirt this line normally, telling things about himself without giving any identifying information, but it's different, saying it to someone who'll write about it and around it somewhere Charles has no control. When he starts his answer his fingers are much slower on the keyboard now, thinking through each word before he commits to it.

> **Cerebro:** People often think of telepathy as a fix for all issues of communication, as something that makes your life much easier -- you always know what people mean, what they really think, what to do and what to say and how to get your way. People think you're always listening, that you pry into their secrets and judge them for it. But it's not really like that. For one thing, most thoughts are boring -- can you imagine knowing what everyone in your office is eating for dinner that night, let alone caring?
> 
> **Cerebro:** For another, living in NYC, there are so many people that it just becomes white noise, unless you're concentrating. So really it’s not like that at all. Not to mention, imagine what it's like to really hear everything everyone thinks about you. Every mean thought, every criticism, every time someone is bored of you. Every time someone is scared of you, and you can feel that. It's not a 'cushy' mutation.
> 
> **michaelgoldstein:** How do you think your life would have been different, if some of the support systems for mutants that you've spoken of today, and which you've advocated in your blog, had been in place while you were growing up?
> 
> **Cerebro:** I wouldn't have had to work out how to cope on my own, for one. How to live, what to do and what not to do -- the ethics of telepathy, I suppose you might say. I would have had other mutants to talk to and vent to during the difficult times when all I wanted was to be 'normal'. It doesn't surprise me at all that mutants aged 14-21 are one of the highest risk categories for suicide and attempted suicide. When everything is telling you you're abnormal, when you’re falling through floors or setting fire to your bedclothes or growing horns and nobody can help you gain control, it sometimes feels like you will never be okay. But that's not true. You can be okay. It's just difficult to do that on your own.

Charles doesn't realize how sharp his breathing has become until he stops typing. He leans back in his chair and just ... makes himself slow, steady out, fingers tight and tense as he forces calm upon himself. He can be okay. He can be in control.

When he is, he looks at the screen again to see Michael's next message.

> **michaelgoldstein:** A recent study published in PLoS ONE has also shown that there are higher rates of major depressive disorder and suicidal ideation among young mutants self-identifying as 'separatists' than in those who identify as 'integrationists.' It's been suggested that this is because the separatist mindset leads youth to think of themselves as increasingly isolated and alone, whereas integrationists feel able to rely both on their mutant and non-mutant peers. However, it's notable that those who claimed to have no opinion had the lowest mental illness rates of all. How do you think politics influence young mutants' self-concepts today?
> 
> **Cerebro:** I think this is a classic chicken-and-egg question, actually. Do these young mutants become separatists then become depressed and suicidal? Or do they become separatists because they are already depressed, and don't have the support system in place to believe integrationism can lead to a happy outcome?
> 
> **Cerebro:** I think the media and politics has a huge effect on young people of all creeds, genders, orientations and mutation-statuses. If every time you turn on the television you see another negative story about mutants, you will absorb that and either feel rejected, defiant or both. It certainly won't help either viewpoint. Those who don't feel strongly one way or the other most likely are those who are least affected by the media and thus don't have the same message thrust upon them all the time that they are part of a dangerous, ill-tolerated group of people through no choice of their own.
> 
> **michaelgoldstein:** Thank you very much, Mr Cerebro. I know you were running on a tight schedule, so we can wrap up for now. I appreciate your candor in answering my questions! I'll forward you a copy of the article for your approval before publication.
> 
> **Cerebro:** Thank you for your time as well, and I will be interested to see the article when it's ready. If you have any follow-up questions please feel free to email me at this address and I'll be happy to help.

They make the requisite pleasantries before Michael logs off, and Charles closes the chat window with a sharp exhalation of relief, sitting back in his chair and thinking through his answers, making sure he hasn't said anything he'll later wish he hadn't. For the moment he can't think of anything.

He wonders what Erik would think of the article, what Raven will when he tells her. In any case it's done with now. All he can do is wait and see.

*

_Erik_

On Sunday Charles is out of the house, doing something with Raven. Erik entertains himself for a while finishing his book. It's the kind of book that leaves him thinking about it for hours after he turns the last page, his mind still spinning through the implications of the open conclusion even while he's fixing himself breakfast and pottering around the house, doing his and Charles' laundry. After a while, though, the place is as clean as it's going to get, all the rugs vacuumed and the silver polished.

Probably, he suspects, he should finish the last page of his English essay due tomorrow, but when he opens his laptop and settles in on the couch he finds himself checking reddit instead, scrolling through /r/worldnews until his mounting frustration with the state of everything makes him click away.

> **Maddie:** you should really get a facebook
> 
> **Maddie:** everyone has one and there are loads of things people only invite you to through facebook
> 
> **Maddie:** plus you can do photos and be nosy about other people's shitty days

She's been trying to talk him into it for a while. Erik hadn't understood the point, really, but he's starting to wonder if maybe this is how he would find the rest of the Hellfire Club -- if Aquilla or de la Rocha has one and would search for him, send him a message. He clicks into his URL bar and types in facebook.com, letting it carry him to the registration page.

> **Erik:** All right. I don't have any pictures of myself, though.
> 
> **Maddie:** ooh I do! I took some at my house the other week when we got drunk so they're a bit blurry tho

He types in his basic information, hesitating only a half-second before choosing the option "-1S" for his DS score and clicking 'Register.'

> **Erik:** That sounds dire.
> 
> **Maddie:** it's fine you just look happy they're nice
> 
> _Maddie has sent you a file: photo1.jpg_
> 
> _Maddie has sent you a file: photo2.jpg_
> 
> _Maddie has sent you a file: photo3.jpg_

 

Erik opens them up when they've finished downloading. The first is of him and Madelyne, her arm outstretched to take the picture, both of them smiling. Erik stares at it for a long while; he's never seen a photo of himself. They took his picture from all angles when he was arrested by the CIA, and photos of his body during the medical exam, but he hasn't seen them and doesn't particularly want to. This one, though.... Madelyne is flush-cheeked, her red hair perfect despite how drunk they'd both been, and Erik's grinning so widely he can count nearly all his teeth. He looks -- he looks all right, he decides, faintly surprised.

The second is of just-him, examining the books on the shelf in Madelyne's father's study, frowning, his brow furrowed. He hadn't realized she'd taken a photo at all. He doesn't look like how he remembers, somehow. He's taller. Not as thin. He almost doesn't recognize himself in the angles of his features, the utterly absorbed expression on his face.

The third photo nearly makes him choke on his coffee. He'd forgotten she was still taking pictures when Charles showed up to bring him home. Erik was too drunk to walk straight, and Charles had to hitch him up onto his back and carry him out to the taxi, Erik laughing the whole time.

> **Erik:** Wow. That third one.
> 
> **Maddie:** mr xavier is such a dilf. I didn't even take that picture for you its totally for me
> 
> **Erik:** A dilf?
> 
> **Maddie:** Dad I'd Like to Fuck

Charming.

> **Erik:** You know he's a sub.
> 
> **Maddie:** a girl can windowshop can't she?
> 
> **Erik:** He's so old, though.
> 
> **Maddie:** he's like twenty-seven he's not that old i mean he must have had you at like age 13 so ...
> 
> **Erik:** If you say so.

He's finished up with the basics of his Facebook profile now, and immediately goes to search for Madelyne's account, then Charles', clicking to request to add them both. He doesn't bother searching for any of their classmates. He figures this is enough, and if anyone adds him he'll accept.

Searching for all the members of the Hellfire Club doesn't turn up anything useful. He finds a few accounts named 'Sebastian Shaw' and 'Emma Frost,' but none of them seem legitimate -- just people playing around. There are plenty of groups with names like '1,000,000 MUTANTS AGAINST THE HELLFIRE CLUB' and 'Like if you think Sebastian Shaw should get the death penalty.' Nothing at all shows up when he looks for some of the lesser-known members, like Harry Leland and Elias Bogan.

He tells Madelyne he'll be right back and shuts off Chrome, pulling up Tor instead. Already his heart is beating a little faster, just waiting for the Purgatory homepage to load. When it does, a dialogue box immediately pops up:

_You have one (1) unread private message._

Erik sets his coffee down quickly on the side table, feeling strangely on-edge, like his blood is heating up inside his veins. He clicks through to his inbox.

> **swineherd - The Kid**
> 
> You're right about The Kid, jsyk. IDK if you have real intel or if you're just guessing, but they definitely got him too. I have some sources of my own that confirmed it. My thought is, if they're not saying they have him, must be a reason, right? Maybe he's working with them, maybe they killed him in the raid, maybe they don't want anyone finding him. But they definitely did. Do you have any real information to share with another interested party or is that it? If you do have anything legit then you'd have an interested audience in me (I, for one, can spell my own damn name, and unlike those posers in the chatroom actually do something about the cause instead of hanging around comparing DS scores).

Erik sits back, barely breathing. While it could be someone with the human government trying to suss out how much these internet people really know, that risk is limited. Especially compared to the potential gain. If this swineherd person has sources, those sources might have connections back to Hellfire. But how can Erik convey that he is here, that he wants to return, without giving away his identity in the process?

> **Magneto - re: The Kid**
> 
> I have a contact in Hellfire. She confirmed that L was arrested along with the others. He's a minor, which would explain the limited promotion of his arrest in the media. They never had his face on the news before the raid, either. Possibly he's in the juvenile system or they're trying some kind of rehabilitation. Who are your sources?

He hits send. His hope is that, by using his initial, he'll prompt swineherd into showing just how much he really knows. If he knows enough, for example, to use Erik's real name when speaking with someone who appears to know it himself.

It's a gamble, though. He's not saying anything that swineherd hasn't said himself, but this could all be taken the wrong way. He could find himself under suspicion for collaboration with the humans and end up getting taken out on his way to school one day. It's a risk he's willing to take. They must know he's loyal.

He waits five minutes, half-hoping swineherd is online and will reply immediately. When nothing happens, though, he makes himself click back to the message boards, directing to the Hellfire Club subforum.

The top active thread is "WHICH HELLFIRE BABE HAS THE BEST TITS." Erik scrolls past that one quickly, down to "BEST TARGETS FOR A SCALED ATTACK?" and "PROTEST THE HELLFIRE CLUB ARRESTS!" He checks the second, almost hopeful, wondering if there will be something he can actually attend, here in New York, but the suggestions are mostly West Coast or European.

His interest catches on "JOINING THE HELLFIRE CLUB?" As fucked up as it is to think about having to be recruited, considering he's lived with the Hellfire Club for as long as he can possibly remember, Erik finds himself opening the thread anyway, reaching for his lukewarm coffee while it loads and double-checking the time to make sure Charles isn't on his way back yet.

 **sigmasosuckit:** 10 ways to raise your chances of getting the nod:

  1. Be psi level or above: if you're just green-colored then you won't cut it
  2. Have a useful mutation: like, if you're psi but your mutation is making big things change color then frankly who gives a shit
  3. Be a Dom: subs need not apply, get back in the kitchen
  4. Use your mutation publicly so people know you have it: duh if they don't know you're a powerful badass they ain't gonna call you
  5. Hate humans: if you're a piglover then they won't want to know will they?
  6. Live in a big city: they ain't gonna find you in the middle of Alaska dumbfuck
  7. Don't hit on Frost: seriously she doesn't want your dick/strap-on. plus she's a Domme, faggot, go wank to a sub like a proper mutie.
  8. Be good-looking: in basically every career hot people get hired first so it can't hurt
  9. Commit a crime: they don't want goody-two-shoes they want rebels so don't pay your parking fines and go blow somebody up
  10. Wear clean underwear: if they turn up to recruit you and you're in your y-fronts they're not gonna hire you dumbfuck



Well. Erik re-reads the list again, figuring it's actually not bad, considering none of these people actually know much at all about Hellfire or how it operates. There are some obviously incorrect facts -- like Erik is a sub, for example, and as far as the first one goes, Erik himself is, at Psi-level, the most powerful mutant in the Hellfire Club. He may even be omega now, like Charles; he hasn't been tested recently. Shaw himself is only Sigma.

Wearing clean underwear, though? Probably good life advice in general.

But, Erik thinks, maybe sigmasosuckit has a point. Since coming to live with Charles he hasn't done anything particularly notable. He's used his mutation as readily as he always does, but not for the purpose of grabbing attention, or committing a crime. That's how they recruited Quested, after all. Erik and Shaw went together, just the two of them with Azazel, after hearing about the mutant who used tornadoes to kill hundreds attending an anti-mutant rally. They broke him out of a jail in Buenos Aires.

He could go out right now, if he wanted, and tip over the Empire State Building like the first in a line of dominoes. He could level half the city. Surrounded by so much steel, he'd barely break a sweat. He could escape arrest if he tried, go underground somewhere and set up a broadcast. Or maybe let himself be taken in, and wait for rescue. He could get those suppressor bands off eventually; he knows that from experience.

It's what he _should_ do. And yet Erik doesn't get off the sofa. He just sits there, hands on his keyboard, stomach roiling like he's on board a ship.

For Erik, so much death and destruction has always been -- purposeful. If it weren't for Shaw's orders he would kill as little as possible, just do what was necessary to be sure the mutant voice had been heard, the deaths limited to targeted assassinations and collateral damage. This would kill millions, and to what end? So Erik could go back to his old life? So he could just ... leave?

It shouldn't be Charles that keeps Erik here, but he can't help thinking of him all the same, imagining the strange void that would take Charles' place if Erik were gone. And now that he's seen how Charles can get sometimes ( _curled up under the desk, screaming_ ) he flinches back from thinking about just leaving him to it. About Charles, alone in this huge place.

Ping.

_You have one (1) unread private message._

> **swineherd - Re:re: The Kid**
> 
> Without knowing more about you I can't give specifics -- you might be a Fed -- but I have a friend of the cause in the justice system, and I'm a pretty good hacker myself. So my sources are right at the wellspring, so to speak. The sexual assault charges are legit too, btw. Unpleasant but I'm sure Shaw has his reasons and tbh does it matter in the grand scheme of things given the state of the world vs mutants if one sub kid has sex with Shaw and the other HC members? The humans always make out like it's a big deal when frankly the way they oppress us should be a bigger deal than Lehnsherr's asshole. Thoughts?

Erik realizes very belatedly that all the lamps in the room are floating ominously above their seats. He carefully lowers them down again, plugging them back in where necessary.

> **Magneto - Re:re:re: The Kid**
> 
> I understand. Is there anything I can do to reassure you without compromising my identity? I agree the auxiliary charges are irrelevant. But I'm sure that's all the media will focus on. They love a good sob story. Pathetic -- the real crime here is the rape of mutant liberties.

Send.

He knows what Charles would say -- that it's all important, that they 'raped' him, and that that only proves what kinds of people the Hellfire Club really are. Charles doesn't understand, of course -- how can he understand that yes, Shaw hurt him sometimes, but Shaw also showed him the greatest kindness Erik's ever seen. And Erik, in turn, allowed him to do as he liked. It isn't so black and white as people like Charles would choose to believe.

Besides, swineherd's right. _Erik's_ right. Who gives a fuck about any of that? Erik should only care that freedom fighters are in jail, and mutants have not yet been lifted to their rightful place above humanity. He _shouldn't care_ about _any_ of this.

And for someone who shouldn't care, he's been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about it.

He closes out Tor and pulls Chrome back up instead, trying to push aside his lingering sense of uneasiness. Madelyne and Charles have both already accepted his Facebook friend request and he's got several requests of his own, now, from most of his classmates. He clicks over to Charles' page, out of curiosity, and finds it mostly full of notes from Raven and a few from a strange and varied range of people he can only assume are Charles' patients, because there's nothing else to unite them. The photos are for the most part out of date, older ones from Charles' college days.

Charles looks happy in almost all of them, and much younger, maybe not much older than Erik himself -- how old was he when he went to college? Erik decides to make it his business to get a few decent photos of Charles on his phone, _recent_ ones, to post on Facebook. No adult man should so openly admit his best years were his teenage ones.

Madelyne's sent him a few IMs in his absence, all complaints about the math homework that Erik found painfully easy. He gives her a few tips then signs off, closing his laptop and setting it down on the coffee table. He's pointedly not-thinking-about anything related to the Hellfire Club, or the trial, but for the rest of the morning he's left with an uneasy nausea crawling through the pit of his stomach, one that doesn't improve when he eats lunch or with a few cups of ginger tea. Now more than ever he feels very, very far from where he's supposed to be.

*

Charles is sitting in his study chair with a plain brown folder sitting in his lap, legs crossed and hands folded atop them. Erik tries to look him in the eye but for the entire session his gaze has kept sliding down, drawn as if by magnetism itself, until it's obvious he's only maintaining his concentration in bits and jolts. Charles' fingers flex, pause, flex again, like he's trying to decide whether to do something, and then he says,

"Erik, I have something I want to show you. I only received this information yesterday, and I suspect it will be upsetting, but I think you need to know. However, probably a foolish offer but if you say now that you don't think you can handle it, I'll put this away until you feel more capable." His expression is solemn, no trace of his usual calming smile. "What do you think?"

"I want to see it," Erik says immediately. Would anyone ever say differently? Even knowing something might be upsetting? It seems worse to put it off and wonder, and let his imagination wind itself up, invent thousands of increasingly unlikely and terrible scenarios.

He holds out his hand for Charles to pass him the folder, and for a moment he thinks Charles might even refuse -- his lips purse, brow tightening, but then Charles places the folder into Erik's waiting hand. "I'm going to stay right here while you read," he says, "and when you're done we can talk about it. Okay?"

Erik lifts one eyebrow, and the sense of anticipation rising in his chest isn't entirely negative -- as much excitement as it is dread, wondering what could possibly be so bad that Charles would react like this. He flips open the cover of the folder and finds a print-out in German, labeled _Initiative Vermisste Kinder_ \-- the Initiative for Missing Children. There's a color photograph of a male toddler, maybe one or two years old, auburn-haired and grey-eyed with his face set in an oddly serious expression. Even after he sees the caption -- _Erik M. Lehnsherr, age 19 months, missing 15-Dec-2003, DOB 09-May-2002_ \-- he still doesn't quite realize it's himself.

> **Parents:** Jakob Lehnsherr (32) & Edeline "Edie" Epstein-Lehnsherr (27), both dead on scene
> 
> **Hometown:** Düsseldorf
> 
> **Citizenship:** German
> 
> **Sex:** Male
> 
> **Race:** White
> 
> **DS Score:** 7D 
> 
> Last seen being put into car seat by parents Jakob & Edeline Lehnsherr, both on their way to a Chanukah party. Motor vehicle accident on Corneliusstraße in Bilk, Düsseldorf killed both parents; child's carseat found empty, child's body not found on scene, presumed dead or abducted.

He turns to the next page. This one is Interpol and thus is written in French, a submission to EU authorities, expanding the scope of the Amber Alert for Erik Lehnsherr, now missing for 6 months, possible child abduction.

The third and final page is on CIA/Department of Homeland Security letterhead. English.

> Erik Lehnsherr reports his mutation saved him from fatal car accident that killed his parents, says he was told by S. Shaw that S. Shaw found Lehnsherr on the side of the road and brought him to safety, raising him as member of H.C.
> 
> A review of the police report of the motor vehicle accident in question revealed witness claims that crash occurred because Lehnsherr vehicle swerved to avoid hitting unidentified male standing in road; conflicting reports suggest Lehnsherr vehicle did in fact hit unidentified male standing in road. The unidentified male was not available for questioning at the scene, nor was any body found matching his description ("tall, brn hair"). It is notable, however, that street on which this occurred, Corneliusstraße, is the busiest in the city of Düsseldorf and responsible for highest local percentage of motor vehicle crashes.
> 
> Police reports were filed by J. Lehnsherr prior to his death with the Düsseldorf metropolitan police department reporting 2 attempted break-ins to his domicile. These both occurred within 2 weeks of the fatal car accident. No theft reported, forensics found no trace of DNA, fibres, or fingerprints. This agent believes it is reasonable to suspect S. Shaw is the unidentified male from witness reports.
> 
> Altogether with S. Shaw's recorded mutation (energy absorption, superhuman strength) and the pattern of break-ins prior to E. Lehnsherr's disappearance and E. Lehnsherr's immediate 'rescue' by S. Shaw and confederates, this paints a clear picture of stalking and premeditated homicide for purposes of child abduction. E. Lehnsherr had previously been noted by local medical professionals to be showing signs of early mutation, which is often associated with greater strength in adulthood than children who manifest at a later developmental stage.

Erik reads it three times, and each time he feels more and more divorced from the words on the page. It's as if he's reading about a total stranger -- he feels nothing, and yet he can't swallow past the hard thing swollen in his throat and his hands feel weak as he turns back to the first page in the folder, looking down at a picture of his own face, imagining the people who took that picture -- Jakob and Edie Lehnsherr, his parents, who were taking him to a Chanukah party -- Christ, he's _Jewish?_

He closes his eyes, but then all he can think about is the unidentified man standing in the middle of the road, and his mind sees him and sees _Shaw_ , sees Shaw's thin smile as he holds out one hand and catches the speeding car. He wonders if Jakob and Edie would have died on impact, if the force of something moving at 65, 70 miles per hour coming to a sudden _halt_ would be enough to slam their brains against their skulls so hard that they just ... stopped existing. Or if they would die later, lying in their car in their own blood, airbags like pillows, as their hearts slowed and then stopped. If maybe they would have survived, if not for a gentle _tap_ of a finger to the backs of their heads.

He keeps swallowing against the way his throat's convulsing, a feeling like he's gagging even though he's too numb to throw up. He passes the folder silently back to Charles and feels like he's looking at him through window glass, seeing him perfectly clearly but feeling separate from him at the same time, like they aren't quite on the same plane of existence.

Charles puts the folder on his desk, carefully squaring it with the corner until it's perfectly flush. "I'm very sorry, Erik." His voice is soft. His eyes are very kind, glittering a little -- and Erik realizes Charles' eyes are wet with emotion, though it's impossible to say if this is from Charles' own feelings or, perhaps, Erik's. "Nothing is certain, of course, but it does seem ... likely."

"Don't say that." It comes out strange and scratchy, like the words were recorded long ago and are being played, now, for the hundred thousandth time. "You don't know that. There's no way to know that."

It's all -- _conjecture_ , it's a theory, there's no _proof_ \-- just circumstance, a few human swine saw a man in the road, who fucking cares, probably no one, probably a hobo, or a figment of their imaginations. Shaw wouldn't. He'd wait until Erik was older, to be sure -- what good is a child, anyway?

"Except," says Charles, "that you had already tested 7D. If Shaw wanted to Dominate you, change you, he would need to start young."

"No," Erik says, and he doesn't know how he got on his feet but he's there, now, standing, something hot and anxious rattling up his whole body. "There's no reason -- I showed my mutation young, but that's no guarantee I'd end up strong, he couldn't _know_ I'd eventually be omega-class -- "

Charles is still sitting, looking up at Erik, so non-reactionary it's unnerving. "Of course not," he says, finger touching the folder again almost compulsively. "Nothing is certain, Erik, of course it can't be without Shaw being questioned by a telepath on the subject. But -- it's well-known he disapproves of mutant children in non-mutant families, and that he has a distinct interest in eugenics and social engineering."

"Stop it." His head hurts, it's pounding like he's getting a migraine, the way he does when he uses his mutation for a long time, or for something difficult, something molecular. He lifts his hands and presses his fingers to his temples, pacing in Charles' tiny study, trying to block out the sound of his own footsteps and the way his sense of all the metal around him is starting to make him feel ... sick. "I need to think."

It can't be true. It _might_ be true -- they can't know, there's no proof, not unless --

They'd know. The rest of Hellfire would know. And he knows how to find them, now, can get their attention if he wants to.

"I need to go," he says, suddenly going still, hand grasping the door frame and leaving a damp mark behind; he's sweating. "I have to go -- "

 _I'm sorry_ is on the tip of his tongue but he swallows it down and turns on his heel, tearing out of the study before Charles is even up from his chair. He can hear Charles calling out after him but not the words, and when Charles' mind tries to brush up against his own Erik pushes back as hard as he can, and when that doesn't work he thinks about all the nastiest things he's ever seen, anything he thinks would repel Charles so viscerally he'd be forced to withdraw: the sight of one, two, four bodies dropping as Erik pulled triggers, shot them and sent the bullets straight through their skulls -- the coldness of bodies on the ground around their feet after they destroyed the Flatiron Building, Shaw's laughter as he ruffled Erik's hair and they waited there amidst a field of corpses for the first responders to show up so they could kill them, too -- the way blood felt hot and sticky on Erik's skin the first time he actually got his hands wet with the stuff -- Erik running up to a man on the street and grasping his wrist, distracting him with a child's big eyes and a frightened expression just long enough to send the metal ring on his sub's collar straight through his throat, the way he gasped and choked on the ground after and didn't die, so Erik had to turn his wedding ring into a makeshift bullet and send it careening through his skull and wet brain-stuff point blank. The blankness in the man's eyes, at the end.

Charles' mindtouch snaps back as if it's been cut, and Erik can't hear him any more, either. He's stopped calling for Erik, but just in case, just for good measure, Erik remembers in as explicit detail as he can how it felt to be held down and fucked until he was screaming and begging for it to stop, when he was so young every time still felt like he was being torn in half.

The elevator's waiting for him when he gets out into the hall, and Erik sends it down, scraping it past all the other floors that have pressed the call button, down down down, past the ground floor and to the underground garage where the valets park the cars.

He's not thinking, at this point, about anything -- he's reduced to a heartbeat and the fuel of anger, hurt, desperation. There's a black Lamborghini Huracan parked near the lifts -- it beeps a furious alarm when Erik forcibly unlocks the door with his power but once he's turned on the ignition it goes silent at once, like a smothered child.

The leather seats are set for an adult man. Erik adjusts them impatiently, pulling the steering wheel down and then pressing his toe to the gas. It takes off with a rigid series of jerks before Erik gets the vehicle, gets his power, under better control. He hits 60 mph in three seconds and Erik grits his teeth, turns his face away from the valet who's abandoned his post and is running after him, waving his arms.

The car hurtles out into the street far too fast, Erik yanks at the chassis even as he's turning the wheel to drag it into the right lane, and he smells rubber burning as the tires squeal along the pavement. _Fuck_ , he thinks, and pounds the brake, restraining himself to ten over the speed limit as he turns the next corner and merges into the sea of cars heading downtown.

This isn't how Erik thought his first experience in a car would go. Or maybe it's exactly how it would have gone, if he'd stayed with the Hellfire Club. Maybe he'd be the one driving the decoy car through the streets of Prague, trailed by the entire police force while the others destroy half the city behind their backs. It's almost physically painful, going this slowly, and his heart's beating so loudly in his ears that it's not until he's turning onto the Brooklyn Bridge that he realizes the radio's on, playing the classical station. It's Mahler's Symphony no. 5 in C-sharp minor: Etwas ruhiger. Well, at least the owner of this car has good taste, Erik thinks, and leaves it on.

He figures out where he's heading when he recognizes the pattern in the turns he's making. He knows this neighborhood. Knows that coffee shop, this grocery store. Knows the man who owns that bookshop. If he finds anyone Hellfire, it'll be here, watching, waiting to see what the CIA wants, to mark their movements even as the CIA tries to mark them.

_How to Join the Hellfire Club, Tip No. 9: Commit a crime._

Erik picks up speed, heads two streets, three streets past his destination and makes a hard right. The alley ends in a brick wall.

His breath comes in little hitches and gasps, barely enough oxygen to keep him awake -- already he's dizzy, the world spinning. He sees Shaw again, standing there, arm outstretched, waiting.

If the story's true, he thinks, I'll live. My mutation will save me. I'll hit that wall at a hundred miles per hour and I'll miraculously survive, cradled gently in a metal embrace. If not, well. If not, I guess I won't be around to give a fuck, will I?

He drags the shift into gear and reverses back, pressing the pedal down until he's got enough room to go as fast as he can possibly go, to hit the wall so hard he'll leave his car the size of a matchbox, crash fast enough that if he were human he'd have his skull split open like a melon. He catches a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror and he's grinning, wide and manic, so hard his cheeks hurt, the expression in stark contrast to the veins visible in his temples and the gleam in his eyes.

Fuck it, Lehnsherr. Do it. Get it over with.

**Erik, don't -- _don't --_**

He hits the gas.

The car launches forward and in five seconds he's already at a hundred miles per hour, a hundred twenty, the brick wall looming up fast and huge, his pulse pattering against his sternum and his veins gone to ice. The steel chassis of the car is shuddering and alive all around him -- he can't stop now, he's going to hit, going to crash, going to _die_. The terrible certainty of that fact hits him all at once and he sucks in a deep breath, foot pressing down as hard as he can -- the wall is all he can see and he shuts his eyes, gives himself over to the black --

_**ERIK!** _

The car hits the wall with the loudest sound Erik's ever heard, a horrific crash of metal on brick. He can taste steel in his mouth, the smell of smoke acrid in the air. Only Erik's still moving, his body shooting up toward the sky, decelerating very slowly -- he can hear the thrum of electromagnetism, so thick around him it's almost like a blanket. Almost giddily, it occurs to him: _my mutation’s physics doesn't want to give me whiplash._

His body comes to a slow stop and then drops back down to earth. This time, Erik has to consciously scrabble for control, repelling himself against the geomagnetic field just in time to moderate his descent, landing lightly on his feet three meters back from the smoking wreck of the stranger's Lamborghini.

"Fuck," he gasps, reaching up to cup the back of his neck and wincing at the ache when he tries to turn his head. Obviously his mutation didn't kick in quite soon enough to decelerate _sufficiently_. When he changed directions to head up he still managed to strain the tendons in his neck and upper back, and now the pain flares up whenever he moves the wrong way. If Charles was in his head -- if Erik hadn't just imagined it -- he's gone now, no trace of him in the periphery of his mind. He's alone.

Well, Erik thinks dazedly, staring at the metal twisted and contorted on the ground, the roof of the car entirely torn off like the lid of a soup can, crumpled some ways away. I survived.

He takes a few unsteady steps back, feeling woozy, and nearly trips over a glass bottle lying in the road, stumbling to catch himself on the wall.

Is this what happened when he was a child, then? The car crashed, for whatever reason, and Erik's mutation realized the inevitable just quickly enough to rip off the roof of the car and float him overhead, bringing him to a halt at non-fatal speeds. And that's where Shaw found him. Erik doesn't remember that far back in his life but it's not hard to imagine sitting in the grass on the side of some road and seeing knees bend in front of him, Shaw's unaging face smiling at a crying toddler, his hands reaching under Erik's arms to lift him up onto his hip.

And that is why he did it. Erik stands there, stunned, as the truth of the matter settles into his core, sinking into him like lead. That he did survive the crash, that this part of Shaw's story was true, doesn't prove Shaw told the truth. Just the opposite. Erik had asked the question himself, what motive Shaw had to go to such lengths for a child who had no guarantee of becoming powerful, who was a 7D and thus a threat to Shaw's rule. But this ... this would be the answer to that question, for him. If he put Erik's life in danger and Erik had minimal latent ability, Erik would die. Killing a mutant would go against what Hellfire stands for, but the death of one not-very-powerful child would be an acceptable loss.

If Erik lived, though.... If Erik lived, then Shaw would have every reason to think he could grow up to be Sigma level, Psi level, even omega-class. Erik's parents would be dead, out of the picture, leaving Shaw to take Erik into his care and make him what he wanted him to be. Make him submissive. And if he was to be omega-class as well, make him sure to use that power at Shaw's command, rather than against him....

Erik feels sick, waves of nausea surging up from his gut and making his mouth taste bitter. It wasn't a rescue. It was abduction. He wasn't _saved_ by Shaw, he was taken by him. No matter if it was for a greater good, if the cause of Hellfire was -- is -- just. Erik can't help feeling ... He feels --

"Nein," he whispers, and his eyes are hot, stinging. The smoke. He lurches forward, walking like a drunken man and reaching out with both arms, ripping into what's left of the car with his power and sinking everything he has, is, into the metal until it's all but melting, the paint losing its color as heat soaks through every particle Erik can touch. He thrusts the heap of steel forward again, launching it against the wall, hearing that horrible crash again. Again. Again.

The car is unrecognizable as such when he finally lets himself stop. It's only then that he sinks down to his knees next to the bits and pieces and lets himself feel hollow, grasping at them with his power, trying to shape them back into what they were, fix what he broke. Only it doesn't work, it's useless. The non-metal interior is too damaged and the rest of it is torqued beyond recognition. It'd take forever to fix, if even he could, if even it were worth the effort. He lets the few parts of the chassis he'd been holding drop from his power's grasp and fall back into the mess below.

Erik presses the heel of one hand to his brow and drags his fingers back through his hair. He came here to find the Hellfire Club, and that's still what he's going to do. The car's wrecked, and if Hellfire's around here, watching the CIA watching for them -- if they saw, then they know he's here. If all they see is the wreckage, they'll know who did it. They'll find him, and he'll be waiting.

The Brooklyn safehouse is a few blocks away. It feels strange, walking down this sidewalk, past buildings he used to see all the time whenever they were working in New York. Most of their time was in Paris or Berlin, but New York and Moscow were tied for the second most often-used safehouses. They've used the same one for New York since as long as Erik can remember. He got stopped, once, by a police officer on this corner, when he was seven. Cop asked why he wasn't in school and Shaw made up some bullshit excuse about mononucleosis. He was always such a fantastic liar when he had to be, and he looked so charming, and wealthy, that he usually got away with it.

Erik pauses at that corner. The safehouse is two doors down, the front steps still cordoned off with yellow police tape even after all this time. Erik casts his power out, feeling for the familiar slim cylinder of a sniper's gun, but all there is is the usual metal of the city. Even so, he glances around, checking the windows and roofs and passerby. A couple with a baby stroller give him an odd look but he just smiles and, after a moment, they smile back.

He ducks under the police tape and takes the front steps two at a time, unlocking the door with his mutation but reaching to open it with his own hand, closing his fingers around the brass knob and turning, pushing. The door swings inward, revealing the empty foyer.

Going inside is like falling into a dream. Somewhere the lines between past and present, memory and reality, are faded and blurred. He pushes the door shut but it doesn't undo the strange sense he has of being watched. His gaze instantly leaps up the stairs, half-expecting to see someone standing there, waiting for him, but the landing is dark.

He goes left, his footsteps echoing off the hardwood floor. The blinds are open on all the windows, sun casting golden pools of light across the furniture. There are yellow plastic tags here and there, evidence markers that don't seem to be marking anything at all. There's one on the coffee table, and Erik has to struggle for a second to remember -- but, yes, there was a map there, left from the previous day's discussion, marked with Shaw's notes and Emma Frost's neat colored stickers. It's gone now, of course, the only thing left of it that little yellow marker declaring where it'd been.

His submissive's cushion is still there, carefully placed just to the left of Shaw's favorite armchair and labeled with marker number 18. Erik's heart skips a beat; he can still see the indentations his own knees left from kneeling there so often, now frozen in time like a fossil.

Another tide of dizziness crashes over his mind and he loses his balance, grabbing onto the end table to steady himself, making it rock back on two legs and threaten to knock a couple coasters onto the floor. God, his head hurts --

He makes his way into the kitchen. It's as if they never left. The paring knife is still on the counter next to the cutting board where Erik had forgotten to put it away the night before. When he opens the pantry the boxes of cereal are still there, tops folded shut. A bundle of bananas are black and rotten on the shelf, buzzing with fruit flies.

That feeling is back, like someone's watching him. Erik jerks around, quickly enough that it sends a spike of fresh pain down his neck and he yelps -- but no one's there. Still.

"Charles?" he says. There's no answer. A slow shudder wreaks its way down into Erik's core, and he says, ears ringing, "... Mr Shaw?"

Nothing. Of course, nothing. And yet -- and yet, even so, Erik is certain he must be here. He's never been so certain of anything in all his life. He edges along the counter toward the doorway, his pulse pounding so hard in his ears he'd be surprised if his whole body wasn't shaking from it.

He grasps the door frame and peers around the corner, and even though the sitting room is empty he jumps all the same, startled by his own expectation more than reality. "Hello?" he says again, and his voice sounds strange and thin to his own ears. "Is anyone there?"

Erik makes himself take in a breath, and then another one, forcing the air deep into his lungs. Only once he's exhaled does he step forward again, moving through the sitting room toward the hallway, until he's standing where he was before, where he was so certain someone had been watching him, staring up at the dark top of the empty stairs.

He reaches for the handrail, clenching his hand tight around the mahogany wood, legs weak and unsteady. His footsteps sound hollow on the stairs, his palm slippery on the rail, and he strains his eyes to try to see into the shadows on the landing but even when he's there, stepping onto the rug, he doesn't feel alone.

 _You're home,_ he tries telling himself, but he just feels sick to his stomach. He can't remember why he's here; it's like he's lost his anchor and is adrift on a stormy sea, drowning in salt water.

He flips the light switch and all the shadows vanish. The upstairs hall stretches out before him, all the bedroom doors shut on either side, metal knobs ringing in his awareness. He can hear voices speaking behind the doors, muffled through the wood. Can hear his own sounds. The creaking of bed springs.

They fade to silence as he walks past, until there's nothing left but the throb of his own mind. He pauses outside Mr Shaw's room, his hand on the doorknob, mouth gone dry. It's like his vision has sharpened. He can see perfectly the striations on his own fingernails, the grain of the wood door, the slight speckles on the brass knob. He swallows, and turns the knob, pushing the door open.

No one's there. It still smells like him, though. Like stale cigarette smoke and shoe shine and something-else. And for a moment Erik feels lost in time, is sharply aware of the sound of Mr Shaw's voice as if it were spoken right next to him, almost genial: _You know better than that, my boy_ and the crack of skin-on-skin, punctuated with the _snap_ of bone breaking --

Erik stumbles back, gasping for air, and his wrist is on _fire_ , hot and pulsing and the only thing he has any sense of, the pain flooding through him and he's going to faint -- only when he looks down his wrist is pale and thin and normal. There's no redness or swelling, no quick-blooming bruise. No serrated bone thrusting out through the thin flesh, white gleaming amidst the blood.

He curls his fingers around his wrist and squeezes, hard, until the skin blanches. That was forever ago -- not now, he isn't ... no one's even _here_ , he screams silently at himself. Pull yourself together.

He's in the hall again. He doesn't know how he got here, doesn't remember leaving or shutting Mr Shaw's door behind him. But he feels steadier, now that he's out of that place, even if he can't quite bury the sense that he's done something wrong, something terrible, that he's going to be punished --

Erik's room is at the end, the last door near the second bathroom. He feels like he's walking down his hall for the first time, the last time, like every step he's ever taken he is taking again, right now. He's three, he's fourteen, he's ten. He opens the door.

It's bare, now. There are little yellow markers everywhere, on his bedside table, one on his mattress, some on the floor. He nudges one with his toe and it tips over, falls.

Someone's stripped the sheets off his bed, leaving just the naked mattress exposed to the stale air. Even his books are gone, with the exception of the Russian copy of _War and Peace_ Mr Azazel gave him. He goes and picks it up, flips through the dusty pages and coughs, nose wrinkling. He sets it down again to pull open the drawer, even though he already knows it'll be empty, the lube gone, toys gone, no more whips and cuffs and dildos, and the rattan cane that used to sit next to his bed missing.

There's just a few wrappered ginger candies in the drawer now. Erik opens one up and pops it into his mouth, sucking after the sweet-spicy taste.

He doesn't like the emptiness here. He goes back to the hall and gets fresh sheets out of the linen closet, carries them in and makes the bed, tucking the pillows into pillowcases and neatly folding the topsheet down, all at perfect angles, unwrinkled. He spends a good five minutes after making sure the fabric is perfectly smooth, every ruck tugged out. In the light streaming in from the window he can see dust particles glittering in the air. He feels like he's trapped in a relic, frozen in amber.

Erik toes off his shoes and stands there in stocking feet for a long moment, just breathing, before he finally sits, his weight pressing down on the sheets and undoing all his hard work in a single instant. His head hurts again, blood thumping in his temples. He's tired. The weight of these past several months is heavy on his shoulders and he lifts his legs up onto the bed, rolling over until he's lying in the center with his head on one pillow, curled up on his side with his knees bent toward his chest.

He closes his eyes and lets his breath even out until it's coming slow and steady, until he can't feel his pulse throughout his entire body anymore. He can just stay here for a while, he decides, the scent of their old detergent filling his nostrils and making him light-headed. He can sleep here, and when he wakes up everything will be ... normal, again.

He's lost in the weighty ocean halfway to reverie when Charles comes into the room on quiet feet, the sense of his mind coming before him like a soft wave, barely rippling the water. He doesn't say anything at first, just touches Erik's shoulder and sits down on the edge of the bed behind Erik's hip, the mattress dipping with his weight.

"I can see I'll have to buy Mr Brendanowicz a new Lamborghini," Charles says, and even his voice is quiet. "It's very thoroughly dead. Good job on that. I don't think I've ever seen a more thoroughly dismembered sportscar."

Erik blinks his eyes open. He can't see Charles, just the wall opposite him and the blindingly bright window-light. He isn't astray in time anymore. Charles' presence is like a compass needle turning to point true-north. "I don't know why I thought they'd be here," he says. It feels like a confession, like tearing something out from his very flesh.

"Mmm, well. They were here the last time you saw them, so you still feel like they should be because you haven't seen anything to the contrary in real life." A long susurrating exhalation. "I felt rather like that when my mother passed. Kurt wouldn't let me see the body, so it took a very long time for me to convince myself she was really gone. I kept expecting to find her in her room, the same as always. It's natural for you to feel this way."

Erik turns over to lie facing Charles, knees pressed up against Charles' warm and solid thigh. "I thought maybe there would be an explanation. But there isn't one. They just ... took me." He can't think about anything the same way anymore; it feels different, thinking of himself not as a rescued child but as a stolen one. An asset.

Charles' mouth twists. "There's not a _nice_ explanation, no," he says, shifting his hand to rest more comfortably on Erik's shoulder again. The smile he gives Erik is small and tight. He looks ... tired, maybe. "How are you feeling? I know this is very difficult for you to take in."

Erik tries to mimic Charles' smile, but it feels fragile on his lips. "I don't want to think it's true," he says. "I want to find a reason to think this is a misunderstanding. I wish I hadn't read that file at all." Because now he's -- it's traitorous, thinking like this, questioning anything he was told. But he can't help it now. He feels like he's sliding down a slippery slope, and now that he knows this, knows he was never a sub, knows there _were_ lies, that he'll end up finding out everything he knew was wrong, that he'll learn, his whole life, no one has ever loved him. And he doesn't want that. He doesn't want to be ... _that._

"I'm sorry," Charles says, and this time he looks away, turning his face so that Erik can't see his expression. "It would have been worse, though, to keep it from you."

"I know." Erik pushes himself up, slowly, his arms shaking a little beneath his own weight. His neck twinges again but he ignores it. He can see just the pale curve of Charles' cheek, the flicker of dark lashes below lowered eyelids. It feels unsettling, sitting here with Charles on this bed, where they used to come and fuck him every night, every morning. Charles seems out-of-place here, a glaring anachronism. "Do you want to go?"

Charles' head bows for a moment, then he gets to his feet, only then turning to look at Erik. He has that calm, familiar look on his face that says _safe, placid, in control_. "The police and the CIA are outside," he says, folding his arms across his chest and rumpling his cardigan. "We'll need to talk to them before we can go home. I don't know how long it will take. But I'll do what I can to mitigate this, Erik. We can pay for the damage and hopefully nobody will press charges."

Erik isn't terribly surprised. He knows the CIA is watching this place, and there would have been witnesses to the car crash. There were meant to be, after all. "All right," he says, getting up and putting on his shoes, following Charles out the door into the hall. And then -- "Hold on." He darts back into his old room and grabs the copy of _War and Peace_ from his bedside table. He hesitates for a second before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his half-full pack of cigarettes, sets it down on the table in the book's place, very slightly askew.

"Let's go," he says when he's back in the hall, and Charles' smile is more -- more now, as he leads Erik down the hall, down the stairs, and pauses for a moment on the threshold before opening the front door to the flashing lights of cop cars and the loud voices of the gathered gawkers. Charles raises his hands to show he's unarmed. Seeing his silhouette from behind Erik can't help but jerk forward to pull him out of the line of fire, all too reminiscent of the night the rest of the Hellfire Club were taken from him, too, just like this.

But no one shoots. Charles' weight falls against his shoulder when he stumbles back, and the police are shouting for him to put his hands in the air. He can feel their guns but all the bullets are safe and cold in their chambers. It doesn't stop him from feeling high, reeling off the adrenaline surging through his veins and buzzing in his ears. He grasps all the metal he can find, ready, prepared to use it if he must.

"It's fine," Charles calls, amplifying his own voice telepathically. He lowers his hands slowly to take hold of Erik's, tugging them around his own waist so that they're visible, too. "I'm Dr Charles Xavier, and we agreed I could go in to talk to Erik first because you gentlemen and ladies would scare him. You're scaring him now. But he won't hurt me, or you." More quietly he says, in a voice only Erik will hear, "It's fine, Erik, we're both safe. I'd put them all to sleep if one of them so much as twitched towards hurting us. Okay? Do you believe me?"

Erik's frozen like that for a second, Charles' hands hot around his wrists and Erik's fingers tensed, threaded through the electromagnetic fabric of the universe. But then he nods, once, and lets his head fall forward to press his brow briefly to the nape of Charles' neck, breathing in deep the familiar scent of him. Slowly Charles lets go of his wrists and Erik steps aside, lifting his arms above his head even though all of them here know it means nothing, that he could kill them all with their own weapons if he wanted, bar the CIA personnel who have plastic weapons trained on him that he can't feel, with plastic ammunition.

"Good," Charles says, raising his own hands again. "All right, gentlemen and ladies. Would one of you be kind enough to offer us a ride to the station so we can give our statements? I'm afraid I don't have a car. Or a driver's license."

He's still calm even when one of the CIA agents approaches, no metal on her at all. "Hi, Charles," she says, giving him a tiny smile before her gaze turns to Erik. She looks familiar. A submissive. "Mr Lehnsherr," she says, and reaches into her hip holster for a set of zip-tie cuffs and -- Erik's heart skips a beat -- a pair of suppressor bands. "You remember how this goes."

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary, Moira," Charles says, stepping just a little to the side, in front of Erik. "We're done with our wild tears for today. If you cuff Erik you'll have to cuff me too, and that goes for the suppressors as well. And you know I don't do well without my telepathy. It would be much nicer for everyone if we can just be civilized about this."

Her mouth purses up like she’s bitten a lemon, but, "It's up to you, Mr Lehnsherr," the agent -- Moira -- says, holding Erik's gaze. "What do you think? Can we be civilized?"

Erik swallows the acidic taste in his mouth and says, "Yes."

"Glad to hear it. Before I turn you over to NYPD custody, then, care to let me know what you were doing back here?" Her tone is light, too-light, as if she thinks she already knows the answer to her question.

"A little soul-searching," Charles says, before Erik can answer. None of the vulnerability Erik had seen in him inside is showing now. Instead Charles is standing straight and firm, shoulders and jaw both set, eyes meeting Moira's dead-on. "Certainly nothing terrorist in nature, I'll testify to that. But you must accept that sometimes it can be difficult to deal with this sort of trauma without revisiting the _locus memorandi_ to exorcise it. It's a perfectly normal coping mechanism, and frankly, if the Hellfire Club come back to a safehouse that's already had its cover blown then they're stupider than you think they are."

Moira sighs, but she steps aside, putting the suppressors and the cuffs back into their holster and gesturing for them to pass. "As long as you have this under control, Charles," she says, and Erik feels a sudden and bitter surge of protectiveness inside him, an immediate desire to punish her for implying Charles would ever do anything but succeed.

They walk down the stone steps and Erik looks behind him, once, at the house. For a split second he thinks he sees someone standing in the upstairs window, a familiar tall and brown-haired man, but then he blinks and the man is gone, was never there.

They don't get released from the police station until late that night. When they step into the apartment, all the lights are still lit from before they left, Charles' mug full of cold tea still sitting out on the table and Erik's paperback open on the sofa. Erik finally feels like he's come home.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-graphic descriptions of sexual violence against a minor


	8. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you thank you to the amazing **Til** for her efforts betaing this chapter -- they are much appreciated!
> 
> There are content warnings in the note at the end of the chapter. There are some serious issues discussed in this chapter, so if you do have triggers we suggest checking the cw first!

_Charles_

It’s snowing when they come out of the department store, fat white flakes falling from the sky to melt on the gritted sidewalk, and Charles tips his face up towards the sky, blinking as they catch in his lashes; beside him Gabrielle laughs, nudging him with her elbow. “It’s like you’ve never seen snow before,” she teases, and when he looks at her she’s smiling at him, the tip of her nose pink already with the cold.

“I just never believe them when they say we’re going to have snow at Christmas,” Charles says, smiling back and considering trying to take her arm; he decides against it, given the number of bags they’re each carrying. “It seems too pat, having it snow on Christmas Eve the first year Erik’s lived with me. It’s a bit ridiculous.”

“Or maybe you’re living in a Hallmark movie,” she says. She’s entirely distracting, in her blood-red coat with black hair standing in stark contrast to the wool, and the whitening cityscape. Charles can’t help but feel a warm rush of attraction to her, like this, photogenic in her winter gear and smiling at him, happy to be there.

He smiles back, and they set off down the street, walking shoulder-to-shoulder against the last-minute crowds on Fifth Avenue. Most of them are just here to gawk at the window displays, but that means there's a real sense of holiday, of cheer despite the cold, that rises off from everyone in a cloud that Charles can feel buoying him up, like the fizz in a can of soda. It's only three in the afternoon, but there's already a sense of anticipation throughout the whole city, that Christmas Eve feeling.

"I love Christmas Eve," he says to Gabrielle as they duck around a group of carol-singers on a street corner; Charles fishes out a couple of bills to add to their bucket. "Christmas Day, everyone is either ecstatic and loveydovey or angry and fighting, and it's jarring because it's all so vehement. I can't really tune it out. But on Christmas Eve everyone is excited and still looking forward to it, imagining how magical it will be instead of remembering how much they hate their family and want to be at home instead."

"You don't resent it, knowing how it'll end up?" Gabrielle says, arching an eyebrow at him. "Knowing all the good cheer is only temporary?"

Charles shrugs. "It's nice that people still believe it'll be the way the movies and TV and ads all tell them it will be, instead of remembering the way it really is. And for some of them out there it really does turn out to be magical. I can't resent them for giving me something lovely, even if the next day is a bit dire."

"Mmm. Well, Chanukah's easier. It's not a major holiday, so there are no grand expectations to fall short of. And everyone loves latkes and sour cream."

"Including goys like me," Charles says, with a grin, and when Gabrielle laughs he leans in for a quick kiss, pressing his mouth to hers. It's warm, her breath meeting his, and he can feel the cold tip of her nose brush alongside his in the moment before she grips his coat in one hand and holds him there, making him wait while she kisses him back, firmly.

"Goyim love Chanukah more than Jews do," she says, smiling when she pulls back. This time she keeps her hand on his elbow when they start walking again, easy and proprietary, Dominant. "How is Erik? Is he excited?"

Ah. The thought of Erik makes Charles pause, wondering how he's doing; but he'd promised Gabrielle his full attention today, and that means no checking in on Erik, either. "He's ... mixed, I think," Charles says, feeling the crunch of snow and grit under his boots. "He wants so badly to feel the full, 'real Jew experience' of it all, but I'm not sure it has the same meaning for him that he wants it to. I suspect that he'd have a better feel for it if he lived with a Jewish family, more's the pity, than with me and my Christmas tree and candy canes and tinsel everywhere."

"Maybe," Gabrielle says, "but I'm sure he's happier celebrating it with you than with anyone else. He had a birthday last week, didn't he? Should I have gotten him something?"

"Fifteen," Charles confirms, "and no, probably not at this point. I mean, if you want to, of course do, but he wouldn't expect you to." After a moment he says, regretfully, "I'm not entirely convinced that I am the person he most wants to spend the holidays with, if I'm truthful. He may no longer worship at the altar of Sebastian Shaw, but he's still a supporter of the Hellfire Club's ideals. He might rather be back with them."

"Hush." Gabrielle stops him and places one finger over his mouth, glove tickling at his lips. "No trial talk on dates, remember?"

Charles immediately quiets, though less because he has to than because he feels bad dragging that up when they're supposed to be out having fun. It's not that he doesn't _want_ to obey Gabrielle, so much as that he's never really met a Dominant who could _make_ him. It's the unfortunate side-effect of telepathy in a submissive, and one he would happily wish away if it meant he could reach subspace.

Sickening, really, to think that the only times he has were the times Cain ordered him down to make it easier to beat him, when he was too young to know that subspace was supposed to be something experienced through love instead of physical violence. But he doesn't let himself think about that.

"Come on," Gabrielle says, derailing his train of thought and leading him down a side street, heading west. "It's only three. Let's go back to my place. I'm sure we can find something to do with ourselves before sunset."

"I'm sure we'll manage," and Charles smiles.

Time gets away from them a little in Gabrielle's apartment; she doesn't keep clocks in her playroom, and so it's only after she's let him up from the bondage horse that she checks her phone and hisses under her breath, brows drawing in sharply.

"What is it?" Charles asks, getting slowly to his feet from his kneeling position to glance at the screen, hoping she won't scold him. "Oh, bugger. We're late."

"You don't think he'll be upset?" Gabrielle asks, glancing at him. She lifts a hand almost absently to adjust her hair, although it already -- as always -- looks perfect.

Charles makes a dubious noise, and glances at the pile of his clothes where they're folded on a side-table. "I think it's a moot point now without finding a way to time-travel. We'd better get moving." It's a strange mix of satisfaction and guilt, the immediate aftermath of sex and the knowledge that he's let Erik down a little. He walks over to the table and reaches for his underwear, stepping into it and tugging it up his legs.

"No need to wait for my permission, Charles, please go ahead and get dressed," Gabrielle drawls, the teasing tenor of her mind softening the sharp look she gives him.

He pauses, though, shirt half-on and wincing, hunching in on himself a little. "Oh. Sorry." Any non-telepathic -5S would still be on their knees unless Gabrielle had specifically told them to get up and dress. He pulls the other shoulder of his shirt up and starts on the buttons.

"Apology accepted," Gabrielle says graciously, already zipping up the back of her dress. Barefoot, she's only just shorter than he is, so when she steps close she has to rise up onto the balls of her feet to kiss his cheek, one hand pressed against the center of his chest. Charles turns towards her, and they waste another moment on that, the warmth of her body loosening him where he'd tensed.

"I guess we should call a cab?" he says when they break apart, finishing belting his pants and bending to pull on his socks. "It'll be better than walking to the subway if it's still snowing."

Gabrielle nods. "I'll take care of it. Perhaps you want to text Erik, let him know what time to expect us?"

"Something like that," Charles says, and lifts his fingers to his temple so that she'll know what he's doing before his eyes unfocus and he's looking inside his own head to look outside, reaching across town to the apartment to find Erik.

Erik is sitting in the kitchen, half his attention on _The Count of Monte Cristo_ and the rest nothing but an irritated consciousness of the time. His phone is set on the table with the screen lit up to show the clock, Erik's mixed anxiety and anger heightening with each new minute that passes. When Charles touches his mind Erik tips his book down, looking up even though Charles isn't there to look at, and thinks, _What?_

 _I'm sorry we're late,_ Charles says, sending a waft of apology and soothing energy towards Erik, along with a sense of his own chagrin that he hopes makes a dent in Erik's hurt feelings. _We're on the way, it's just difficult to get around because of the snow, so we'll be there as soon as we can._

 _Take your time,_ Erik says, and Charles doesn't miss the sarcasm, even if Erik's mentally withdrawing it a second later and glaring back down at his book. _Sunset was_ an hour _ago._

Charles winces, something clenching hard in his stomach, like a fist around a rock. _I really am sorry. We'll get there as quickly as possible, okay?_ He wants to make excuses, blame it on the snow, but he's not lied to Erik yet and he doesn't intend to start now just because he's embarrassed to admit he's missed sunset because he and his girlfriend were having sex. _I know I've let you down. I'll not let it happen again._

Erik doesn't reply to that, just keeps reading, and flips the page a little too violently.

Charles opens his eyes as Gabrielle hangs up on the cab company, and makes a face. "He's not very happy with us right now, I'm afraid. If you'd rather not spend your Christmas Eve-slash-first night of Chanukah with an upset teenager then I would completely understand."

"I have a sixteen-year-old little sister," Gabrielle says, one corner of her lips quirking upward. "I'm familiar enough with upset teenagers. I think I can handle it."

"All right." Charles indicates the door with a tilt of his head, this time waiting for his cue, even if he is nudging it along.

The ride back to Charles' apartment is long, the snow slowing down traffic to nearer a crawl. Charles can't help but feel tense and frustrated, the warm afterglow entirely faded into wondering how long it will take them to get back. Gabrielle notices and tries to calm him, but her hand on the back of his neck doesn't do much to take the edge off, even when she squeezes gently.

By the time they finally get there Charles feels terrible knowing how long Erik has been waiting, and as he pays the driver he reaches out to Erik in his mind, just enough to say, _We're here, on our way up now._ In response he feels Erik reaching out with his power and feeling for the elevator, which is stuck at the twenty-fifth floor; Erik doesn't bother sending it down for them, just retracts and turns his attention back to his computer.

"Here we go, then," Charles says to Gabrielle, and they walk inside the building to call the lift for themselves.

When Charles opens the front door of the apartment he can feel Erik's emotions roiling around like some angry, wounded animal with a thorn in its paw. "We're home," he calls, tugging off his scarf but not pausing for once to remove his shoes, just going straight into the den, standing beside the couch where Erik is sat. "I'm sorry we're so late. The weather out there is terrible. I suspect Gabrielle will have to stay over tonight."

Erik closes the top of his laptop lightly, setting it aside on the sofa. Without looking back at Charles he says, "I'll prepare a guest room. The food's in the fridge if you want to eat. You might have to heat it up."

"Erik," Charles says, reaching out to touch Erik's shoulder and sitting down on the arm of the couch. "Please. I'm trying to apologize and it's Christmas Eve, can't we light the menorah together and at least try to have a good time? I can't keep saying sorry all evening."

"So don't." Erik stands and Charles' hand falls from his shoulder onto the still-warm seat cushion, Erik angling around Charles' knees and heading out the room, obviously going the long route just to avoid having to get too close to Gabrielle, who is standing in the doorway.

Charles looks over his shoulder at her and makes a rueful attempt at a smile, though he can tell it doesn't quite work. "I'm not forgiven yet, it seems," he says, getting back to his feet and starting to unbutton his coat. "Sorry to have dragged you out into the snow for this. There's probably still time to get home before the roads shut down, if you want."

"I can take the train if it comes to it," Gabrielle says, moving forward to take his coat, folding it and draping it over the back of the vacated sofa. "Of course, if you need me to leave, I will. But I promise not to be offended, either way."

Charles shakes his head. "No, please stay. I'd feel better if I can see you fed at least, although Erik is the one who cooked." He reaches out to put a hand on her waist, and pecks her on the lips. "I'll go put the food on to reheat and then see what I can do about Erik."

Once the plates are in the oven Charles goes upstairs, finally tracking him down to the bedroom that adjoins Charles' own, making the bed; Erik is getting taller now, but he's still lanky and thin, his dark sweater silhouetting him against the white sheets as he snaps them into the air to spread out over the mattress.

"Hey," Charles says, leaning against the door frame. "Thank you for cooking, Erik, and for doing this. I do appreciate all the hard work you put in around here. You don't have to."

"Someone has to," Erik says, tucking the sheets in under the foot of the bed. "Left to your own devices, you certainly wouldn't." He tugs at the edges of the sheet, pulling out any wrinkles; he's always been almost compulsively neat, and now there's a sort of violence to the way he goes about it, a controlled aggression against the way the sheets want to ruck up and pool.

This time Charles frowns, starting to get a little irritated. "Erik, there's no need to be rude. I've apologized several times for being late, and I don't see what else I can do. If you want to be grumpy about it then of course you may, but don't be petulant. Given that we were out buying presents _for you_ , there's no need to spit in my eye for it." He folds his arms across his chest, straightening from his lean and trying not to let his lips purse.

Erik turns around at last, crossing the room to close the distance between them, stopping when they're a foot apart and holding Charles' gaze very evenly as he says, " _Is_ that why you're late?" His eyes are intense, his hands curled almost into fists; there’s a quiver in his mind that could be either hurt or anger, ready to explode.

"The weather is why we're late," Charles says firmly, because he's not about to get into the details of his sex life with his fifteen-year-old.

"Did you just lie to my face?"

Charles sighs. "It just took us almost an hour to do a twenty-minute-journey. So no, I did not lie to you, Erik. This afternoon Gabrielle and I went shopping for Christmas-slash-Chanukah presents, and afterwards we went back to her apartment for a while, if you must know. Following that, the weather gridlocked the city and made it difficult to get back here." He raises an eyebrow, meeting Erik's eyes. "Is that detailed enough or would you prefer a play-by-play of my day?"

It's a long moment before Erik responds, his gaze dark and closed-off, lips pressed into a line. "I don't think the weather's the problem," Erik says at last, and he steps away, going back to the bed and pulling the comforter up over the sheets. "The problem is that you're too rich and cosseted to take the train like normal people. You had to take a taxi, weather be damned -- god forbid you cozy up to the hoi polloi."

Oh, for fuck's sake. "You know what?" Charles says, "We're done with this for now, Erik. Gabrielle is here as my guest and we're being rude right now by ignoring her and coming up here to squabble like children. I've apologized and you choose not to accept it; that's your prerogative. But if you want to come downstairs and light the shamash and have your presents on Christmas Eve then that's up to you. I'm sorry if I'm providing a substandard holiday season for you but I'm doing the best I can." Charles turns and leaves, heading back downstairs to take the plates out of the oven and set them on the table, his movements sharp and jerky with frustration.

"I guess it didn't go well," Gabrielle says. She's lingering in the doorway between the kitchen and the den, watching him. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Oh, not really," Charles says, trying to calm himself, but he's still too frustrated with Erik to manage it. "It's not as though he's wrong; I did promise we'd be back in time, and we weren't. And it's part of being a normal teenager, having strops like this." He sets out the cutlery, clinking the metal against the wooden tabletop. "I suppose I got so used to his shy, retiring self that I didn't notice when he came out of his shell a little more and got bolder with me until it became a problem."

"I meant with the table," Gabrielle says, grinning, "but with Erik, too, I suppose." She steps forward and pulls out one of the chairs, sitting down and looping her arm over the back, gazing up at him. "Who knows? It could be the 7D coming out."

"Maybe," Charles says, pausing on the thought before going back to fetch a bottle of wine from the counter. "Hmm. Well. Never mind. I suppose we'll see if he wants to join us or not in due course." He takes a seat, finally, and pours them both a glass. "Merry Christmas, Gabrielle. And a happy Chanukah."

"You, too." Her smile is warm, and she tips her glass in his direction before drinking. 

Erik doesn't come down for nearly fifteen minutes, but when he does he's trailing a sense of resignation like a dark cloud behind him; if his reactions earlier had been any hint at emerging Dominance, it's been subsumed by Erik's desire to please Charles and the present Domme, for Charles not to be angry with him anymore. He slides into his chair next to Charles wordlessly, gaze downturned, although he must have been peeking because when Gabrielle looks at him he stiffens just slightly.

It's difficult to still be angry when Erik is so downhearted, and when Charles knows he's in the wrong. So after a moment he reaches out and ruffles Erik's hair with one hand, a brief caress before going back to finishing his dinner.

Once dinner is done and cleared away they move into the den, where everything is set up ready, so perfect that Charles knows Erik must have spent at least half an hour checking the angles, making sure everything was just right. "Do you want to do the honors?" Gabrielle asks Erik, offering him a box of matches. The menorah stands in front of a dark window, backlit only by the glitter of the city. Charles turns off the overhead lamp until only the tree lights are softly glowing, fading in and out in a rainbow of colors.

Erik takes the matches, a little awkwardly as he's visibly trying not to let his fingers brush Gabrielle’s, and strikes a match against the side of the box. It flares into flame and Erik lights the tall shamash, which he then uses to light the first, far-left candle.

"Do you know the prayer?" Gabrielle asks him, and Erik nods. "Together then. Baruch atah Adonai...."

Charles sits quietly on the floor beside the tree while they pray, and just enjoys the feeling of calm that comes over them during it, watching them together. If Erik weren't so wary of Gabrielle they could look like a little family, Charles thinks, allowing himself to share in their emotion, a warm contentment flowing over him, quiet and unadulterated. When they're done he sits up a little and says, "That was beautiful."

Gabrielle grins at him and says, "Just wait until Sukkot. You have the perfect balcony for building a sukkah."

"That's precisely why I chose it, naturally," Charles lies; he knows Erik knows he inherited it from his parents, and sure enough he catches a tiny grin on Erik's lips before Erik's hiding it away again, crossing the room to settle down on the floor next to Charles, folding his legs tailor-style so that his knee is pressed against Charles'. "Hey," Charles says, patting Erik's leg and leaning against him for a moment to bump him with his shoulder, "Does this mean you don't want your Christmas Eve present tonight? If you're feeling too Jewish I understand."

"It could always just be a Chanukah present," Erik says, looking at him with a bigger smile, and Charles is struck by how mutable Erik's eyes are this close, grey and green and blue, can't quite look away.

A little bewildered, Charles says, "Whatever you like, but I'm still having a big roast turkey lunch tomorrow," feeling a bit hazy; he almost forgets Gabrielle is there, just looking back at Erik and curiously unwilling to turn his attention back to his girlfriend.

"As long as you don't burn it," Erik says, and Charles watches his mouth slowly curve into a smile before Erik abruptly looks away, picking at his sweater sleeve. It takes a moment for Charles to realize that Gabrielle has sat down on his other side, lacing her fingers through his own and squeezing his hand.

"I won't burn it," Charles says, but his gaze has already turned to Gabrielle, smiling at her in turn and squeezing back. He feels a floaty sort of happy sat there between them, and it takes him a moment to turn, almost drowsily, to look at the tree, with its load of wrapped and beribboned presents underneath the green boughs, themselves weighed down with baubles and tinsel. "I'll let you pick, Erik -- which present would you like to open tonight? The rest are for tomorrow."

"Well," Erik says, lifting his head, "I already know what _one_ of them is." A green-wrapped box tugs itself loose from the pile and slides across the floor to knock against Erik's shins. For some reason Charles is sensing frustration from Erik, but Erik gives no outward sign of it, unwrapping the present almost gingerly and folding the wrapping paper up to be reused, stacked away to the side.

Erik lifts the raw metals from the box with his power, gold and silver and bronze bars, along with a ball of platinum and a small hunk of rose gold, setting them to spinning in a slow orbit around each other, the metal glittering in the lights from the menorah and the Christmas tree. "They're beautiful," Erik says, and closes his eyes as a ribbon of gold unwinds from its brick, breaking apart into three pieces that are molded by Erik's power until he's reaching out to catch them.

"For you," Erik says. He closes his fingers around Charles' wrist, turning his hand over and placing the gold in Charles' palm. He's shaped it into a delicate tie pin ornamented with an elaborate CX, and two matching cufflinks.

"Oh!" Charles breaks into a delighted, surprised smile, staring -- the workmanship is incredible, limited only by Erik's fine control and his imagination, and the gold shines brightly, untouched by tools or muddied by fingerprints. Erik's grip on his wrist is warm and soft, lingering still when Charles looks up at him and says, heartfelt, "Thank you, Erik. They're lovely. This shows amazing skill -- your control is really very impressive. Thank you." He tugs his other hand gently free of Gabrielle's grip so that he can wrap it around Erik's opposite shoulder, drawing him into a hug.

Erik is a far more solid presence in his arms these days, compared to the bony thing he'd been when he first came to live with Charles, the tips of his fingers grazing the nape of Charles' neck. When Erik pulls back he kisses Charles' cheek, and Charles startles, drawing back a little faster than he might have done otherwise to give Erik a puzzled look; it's not normal behavior for Erik, but Erik's thoughts are innocent, just affection and a desire for Charles' attention that's now a little marred by anxiety over Charles' response.

"I love them, thank you," Charles says to break the awkward pause and wishing he was wearing a shirt and tie so he could put them on at once. "I think I can assume you like the metals, then?"

"Very much," Erik says, turning his gaze back to the still-orbiting metal, reaching out to touch the bar of silver with one finger almost lovingly, like a caress. "I'll have to think of things to make with them."

That's better, Charles thinks, now Erik is distracted again and not giving him hurt puppy eyes. "It’s hard to keep presents a secret from a -- hmm, electromagnetist? Electromagnepath? Everything has metal in it these days."

"Yes, well, imagine the difficulties one has shopping for _you_ , Charles," Gabrielle says, nudging him with an elbow. "I can't even think about your present around you, which is harder than it sounds, believe me."

"I do try not to peek, I'll have you know." Charles has to twist back around to look at her -- when did that happen? -- and he reaches out to take her hand again as an apology, though he's not quite sure why he feels apologetic. His concentration is shot today; he can’t seem to split his focus between Erik and Gabrielle at all, yo-yoing between them like he’s caught on a string, spinning back and forth. The truth is that he's known what she bought him for the past three weeks, but it would be rude to say so when she's tried so hard. "Do you want to pick a present for yourself? Yours are the blue-wrapped ones to the lefthand side."

While Gabrielle is choosing, Erik leans against Charles' back, his weight settling against Charles' shoulders almost as if he's tired; when Charles glances at him he's utterly absorbed in his metals still, the platinum unwinding into a web of shining threads that are lacing together like spider silk in the air. Erik is heavy, but Charles doesn't have the heart to dislodge him, even when he catches the thread of Erik's thoughts again, that undertone of irritation as Gabrielle exclaims over the silk scarf Charles bought her and kisses him on the lips, and again when Charles opens his own gift, a book of philosophy.

It explains why Erik has been so clingy ever since he came back downstairs, and probably as well why he was so uncharacteristically aggressive about Charles and Gabrielle arriving late; Charles just sighs inside, accepting that this is something he'll have to deal with at some point, and carries on, plucking a chocolate from where it's hanging from the tree and popping it into his mouth.

It's strange how dopey he feels, more so as the evening wears on, sat so closely between Erik and Gabrielle, the former projecting possessiveness all over the room and the latter making easy conversation with him while she plays with his fingers, her other hand wrapped around his wrist, keeping him still. Charles blinks slowly, a little surprised when he looks at the clock and finds it's after eleven. He barely noticed the time passing.

"I assume you'll be staying the night?" he asks Gabrielle.

"I think so," she says, oblivious to the surge of intense dislike from Erik souring what had been Erik's rather pleasant thoughts regarding his plans for the platinum. "Midnight trains are always much more of a gamble than they're worth."

Charles just nods, leaning back a little against Erik's weight. "That's fine with me, so long as you don't mind spending your night here; I know you're off to Israel tomorrow."

"A very brief holiday before it's back to the grindstone," Gabrielle says, her fingertip tracing a small circle around his second knuckle. She's so pretty in the dim room, her dark hair glossy and pale skin colored by the fairylights. Charles feels very calm, almost placid, despite the waves of _**mine**_ coming from Erik, almost overflowing Charles' mental walls.

"Mmm, well," he says, thoughts coming slowly now; he must be tired. "Let's head upstairs then. I'm pretty tired, and if we stay down here Santa won't come. We can't have that."

One of Charles' hands is pressed against the floor, holding up his weight. Erik's fingers close around that wrist for one brief moment, as if Erik thinks he can keep Charles here, hold him back -- but just as quickly Erik's letting go again, and the beautiful sphere of threaded platinum Erik had been sculpting in midair loses its shape, dropping for Erik to catch it in the palm of his hand, just a lump of raw metal again.

"Come on, Erik, you too," Charles says, getting to his feet and offering Erik a hand up, smiling down at him. "You missed out on Santa as a child so you have to play along with me now."

Erik puts the metal back in the box and lets Charles pull him to standing. He's taller than Charles now, even if just by a couple of inches. "Don't get stuck in the chimney." 

"No promises," Charles says, letting go and turning back to Gabrielle. "Well, shall we? Erik made up the guest room for you."

"How considerate of him," Gabrielle says, smiling at Erik over Charles' shoulder, even though all three of them know that isn't where she'll end up spending the evening. Gabrielle is thinking of all the things she'd like to do with Charles tonight, or in the morning -- things that wouldn't be possible if she didn't think he were behaving so submissively tonight. She's put it down to him being here, in the comfort of his own home, which is sweet, but really, Charles is just tired. The fact that he's quiet, and drowsy, is to do with that, and nothing else.

Still, they play through the charade of his leading her to the door of 'her' room and showing her the adjoining bathroom before retiring into his own bedroom to wait for her to come through. Down the hall Charles can feel Erik's irritation like a persistent itch in the back of his mind, but once Erik settles down and Gabrielle opens the door between them wearing just her panties Charles forgets all about dealing with that until much, much later.

*

_Erik_

With Gabrielle gone to Israel and Charles off work for the week, Erik has Charles to himself for the week leading up to the new year. It's a refreshing change, to know that if he wants something Charles won't be too wrapped up in anyone else to help, that there is no one in the city in whose company Charles would rather be. Erik has no good reason to dislike Charles being around Gabrielle, he knows that much, but it doesn't stop him hating her. For so long he and Charles have existed in a private orbit around each other, and now there's a new element, something foreign and Dominant, a black hole devouring everything.

It didn't used to affect him like this, when the balance of power shifted. Janos Quested didn't join the Hellfire Club until Erik was ten, but his introduction and the focus on orienting him to their lifestyle didn't make Erik wish more attention was being paid to _him._ In fact, not much changed at all, beyond Erik having to listen to one more Dom's orders.

Gabrielle hasn't ordered him at all. 

He wishes she would, just so he'd have something concrete he could privately resent. Instead, all his anger and frustration just ends up feeling silly and unjustified. Not that that changes anything, of course.

He's left Charles absorbed in writing some opinion piece or another and gone out for a run through Central Park, ears burning in the cold and his thighs and calves aching by the time he finally completes his loop. He only got interested in running at all a couple of months ago, but he finds it makes him feel better in a strangely masochistic way -- or maybe it's just an outlet. He's not very good at it yet, can only run for about six or seven miles usually, but it's a start.

Erik is stretching out his hamstrings against a park bench when he hears running footsteps approaching down the path, slowing, then pausing behind him, the scuff of shoes on pavement still sounding as the person jogs on the spot. "Erik?"

He turns to find a girl -- Suzanne, isn't it, from school -- hopping from one foot to the other, her blonde hair only just peeking out from under a knit cap. "I thought it was you," she says. Her teeth show when she smiles, gleaming white under her pert little nose, which is reddened from the wind. "How are you?"

She's a Domme, 1D, so Erik pulls himself together efficiently, straightening up and clasping his hands behind his back. "I'm fine," he says, returning her smile with his eyes decorously lowered. "Just out for a run."

"Chilly out," she says. "Come on, run with me, we can keep each other company."

It's an order, so he obeys, falling into pace next to her even though he's gone six-point-two already today and all he wants to do is go home and lie around on the couch, vegetating. She's fast -- it's an effort just to keep up, but he manages it, though where he pulls the energy from he has no idea.

"You should consider joining the cross-country team, you're pretty good," she says, seemingly not out of breath at all as they run, feet light on the path. "It's nice to have extracurriculars, too. Looks good on your college applications."

"Oh," he says. It seems like college applications is the only thing anyone at Trinity ever talks about. When Erik first started it seemed an impossible goal, but he's at grade level in English and history now, and he's doing so well in math and the sciences that his teachers have consented to let him take AP Calculus and AP Physics this spring even though he's only a freshman. He's starting to wonder if going to college might be in his future after all, although the idea still feels vague and filmy, like a life experience that should belong to somebody else. 

"All right," he says, remembering what she'd actually said -- cross-country. Right. "Sure. When are try-outs?"

"First week back," she says, dodging around a small child that seems to have got loose from its stroller. "I can let you know exactly after we start and I confirm it with Mr Hampton. And, awesome, I'd love it if you join up. I wasn't sure you'd say yes. Does it make it weird now if I ask if you'd like to go get coffee with me? And a pastry? I'll buy."

Erik stops running, though it takes Suzanne a second to notice and stop as well, turning back to face him. Her cheeks are flushed from the cold, eyes bright; she's very pretty. He hadn't thought she liked him. She never asked him to fuck her, at least. Not many of the female Dommes ever did, and even then he always worried he was insufficient -- his practice with fingering girls, or eating them out, is limited compared to his vast experience sucking cock and getting his ass fucked. "Do you mean like a date?" he asks, warily.

"Well, I guess ... yes," she says, smiling at him. "What do you think?"

Dating. Him, Erik, dating a Domme ...? Going to the movies, and eating dinner together -- letting her kiss him and fuck him, order and punish him, let her tie him up and leave her marks, her and _only_ her .....

It's too much. It requires something from him that he doesn't think he's capable of giving, it has a sense of _permanence_ that makes him -- angry, in a way he knows is unjustified, a tightening in the pit of his stomach, a bitter resentment toward Suzanne for demanding this of him, _expecting_ it. He doesn't want to wind himself up with her life the way Charles is doing with Gabrielle, throwing away everything else to serve one Domme.

A year ago he wouldn't even have been able to say no, never mind that it's not an order.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Erik says coolly. "I'll service you, if you like, but I'm not looking for anything exclusive."

"Oh," Suzanne says, looking a little taken aback, eyebrows rising towards the hem of her hat. "Well, uh, thank you for being honest. I'm not really looking for a, um, sexual relationship right now, not right away, so I guess not, then." She reaches up to touch her hair, even though it's already perfect. "I suppose that's a no to getting a coffee, too, then?"

"Coffee's fine," Erik says, trying to make himself soften a bit and not sure if he's succeeding, his stomach still clenching. "I can pay for mine, though."

"No, no, it's cool, I invited," she says, almost too fast. "You can get it next time."

So he goes with her, and they sit inside a little independent cafe and drink macchiatos and talk about things that don't matter -- movies, school, internships. Erik's not entirely sure why he's there, the whole time, if this is meant to be an extension of friendship, or .... Suzanne might say she doesn't want anything sexual right now, but Erik's seen plenty of Doms say that then change their mind within days, weeks, sometimes even within the same hour. 

He remembers, too, being six years old when newly-recruited Azazel said _I don't fuck little boys._ Twenty-six days later (Erik counted) he came into Erik's room in the middle of the night, a heavy heat against his back, and Erik pretended to still be asleep the whole time because he didn't want Azazel to be angry with him for making him break his word.

Suzanne is not Azazel, but she's still a Domme, and Erik knows precisely how Doms operate. He's spent a lifetime studying them. He could write a thesis on the mating behavior of the Dominant in its natural habitat, and Suzanne's just fooling herself.

Gabrielle's fooling herself, too, if she thinks she'll stay loyal to Charles, Erik thinks later as he's walking home alone. But he's not totally certain whether or not she's fooling Charles himself. He can't decide which is worse: how Charles will feel when she sleeps with another sub, or the possibility that she might drag this out just long enough to see it become the new normal. Until she's a permanent fixture in their home, a shadow on Charles' heels, an unwanted intruder waiting behind each corner.

When Erik gets back Charles is watching a movie, something Christmas-related; there's a bowl of candy cane pieces in his lap, and he pauses the film as Erik comes in, a sharp shard of sugar sticking out from the corner of his mouth. "Good run?" Charles asks around it, eyebrows lifting.

"Fine," he says, leaning against the back of the couch, looking down to meet Charles' gaze. "Seven miles. It was supposed to be six, but then I ran into someone I know."

Charles twists further, propping his elbow on the back cushion. "That's nice. You feel a bit worried about it, though -- do you want to talk about it? If not, I'm watching _It's a Wonderful Life_ if you want to join."

"I'm not _worried_ ," Erik says. "She asked me to go out with her. On a date. I told her no, but then we ... got coffee anyway, which makes me wonder if I was entirely clear."

He can feel it when Charles looks in his head, like a breeze rustling through leaves; Charles' mouth twists for a moment, but then the expression is gone, and he just says, "It looks to me like she was saving face, Erik. If she just left then it would be like you chased her away. You were very clear, so I'm sure it's fine." He pauses for a moment. "Should you be drinking coffee at your age? Won't it stunt your growth?"

"You should talk," Erik says, raising an eyebrow. Charles is only five-foot-seven. "I have three inches on you already, and I've been drinking coffee since I was nine; it obviously hasn't hurt anything yet."

Charles gives him a look of mock outrage. "I have it on good authority that I'm a 'Pocket Adonis', thank you very much," he says, lifting his chin and looking down his nose at Erik, though his mouth is quirking.

Right. Erik thinks he has a pretty good idea who might have told Charles something like that, and remembering Gabrielle's existence makes him feel like he's swallowed a chunk of ice. He doubts there's anything he could do to keep Charles away from her, but that doesn't make him want to stop trying. He wishes Gabrielle would just fuck Charles and then send him home after, like a normal human being. Not chase him into Charles-and-Erik's private life.

"We should go on a trip," Erik says, the idea coming to him all at once. "Just the two of us. I can show you around Rome, or Prague. This summer."

There's a moment before Charles glances down, his expression turning to one of regret. "I'd like that very much, Erik, but remember -- you're not allowed to leave New York, certainly not without prior authorization and probably not without a military escort. It's unlikely to be granted for a pleasure jaunt. I'm sorry." He pats the couch next to him. "Won't you come sit down? I'm getting an ache in my neck."

Erik had forgotten. Even if he's not being charged with anything, and even though they allow him to live here with Charles, he's still considered a terrorist by the United States government. It's just that they've let this be his prison, instead of Guantanamo Bay. Not for the first time, he wonders if Charles has instructions to kill him, rather than let him try anything. Personally, Erik doubts Charles has the heart to go through with it either way.

He sits, angling his body toward Charles. "It doesn't matter," he says, dismissing the earlier plan. "We should still do something together. You can take off work again this spring break and we'll just -- stay in the house. We'll make Thai food and watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy." 

He'll take any promise that will preserve Charles just for him, even if just for a little while. Erik smiles at Charles and loops his arm through his, bending his wrist to curl his fingers around Charles' upper arm and squeeze lightly, trying to think filial thoughts, to make Charles think how pleasant it would be to take a break from everyone else and spend some more time with just-him. "What do you think?"

"Hmm," Charles says, casting Erik a sidelong look; he seems amused, for some reason, the telepathic aura he puts off warm and fuzzy at the edges, but he lets Erik hold his arm, only turning it so his palm is facing upwards, fingers relaxed. "That sounds good. Extended edition?"

"Of course," Erik says, satisfaction offsetting his earlier irritation quite a bit. 

He reaches for Charles' wrist and moves his arm to settle it on his own knee, leaning forward to examine the lines of his palm. Charles' lifeline is very deep and strong. Erik traces a fingertip along it almost idly and tries to think of something else they can do, something that doesn't involve leaving the city. 

"We'll go to Coney Island,” he says, getting a bit excited now by his own plans. “I can make the roller coasters go faster than they're meant to. And we can go down to the Strand and buy half their book collection. You can afford it, and between the two of us we certainly have enough concentration to _read_ it."

A huff of breath, and Charles' fingers flex, half-curling before they relax again. "But where would we put them?" he asks somewhat absently, and when Erik looks up at him Charles' eyes look oddly sleepy, lids heavy, like the motion of Erik's fingers in his palm is hypnotizing him. "I know this apartment is a little oversized, but it's not that big."

"It was hyperbole," Erik says, and he pulls his hand back into his lap, leaving Charles' resting palm-up on his knee, frowning. "Are you all right? You seem tired." Is Charles sick, and Erik hadn't noticed? That would be something of an egregious oversight on Erik's part, he thinks; he likes to believe he's pretty observant about that kind of thing.

"I'm okay," Charles says, blinking slowly, but then he seems almost to shake it off, eyes clearing as he meets Erik's gaze. "Just a funny five minutes, I guess. It's nothing to worry about, I feel fine." He smiles, hands moving to push the ragged-ended sleeves of his old sweater back up above his elbows, baring his forearms. His jeans aren't much better, with the look of ancient denim that only comes out on special occasions, like vacation days; Erik's never seen Charles wear jeans before. "You do know you don't have to compete for my attention, right? I like spending time with you, Erik. You don't have to fight for that."

Gabrielle again. Whatever contentment Erik had been feeling is draining fast, now, replaced with the flat and bottomed-out feeling he got the first night of Chanukah when Gabrielle was here, interfering. "No, you'd just rather spend time with _both_ of us." He says it like he thinks it's something reasonable, even though he doesn't. Even though that's the part he resents most of all.

Charles shifts, pulling one leg up onto the couch so that he can face Erik directly. "I like spending time with both of you, yes," he says, gaze steady. "Although to be quite honest spending time with both of you at the same time is rather uncomfortable. Gabrielle hasn't done anything to you, Erik -- I don't understand why you resent her so much when you spend plenty of time in your room reading, or out with friends, instead of with me. The fact I spend time with other people should not be this much of a problem."

"She isn't right for you," Erik says, because he doesn't think he has the words to explain the way he feels when he thinks about Charles just ... _existing_ alongside Gabrielle, even if it's the two of them watching a movie while Erik reads upstairs, or him visiting her house while Erik is out with friends. Erik doesn't usually like to put too much stock in 'bad feelings,' but thinking about Gabrielle and Charles ending up together long-term certainly gives him a very bad feeling. "I know I told you that you were getting old to be alone, but I didn't mean you should just tie yourself to the first Dominant that comes along."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Charles says dryly, leaning back into the corner of the couch. "I certainly will bear that in mind."

"I understand she's beautiful," Erik says, just so Charles knows it's not like he's completely unsympathetic. "And I understand she wants to fuck you, and of course that's fine. But do you love her? Are you _in love_ with her? Because if not, surely you know all this is a waste of time."

Charles sighs, and closes his eyes. "I don't know, Erik. I'm dating Gabrielle because I like her, and because she's beautiful, and she likes me. Is it really a waste of time to enjoy someone's company? And in any case, most people don't just fall in love at the drop of a hat. You date someone to find out if you fall in love with them. So I don't see it as a waste of my time to enjoy being with her and seeing where things go. I suspect that you're finding it difficult sharing my attention, now that you aren't guaranteed it whenever you want it, rather than having any real objection to Gabrielle herself. She's been nothing but nice to you."

"She's a human," Erik retorts, and real anger comes with it this time; he hadn't even noticed it welling up inside him until it's already overflowing. He doesn't try to staunch it. "She doesn't _deserve_ you. She will never understand you. She will never _support_ you, or your kind. And if that wasn't enough, she's one of the prosecutor _swine._ " He's on his feet, jostling Charles' legs as he moves toward the door, and the stairs. "I knew you were a fucking blood traitor, but really, _ich habe die Nase voll._ "

Charles doesn't say or do anything, but after a moment Erik hears the television switch back on and the movie continue. Fine, Erik thinks, heading upstairs and to his room. Let him stew in _that._

He ruminates in his own righteous anger for a while, until he loses interest and gets invested in reading a book instead. It's not until later that night, when he's trying to staple his English essay, that he realizes what Charles has done. For the second time since Erik's been living here he finds his power cut off from him at the functional level, metal palpable but not usable, and Erik gets the distinct impression of a pop-up banner reading: _Not until you can be polite._

It's nearly a day before he musters the fortitude to apologize for cursing at Charles, even though he refuses to take back what he said about Gabrielle, or apologize for calling Charles a blood traitor. Charles lifts the punishment all the same.

*

"You can't go to a college party wearing that. You look like you've shrunk in the wash but your shirt stayed the same size."

It's the first thing Madelyne says to him once they've closed the door of her bedroom, and Erik can't help but glance down at his plain charcoal grey sweater which, while not form-fitting, certainly isn't baggy either. "It's not that bad," he says, tugging at the hem a little. "It's cashmere. It's nice."

Charles gave it to him over the holiday, as well, which makes it particularly special in Erik's opinion; it's soft and warm, and Charles told him it made him look very grown-up. 

"Yeah, for a thirty-year-old going to a wine-tasting," Madelyne says, wrinkling her nose at him, and she practically dances over to her bed, lifting something up and twirling to show it to Erik. "You should wear this! I borrowed it from my brother. This is much better."

"That wouldn't fit a twelve-year-old," Erik says, but he takes it from her hands anyway, holding it out to get a better look. 

Well. It's black. It has that much going for it, even if Erik's going to be worried people will be able to count his ribs through the thin, clingy fabric -- it’s practically lycra. Never mind how cold he'll be: it's short-sleeved. He hasn't worn anything short-sleeved in ... ever. Not without a hoodie, anyway, and especially not in January.

Madelyne's looking at him expectantly, though, so Erik just sighs and pulls his sweater off over his head, folding it up to set it on the foot of Madelyne's bed. The new shirt's just as tight a fit as he suspected, leaving nothing to the imagination with the way it clings to every angle of his body. He frowns at himself in Madelyne's mirror, adjusting the v-neck collar and wishing he weighed about twenty more pounds.

Hands come and rest on his waist from behind, and Madelyne's face appears beside Erik's shoulder in the mirror, not tall enough to hook her chin over it. "I love that!" she exclaims, squeezing his hips and jiggling on the spot, shaking him a little. "You look great! I knew it'd fit."

For certain values of 'fit,' Erik thinks generously, but he gives her reflection a small smile anyway and turns around to face her. "If you say so," he says. "Are you planning on wearing a shirt, yourself?" She's been in the same purple lacy bra since he got here, with nothing over it. To be fair, she _has_ filled out a lot in the last year.

"Shut up," she says, but it's friendly as she swats his arm, going back to the far side of the bed where there are more clothes laid out. Madelyne reaches behind her own back and unhooks her bra without any apparent self-consciousness, her heavy breasts falling loose as she slips it off. "I was going to wear a dark shirt, but I changed my mind and this one shows through," she says, reaching for a different bra, this one lacy and white, that's resting on the duvet.

"You could always wear just the bra," Erik says. "Seth told me there would be a lot of Dominants there." 

He said it like he thought that would be a selling point, too, is the strange thing -- said it while Erik was still lying on his stomach on the floor of the costume closet in the fine arts wing and Seth was tugging Erik's jeans back up. _There will be lots of Doms there. Might be nice to even out the demographic a little, if you know what I'm saying._

"I keep telling you, I'm a lady," she says, putting on the new bra differently-- it fastens in front, a little catch between her breasts that closes with a quiet snap. Her hands scoop into the cups to adjust her breasts, pulling them in to create a better cleavage. "Ladies wear shirts and bras that don't show through. Doms respect you more if you don't flash too much. I want a nice domfriend, not one who saw my tits and that's the only thing they like about me."

"I suppose," Erik says, figuring Madelyne probably knows more about what nice Doms respect than he does. "Are you almost ready, then?"

"This is the part where I put my shirt on, Erik," she says, rolling her eyes, and pulls on a tight green top made of some shimmering material that clings to her curves, hiding them at the same time as it accentuates them. "And I have to put on my shoes, too." She's already wearing a skirt and green patterned tights, but she crosses the room towards him on tiptoes, seemingly heading for her closet before she makes a lunge to grab his hands instead, laughing as she drags him into a few dance steps, holding his arms out straight.

"What are you doing?" he says, a bit alarmed -- but he falls into step all the same, of course, grinning despite himself as she rocks them from side to side. "I guess this means you've pregamed already."

"You're such an old man sometimes," she complains, but then she looks down at his arm and frowns, feet halting suddenly so that Erik bumps into her. "Erik, what's this scar?"

"Which scar?" Erik says, before his mind catches up with his mouth and he remembers -- _oh._

She's holding his wrist forearm-up, exposing the long diagonal scar that breaks his skin nearly from hand to elbow, old enough that the wrinkled tissue's gone white against the surrounding skin but not so old that the starkness of it has faded. He feels wary, suddenly, like something's chasing them, is waiting for them outside on the dark street corner. Essex. 

"Nothing," he says, and tries to pull his arm back out of her grip.

"This one, dummy," she says, refusing to let go and frowning at him. "It looks really bad -- not that it looks bad, but that the wound was bad! Did you ... " She swallows, bites her lower lip, before saying, quieter, "Did you try to ... to kill yourself? You can tell me, I won't judge."

" _No,_ " he snaps, and this time he _jerks_ away, with enough force that he stumbles back a half-step. "It was --" _him, it was Essex, he made me do it_ "-- nothing, it was forever ago. Come on, we're late." He can hear his heart pounding in his ears, a rapid drumbeat, and if she doesn't listen he doesn't know what he'll do. Maybe implode.

Madelyne pouts, but she grabs her coat and bag anyway and hurries after him when he opens her door with his power and heads out into the hall, still hopping into her heels as she catches up.

Erik doesn't feel at ease until they're on the train surrounded by so much steel, and even then he's still a little queasy, like he hasn't eaten in a day or two. He's grateful Madelyne dropped it, of course, but he doesn't like that her mind went there. Doesn't like that she drew his attention to it at all. He thinks about Essex as little as he can these days, facing the man only in the horrible nightmares he can't wake from without Charles' help, and the glimpses of him he sometimes catches in strangers on the street who look at him in a way that makes Erik feel like he can't breathe.

The party's at NYU, on the top floors of a residence hall which comprises fraternity row. Erik had his doubts before, that a bunch of seniors and college students would really want a couple of fifteen-year-olds at their party, but Seth had reassured him he'd be more than welcome. If not, Erik figures they can always get drunk at Charles' place; he's pretty sure Charles would be happier with them drinking at home than drinking out here, anyway. Whatever. Either way, Charles will probably want to talk about it in therapy Monday afternoon.

There's an older Dom smoking out front when they get to the residence hall, and he eyes Erik and Madelyne for a second before he says, "You here for the party?" Erik nods and the Dom swipes his ID against the magnetic reader, unlocking the door and letting them in. "Top floor."

Inside the lobby just looks like a normal building; they cross to the elevator and Madelyne hits the button for the top floor, leaning back against the wall as they head up. "So how do you know this guy again?" she asks, tugging on the hem of her skirt.

"Seth? He's that senior who played Benedick in _Much Ado About Nothing_ last year." It's the only thing Erik knows about him, really; he approached Erik for the first time toward the end of last spring, apparently on recommendation from someone whose name Erik forgets. "We've scened before."

"Oh, him." She snorts. "Bit of a douche, isn't he?"

"Is he?" Erik's not entirely sure what the qualifications are for being a douche. They're nearly to the top floor now; Erik pulls his iPhone out of his back pocket to check the time - 11:50.

"He quotes 'Animal House', that dumb fratboy movie, every time someone tries to have an argument with him," Madelyne says, rolling her eyes. "It's not even relevant, he just does it to piss people off and make them stop calling him out on his shitty behavior."

"Hmm," Erik says, even though he doesn't particularly care what Seth is like; they aren't friends. They just have something of an understanding.

The elevator pings when it reaches the penthouse suite and the doors slide open. The hallway it opens onto is rumbling with bass, the walls almost vibrating; there are a couple of girls standing just inside from the elevator, and when Erik and Madelyne step out into the corridor the one on the left walks forward to take hold of his shoulders, looking at him intently.

"Sub, right?" she asks, eyebrow lifted in inquiry. Her lips are stained a dark red color.

"Yes," he says. 

"Thought so," she says, and before he can move she leans forward and presses a smacking kiss to his right cheek, then steps back and looks at the result. "Great. You too, sweetie?"

"Um, yes," Madelyne says nervously, and the girl reapplies her lipgloss before doing the same to Madelyne, pressing her lips against Madelyne's cheekbone and leaving a dark red print on the pale skin.

"There," she says, turning to her partner, whose lips are a bright neon blue. "Your turn next time I guess."

Stepping further into the party, Erik can see now that everyone has marks like these on their cheeks -- red for submissives, blue for Dominants. Not that the dynamics weren't obvious enough already from most people's clothing: almost everyone is decked out in full scene regalia, leather and lace and silk. He and Madelyne are incredibly under -- or over -- dressed.

"Let's find the drinks," he says, reaching for her wrist and tugging her deeper into the party, angling them between the grinding and swaying bodies, the bass pounding so loud through his body it feels like his own heartbeat.

"Erik Lehnsherr, did you bring me to an _orgy,_ " Madelyne hisses -- well, shout-hisses -- at him when they break through into the makeshift bar area, her eyes wide. "What is wrong with you! Normally you _tell people_ before you take them to an orgy, it's common fucking courtesy!"

"It's not an orgy," Erik says, frowning back at her. As far as he can tell most people are just dancing, although it's probably no secret what's going on in the other rooms. He can feel the bedsprings shifting. 

Seth hadn't mentioned that this was a dynamics party, but aside from them looking a bit out of place, it's certainly no worse than anywhere else they've been invited to over the past year. Erik reaches for the bottle of Patrón and pours them each a shot, sliding one glass toward Madelyne.

"Thanks," she says and knocks it back a little overenthusiastically, wincing at the burn. "Seriously Erik, if anyone tries to get me in one of those bedrooms don't let them, okay? I'm not punching my V-card at some weird college party with a stranger."

"Why not?" Erik says after he's taken his own shot, ignoring the way his stomach automatically rebels a little when the tequila hits it. "It's as good a place as any. Besides, aren't you a little old to still be a virgin?" 

"I'm only fifteen, you asshole," she says, smacking him in the arm with the back of her hand. Her ring is sharp and pointy and it stings where it hits him. "And no it is not as good a place as any! If I'm going to have sex with someone I want it to be someone I care about, and without an audience. Stop trying to peer pressure me into slutting around with you." She pours them both another shot.

Erik takes the glass when she hands it to him, then turns his attention back out to the rest of the penthouse. He can feel someone getting strapped to a St Andrew's Cross in the room to the left of them, and the glitter of handcuffs in pockets and around wrists and tucked away inside satchels. He can't see Seth anywhere, or anyone else they know, but that doesn't mean anything. Or, it doesn't as long as no one comes and tries to kick them out for being underage.

"Hey." A tall, dark-haired Dom squeezes in beside Madelyne and reaches for the vodka, pouring himself a shot even as he eyes the pair of them. "Double hey. You two look pretty cozy -- do you come as a set?"

Erik glances at Madelyne, but as he expected, there's no indication that she's changed her mind. "Just friends," he says, very briefly meeting the Dom's eyes before he turns his gaze down and tilts his head very slightly to the side, exposing the line of his neck. 

"Shame," the guy says, pouring himself another shot, of tequila this time, and picking up the salt shaker. "Would you consider it? It'd be pretty hot." He bends around Madelyne and puts his face in the curve of Erik's throat, licking a wet line with the hot flat of his tongue before pulling back to sprinkle salt on it. Erik shivers a little; it's an unnerving sensation, and leaves his skin feeling cold. "I'm Matt."

"Nice to meet you, but no thanks," Madelyne says, stepping back a little and out of the way as Matt takes his tequila shot and licks Erik's neck again, taking up the salt. "I'm purely here as an observer."

"She'll dance with us, though, won't you?" Erik says, looking at Madelyne once Matt has straightened up again. Matt's hand is on his hip, his thumb sliding up below the hem of Erik's shirt to press against bare skin.

Madelyne's eyes are lowered, unusually so -- normally she looks right at Erik when she's speaking to him, and rarely backs down in front of Doms. "Sure," she says, offering Erik her hand. "Let's go."

"She can watch if she wants, I don't mind a bit of voyeurism," Matt says, grinning as he tugs on Erik's hip to take him, them, towards the music.

In the crowd the room feels hotter, like someone's cranked the heat up to ninety. Matt pulls Erik's back against his chest and grinds against him, his body solid and unyielding as stone. "Come here," Erik shouts to Madelyne to be heard over the music, tugging her closer so they can dance together as well, settling his hands easily on her waist.

This, at least, she takes to the way she always does -- stepping into his space and linking her hands behind Erik's neck so she can twist and shimmy with him, her head tipping back with abandon so that her throat is bared, her long red hair curling down her back. Erik loses track of time, a little, the songs blurring together, and the tequila making him feel a little tipsy. Matt's kissing his neck, biting and sucking a mark just above the collar of his shirt, and Erik can tell he's half-hard, rubbing himself against Erik's ass.

"Are you into exhibitionism?" Matt yells into Erik's ear, his breath hot and damp. "Like your friend?"

Erik turns his head, then lets his body follow, twisting around in Matt's arms to face him. "I'm into anything you want," he says, and he presses his hand against Matt's groin, squeezing him between their bodies until he can feel Matt's cock swelling further against his palm. He knows what Matt wants, and honestly the desire for sexual privacy is something Erik had been unacquainted with before leaving Hellfire -- none of the Doms ever cared if anyone was watching, not unless they were new.

Matt grins, looking down at Erik's hand and bringing his own up to Erik's shoulders. "Then get down on your knees and suck me," he shouts against the music, and pushes Erik down.

Matt's wearing jeans, no complicated straps or laces, and Erik uses his fingers as much as his power to undo his fly, tugging the zipper down over the hard line of his erection and sliding his hand under the elastic waistband to tug his cock out. 

"Oh, what the fuck," Madelyne says from behind him, sounding weird; when Erik looks over his shoulder her eyes are wide, her lips parted but not, he thinks, in a good way. She meets his gaze then looks away hurriedly, folding her arms across her chest. "I'm going to head home," she says without looking at him, cheeks bright red. "Are you staying here?"

"Yes," he says, and he files away the urge to get up and talk to her; Matt still needs him, and he can't just leave him like this. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah, um. Later," Madelyne says, and turns away, squeezing between spectators who've stopped to watch Erik suck cock and quickly vanishing into the crowd.

Erik turns his attention back to the Dom now, even if he can't entirely shut off his awareness of some of the others nearby, a few tugging down their own zippers. It's impossible to know what Matt likes best, but Erik's found a decent pattern to use with strangers. He licks at the swollen head, curling his hand around the base to pull a few strokes up the shaft. He doesn't waste much time on foreplay, though; teasing's better when he thinks he'll see someone again. So when Matt curls his fingers tight in Erik's hair he leans forward, letting go of Matt's cock to suck him all the way down his throat, easy and in a single movement.

"Fuuuuuck," Matt says, holding Erik's head there, hips jerking against Erik's face. "This kid has no gag reflex, shit! Suck it, go on."

An order. Erik locks his hands behind his back, one hand grasping the opposite wrist, and lets Matt pull his head in the way he likes, hollowing out his cheeks and taking care to breathe steady through his nose while Matt fucks his face. It occurs to him about halfway through that he probably ought to be using a condom for this, but it's too late now, he'll have to just see it through to the end. He can taste the salty heat of pre-come on his tongue, flattened against the underside of Matt's cock.

Matt grunts over him and folds forward, hips jerking, and comes in Erik's mouth; it's thick and spurts down Erik's throat, the audience cat-calling as Matt screws in as deep as he can go, finishing himself off through the aftershocks. Erik wipes a stray bead of come from his lip with the pad of his thumb when Matt pulls out, and stays down there on his knees, waiting to be told he can stand. He feels a little dizzy, probably from the tequila, and overheated, too. He’s lost track of his own thoughts, his sense of the present sliding sideways and merging with … something else, and he can’t remember what he was thinking even just ten seconds ago, can’t remember why he’s here, what he meant to do here.

"That was awesome," Matt says, petting Erik's hair with one hand while he pants, his face sweaty from the orgasm. "Good boy."

"Was that a one-time deal?" a girl asks from over to the right, fanning herself, her eyes intense; there's a blue kiss on her dark-skinned cheek, which only makes the electric teal eyeliner winging her lashes look even brighter. "Or are you interested in a gang scene? No pressure, but that would be hot."

"I don't mind," Erik says, breathing a little easier now that Matt's stepped away, tucking himself back into his jeans and zipping up again. Not that it helps the dizziness; there are quite a few Doms watching now, and even a few subs, the latter probably drawn more by curiosity or voyeurism than anything else. Their faces blur together and Erik closes his eyes for a moment, trying to steady himself; it doesn’t work.

She smiles, stepping into the space Matt vacated and placing her own hand on his face. Her nails are long, polished the same color as her eyeliner. "What's your safeword?" she asks, bending forward a little; Erik can see down her shirt. "Boundaries, maybe -- how are you with penetration, oral, double penetration? Physical violence? Non-damaging, of course."

"No safeword." He leans his cheek in toward her hand and tries to look submissive, accommodating. "And anything goes. You can do whatever you want to me. Any of you. I don't care."

"Well, aren't you sweet," she says, stroking her thumb across his cheekbone, "but I really do insist on a safeword. I don't know you, you don't know any of us, it's just a good idea. No safeword no playtime, okay?"

Oh, for fuck's sake, Erik thinks, irritated, but he plays along, smiling as winsomely as he can. "Pineapple, then," he says.

"Good boy," she says, and with her other hand she tugs up her skirt, hooking her leg over his shoulder and pressing the point of her heel against his shoulder blade. "Now. Please me."

He obeys, licking her through her panties first before eventually tugging them aside, and when she's finished there's another Dom waiting. It's easy to fall into the rhythm of it after a while, sucking and licking and doing as they say, even when his knees start to hurt and his neck gets stiff. 

A female voice says after a while, "Let's be nice to him. Kyle, you go sit in that armchair and make a seat for him. Come on, darling." Hands help Erik to his feet and he's braced against a soft chest, leaning his face between two breasts as those hands go to work on his pants, tugging them down his legs until they're tangled around his shins and he can only shuffle his feet. "Here we go," the voice says, and then there are wet fingers pressing between his cheeks, stroking Erik's hole.

He shudders, disoriented, and even though he opens his eyes he feels like he can't really see. The Domme slides a finger inside him and he grits his teeth, clenches his eyes shut again when she adds a second, the weight of them feeling like his center of gravity. He takes in a slow breath.

"Good boy," she says, and the fingers push into him deeper, spreading him wider, splaying and wetting his hole; Erik feels like he's being delved into, exposed, and it's hard to stay upright when he's shuffled backwards, the fingers still inside him, until he bumps into something behind him.

"Now sit," and he's guided -- lifted -- up and then -- there's a cock pressing against Erik's ass, slipping on the slick, blunt and thick and then forcing into him, he's being lowered onto it and it aches, his head falling back as he's made to sit down on that cock, take it all the way in.

Behind him someone laughs, a low chuckle with lips grazing the curve of his ear. Erik reaches to grab the armrests but then there are hands on his wrists, restraining him. Someone else is tying his ankles to the chair legs with scratchy rope; Erik struggles, for some unknown reason, but it’s useless. "Here you go," a voice says, and another blunt cockhead bumps against his lips. He opens his mouth and someone shoves in; Erik swallows the cock down his throat and his hole clenches around the person who's fucking him from behind, large hands on his hips moving his ass. When he jerks and the cock in his mouth slips out, his body jolting as his prostate is hit from inside, someone says, "Now that's not nice," and slaps his face, hard, a ringing blow that rattles his skull.

He loses track of the Doms, the party, the beat of his own heart, and the reality he's in fades away. Slowly, inexorably, he falls into the black, into pain.

*

He's tied to a chair in the living room, the back of the seat digging into his throat and the rope chafing at his wrists and ankles and thighs where he's been forcibly splayed open like a butterfly pinned to velvet, his legs lashed to either arm of the chair, and his arms tied to the back. The wooden joints of the chair creak every time Mr Quested fucks into him and Erik wishes Mr Quested had just understood from the beginning -- that he'd taken Mr Shaw's gift of Erik without comment, that he hadn't been such a very weak Dom.

Mr Quested's hands are on the armrests to either side of Erik's body -- every time he thrusts he pulls on them a little, and it jerks the ropes, tugging on Erik's legs. He's fastidious in it; he only touches Erik at the groin where he's stuffed inside of him, nowhere else, as if he finds Erik distasteful.

"Do it properly, if you're going to do it at all," Mr Shaw says to Mr Quested from where he's stood right beside them, watching, and though his voice is calm Erik can hear the irritation beneath it, the banked-up anger. "For God's sake, are you a Dom or a sub?" And he reaches under Erik's chest to grab Erik's nipple, pinching it hard and twisting it.

Erik yelps before he can stop himself, and once he's made the sound he desperately wants to _un_ make it, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes as if that could make him invisible. Mr Shaw doesn't even say anything; he just twists harder, pinches tighter, until every time Erik rocks forward his nipple burns like it's tearing off.

"I'm next," Mr Essex says from somewhere in front of Erik; he blinks teary eyes and sees a waist coming towards him, hands on a belt, lowering a zipper. "Do you mind if I get young Erik to help me get ready for him first?"

"Be my guest," Mr Shaw says, then snaps, "Quested, fuck him like you have an erection at least," and lets go of Erik's nipple only to slap his soft, dangling cock with a rigid palm.

Erik gags from the sudden spike of pain, both hands twisting into fists and he can't help it, he knows it's bad, but it _hurts_ , and Mr Quested's cock hurts, too -- he's squirming beneath him, instinctive at first, only once he starts he can't stop. He hates himself, hates that he's crying like a child, and clawing at the chair as if he could pull himself off Mr Quested's dick and disappear. But there's nowhere to go, Mr Quested's hands are holding the chair in place and the ropes are holding _Erik_ in place, gloving Mr Quested's hard cock. 

Erik makes a pathetic, choking sound and all the nails in the chair suddenly spike into his awareness, turning in the wood. _Stop_ , he tells himself, suddenly panicking. _Stop, stop it,_ because the nails will spring free and the chair will break and they'll fall, Erik, Mr Quested, both of them, Mr Shaw will _kill_ him --

Mr Shaw growls and grabs Erik's hair in a tight fist, drags his head back, back, too far -- says, "This is what happens when you're too soft on submissives, Quested, they get uppity," and there's the crack of skin on skin, heat on Erik's face from Mr Shaw's other hand burning brightly --

*

"Yes sir, Mr Xavier. Ororo has him in her lap right now, we've not left him alone."

At first the lines are all blurred -- he has no sense of where the past ends and the present begins, somehow aware that he's lying down at the same moment as he's tied up -- his cheek still hurts, and for a second that throbbing pain is all he can think about, bone-deep and horrible. 

Slowly, slowly, he starts to realize where he is. On his back, someone's crossed legs pressing against his spine, naked and shivering beneath a scratchy-feeling blanket. He feels sick to his stomach, nausea crawling up the back of his throat, bile hot and acrid in his mouth. He blinks and the world shifts abruptly into focus.

_Where...?_

There are people all around him, too many people, Doms and submissives alike huddled in close, staring; it feels like hundreds of eyes peeling back his skin to peer into the heart of him and Erik wants to destroy himself, to disappear, to cut out his own existence from the world at the root.

"Hey," a voice says from above him, and then bends forward until he can see her face, upside-down and filling his vision. The girl looks worried, her hands supporting his head. "Are you back with us?"

"Dude, he was deeper in subspace than I've ever seen," somebody says, and the girl's eyes flick up in a sudden sharp glare.

"He wasn't in subspace, dumbfuck, he was having some kind of panic attack," she snaps. "God forbid anyone lets you near a sub if you can't even tell the difference, Jerry."

It's like there's a million miniscule insects crawling over his flesh. The music's been shut off, the party put on hold so everyone can gawk at Erik lying here on the floor with come leaking out his ass and a bruise slowly forming on his face, a fucked-up useless sub apparently far more interesting than dancing.

"I'm fine," he says, and loathes himself for the way it comes out thin and shaky. He's certain he's going to vomit, can feel his stomach rising up like a tide within him. He tries to push himself up, to get away from the unfamiliar hands still touching him, but his arms are weak and can't support his weight.

"Stay there," the girl says, pressing him back down. "You're not well, so don't make it worse. Your phone was ringing so Scott picked it up, and your dad is coming to get you." She stops, and looks suddenly very uncomfortable, mouth twisting. "Kid, you should have said you were underage! That's not cool -- you've made us all statutory rapists, you know? I mean, mea culpa, I should have checked, but I just assumed you had a baby face."

It's impossible to escape. The girl's hands are still on his shoulders, holding him down, and he can't see a gap between the people gathered around them. There's nowhere he can slip away unseen, to disappear. The weight keeping him in place suddenly feels oppressive, sickening, and he wants to push her away but she's a Domme. He can't.

He lifts his hands and presses them over his face, screwing his eyes up tight where they can't see. "I want to get dressed," he says when he finally lowers his hands again. "... Please."

A pause, then she says, more gently, "Sure. Scott, hand me his pants? Thanks." She passes them to Erik, who takes them with weak hands and struggles to push himself up, the girl's grip on his shoulders relaxing to let him. Everyone else is still watching, but Erik doesn't care; he just pushes the blanket aside and pulls his jeans back on, hitching his hips up to get them over his ass.

"Come on, assholes, go do your own thing," the girl snaps at their audience, waving at them with both hands rigid and dismissive. "This is a fetish party, go do fetishes to each other instead of gawking."

The others filter away slowly, breaking off into small, muttering groups. After a while someone turns the music back on. Even so it takes a while for people to start dancing again, to forget about Erik.

It's about half an hour before Erik feels Charles arrive, just his wristwatch at first, gleaming like a beacon through the crowd -- and then he sees Charles himself when Charles emerges nearer by, wrapped up in coat and scarf, tugging off his gloves; his face is sallow, but his eyes are determined, brows drawn down a little in that stubborn look he sometimes wears. Erik watches him wading the last little way through the scantily-clad dancers to where Erik is sat on the floor at the foot of the armchair, crouching down beside him.

"Come on, darling, let's go home," Charles says, offering Erik both hands, arms spread to make room.

Erik takes his hands and lets Charles pull him up to his feet. He feels dizzy for a moment, unsteady, but then it passes and he's left with the same feeling as before, like all his insides have been scooped out. He can't look Charles in the eye. He doesn't want to see the look on Charles' face, or know that Charles pities him.

 _I don't pity you, silly boy,_ Charles says to him silently, with a wash of worry and affection that rushes through Erik's mind, sweeping away some of that unsteadiness. _I just want you to be okay. I love you._

It's a strange thing to say, but when Charles says it it makes Erik feel better, somehow, even and more centered. People are still watching them, or else Erik would step closer and lean against the solid warmth of Charles' body and just stay there for a while. As it is he lets go of Charles' hands and wraps both arms around his own waist, hugging himself, fingers curling into the thin fabric of his shirt.

Charles smiles, a private, wry little thing, and then turns his attention to the girl who'd been looking after Erik, who is hovering to their right. "Thank you for taking care of him, Ororo," he says, giving her a firm nod. "I appreciate it. I'd also appreciate it if in future you all inquired about your playmates' ages, given that apparently none of you stopped to think about the fact Erik here was invited by your _high school friend._ "

"Of course," she says, chagrined and looking rather stunned to be the subject of Charles' focus. "It was a mistake, one I won't make again. Sir. Um. Are you ... "

"Yes, I'm a sub," Charles says. "No need to call me sir. Now, we'll take our leave. Come on, Erik. I have a car waiting downstairs." He offers Erik his hand again, but Erik shakes his head minutely, fingers tightening in the fabric of his shirt. Charles doesn't say anything, just smiles at him again and turns to walk away. Erik follows him out into the corridor and into the elevator, trailing behind him like a silent shadow.

In the car, Erik sits as close to the window as he can, pressing his body up against the chassis with his temple tilted against the ice-cold glass. He can't stop playing the past hour over in his mind, trying to identify the moment when he lost touch with reality, to know if there was a chance he missed to turn things around and keep himself locked in the here and now. Time should be linear, past and present two separate things, but for Erik it sometimes feels like his life is nothing but a mismatched collection of experiences, a lake of memories, and all he can do is drown in it. He can't move forward when there's no guarantee that tomorrow he'll wake up and be fifteen instead of ten, that if he lifts a hand to touch his neck he'll find bare skin instead of a leather collar.

Charles is sat at the other end of the backseat, his hands folded in his lap, quiet; he doesn't say anything, but Erik can feel his presence, like the radiating warmth of a fire, there if he wants to move closer to it. The man driving them says nothing either, might as well be an automaton, just there to get them from A to B.

It isn't fair, Erik thinks. It isn't fair that this is how everything has turned out -- that he knows when people look at him all they see is a broken toy, something meant to be used that's now useless. He feels like a marionette on invisible strings, and even though he's far away Shaw is still punishing him, like Erik committed some horrible crime and now his fate is to spend the rest of his life trying to make up for it. 

He closes his eyes, hands clenching into fists, then flexing. He's ... _angry._ Deeply and inexplicably. It's simmering beneath his sternum, threatening to spread, to consume him. Charles says he loves him. Did Shaw? Love him? 

Shaw wanted Erik to be the best he could be, to be a powerful asset to the cause, an obedient sub. And he could be kind, when he wanted to be. Shaw was the one who made him feel proud, when he achieved some new feat of mutation. He was the one who brought Erik books to read, who gave him a teddy bear to hold onto when he was a child and being fucked still felt like being split in half. He was the one who said Erik was his _good boy_ when Erik pulled down the Flatiron Building.

But he was also the one who broke his bones, who hurt him even when Erik was screaming for him to stop, who is waiting for Erik behind the curtain of his nightmares every time he falls asleep.

He's the one responsible for this, Erik thinks. He presses his fingertips against his left forearm, against the soft papery flesh of his scar. Him, and Essex. They're the reason Erik woke up on the floor of a party and didn't know where he was. They're the reason he's strong, but they're also the reason he's weak.

When he looks over at Charles, Charles is still sitting calmly, as if he's just ... waiting, as if he's completely unaffected. Except that's not quite true. Charles still looks pretty pale, and his lower lip looks swollen, like he's been chewing on it. After a moment Charles turns and looks back at Erik, and says, "We'll be home soon. I can run you a bath, if you like; there's a full-size tub in my bathroom."

"Okay," Erik says, and he turns his gaze down toward his knees. His attention keeps slipping, though, and he keeps finding himself staring at the scar instead, at the puckered edges to it. When he gets complacent, he forgets it's a scar at all, and it is fresh, deep and bloody, still shrieking with pain, until he blinks and it's nothing but a white line again. "... I forgot to make them use condoms."

Charles hums, deep and rumbling. "Hmm. Well, let's not worry about that now. We can go to the clinic and get you tested sometime soon, just to be safe."

"Okay," Erik says again. They spend the rest of the ride in silence, and Erik lets himself slip into something like a doze, his mind whiting out as he leans against the car door. He's afraid to let himself truly sleep. He doesn't want to find out what would happen if he did.

When they get home Charles brings him into the master bathroom, as promised, and Erik lurks there behind him while Charles runs the water and gets him a towel and washcloth, and brings in Erik's pajamas, neatly folded and waiting on the sink counter for when he's done.

Erik waits until Charles has gone back into his room to get undressed. The bathwater is perfectly hot when he sinks into it, and when he's in up to his shoulders it suddenly feels easier to breathe, like the steam has opened up his chest. He's so tired. His limbs are heavy, dragging him down, the slow throb of his pulse beating throughout his entire body like a ticking clock. He feels like his life belongs to somebody else, like his mind is just a fragile moth clinging to his flesh, his form that of a stranger, not him.

It could have been minutes, or hours, before the water is lukewarm and Erik makes himself drain it from the tub, scrubbing himself dry with the towel before he pulls on his pajamas. In the mirror over Charles' sink he looks more familiar to himself than he has in a very long time, young and skinny, a bruise darkening on his cheekbone. 

When he goes out into Charles' bedroom, Charles is in pyjamas and sitting in his bed, ostensibly reading a book; however when Erik comes out he looks up and immediately puts it aside without even marking the page. "How are you feeling?" he asks, as if he doesn't already know.

Erik doesn't know how to answer that question. He can feel a single drop of water cutting a cold path down the back of his neck, disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt. 

"I don't know how old I was when it started," he says. The words feel strange in his throat and on his tongue, but he has to say them. "Younger than I can remember. But I know that when I was three, Shaw fucked me and it almost killed me. I had to have surgery." He doesn't remember much -- just pain. Fear. Falling in and out of consciousness. He doesn't even remember what country they were in, or what Shaw told the doctors to excuse the obvious signs of what had happened. "When I woke up from anesthesia Shaw was there. He'd brought balloons." 

Charles' face does something complicated, like he's trying hard not to say something; Erik smiles, just slightly, and his heart feels like it skips a beat. "He promised he wouldn't let it happen again, like that. Said they'd be more careful. But they weren't, of course." They would go to small hospitals, in countries where no one knew who Shaw or the others were. Not that it mattered; Erik's old enough now to know Shaw must have killed the doctors before they left, to tie up loose ends. “When I was older I missed being sick, because when I was sick Shaw would take care of me. I'm only telling you this because I want you to understand why he was everything to me. Because he was the only person who seemed like he ... loved me."

Erik shakes his head, pressing his lips tight together. That heat in his chest grips him, hard, and he crosses his arms, digging his fingernails into his skin. "Only he hated me, too, I think. He took care of me, but he was the one who hurt me in the first place."

"Erik ... " Charles holds his arms out to him again, offering, and this time Erik goes, climbing onto the bed next to him and letting Charles pull him in close against his side, Charles' fingers gripping his shoulder just a little too tightly. Erik closes his eyes and doesn't complain -- he knows it's worse for Charles than it is for him to talk about these things, that Charles needs him to be near right now.

"I can't ... " Charles starts, then pauses, wrapping his other arm around Erik as well, so that he's cocooned against Charles' body, caught in his warmth. "Erik ... that's not love. You know that, don't you? If you love someone you don't hurt them, not without their explicit enjoyment and consent, anyway. I can't comment on how Shaw ... no, scratch that. It's not love, treating someone like that. I know it can be difficult to feel that way yourself when you're in that situation, but it's true." His breath is moist against Erik's forehead. "No matter who it is. I learned that the hard way myself."

Erik doesn't know if he believes Charles. Or maybe it's just that he doesn't want to believe him. He wants the good things he remembers to stay that way, undiluted by everything else. He has to believe that Shaw cared enough about the cause to feel -- _something_ for him, something good, even if just a little. Because Erik is a mutant, because he's powerful, even if he is a 7D. 

He wishes he weren't. He wishes he were actually a -1S. Maybe, if that were the case, Shaw wouldn't have hated him. He wouldn't punish Erik for being so disobedient, so seductive. 

Erik opens his eyes. Charles is in his sleeping clothes, an old t-shirt and probably some sweats; Erik can see his chest rising and falling as Charles breathes, in and out, an unsteady rhythm. Erik feels a sharp pang of something beneath his sternum and he shifts in Charles' arms to rest his head on Charles’ shoulder -- only he’s too tall, and it makes his neck hurt, so after a moment he straightens and curls his hand around the back of Charles' head, pulling him down instead to press Charles' brow against his own shoulder. For a moment Charles resists, but then he allows it, relaxing into the new arrangement.

“I’m pretty sure this is the wrong way round,” Charles mutters. “I’m supposed to be the shoulder.”

Erik just smiles and doesn’t say anything, keeping his hand where it is; Charles’ hair is warm and soft against his fingers, and he feels … safe, the two of them caught up together like this, in close orbit. 

It's over, Erik thinks. Shaw's reign over Hellfire is over. But his legacy is still undecided. The cause has been put on hold, and until this ends there is no going forward. It's his fault they're in this situation. His fault that the humans now think they have reason to reject the truth, that other mutants are turning against the cause. His fault that Erik can no longer disentangle what is right and what is wrong, love and hate, reality and nightmare. Past and present. 

For once, it's Erik who gets to decide what happens next. Shaw's fears have come true. The future of Hellfire is in Erik's hands.

He looks at Charles, at the pale slope of his nose and his dark lashes moving slightly against his cheek. He presses his hand harder against the back of Charles' head and lets the pieces drop into place. In the past, it was Shaw who made all his choices. Now, it's Erik's turn.

"I'm not sure if this is an improvement or not," Charles says from where Erik has him tucked against his shoulder, though he doesn't open his eyes. "On the one hand, you're taking control of your life, which is good. On the other hand you apparently want to become the new leader of your old terrorist gang. It's a bit of a pickle trying to decide whether I approve, I have to say."

Erik grins, just a little, and relaxes his grip on Charles' head enough that Charles can sit up and look at him again. "You approve," he says. "You approve, because I'm going to testify."

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: contains an explicit flashback scene to child rape. References to very-young pedophilia/child sexual abuse. "Consensual" statutory rape.


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With profuse thanks as ever to the lovely Subtilior for her help with betaing the fic! And HOLY SHITBALLS, look at [this amazing art by Palalife](http://palalife.tumblr.com/post/96566842378/all-the-rest-is-rust-and-stardust-by-spicepiano) which seriously blew our minds, it's so beautiful ;_; Go take a look!
> 
> Content warnings are in the note at the end of the chapter. As with last week there are some serious issues discussed in this chapter, so if you do have triggers we suggest checking the cw first!

_Charles_

"I don't know, I just ... I just don't really get what I need from it, I guess," Charles says. He's sitting on the floor in Raven's apartment, the floor cushion comfortable under his knees as he leans against her knee. Raven is stroking her fingers through his hair, toying with it and dragging her nails slowly over his scalp. 

Charles loves having his head and hair touched. It feels better than anything has in months, and his eyes keep trying to close. It's a lazy Saturday afternoon, one of the very few where he doesn't have things to do, and this would be perfect -- if he could really relax, properly let go of himself, instead of coming to complain to his sister about his relationship. "I mean, Gabrielle is great," he says, shrugging, "and I like her and we have fun, but, well."

"Gabrielle doesn't get you down far enough," Raven finishes for him, her fingers not slowing in their persistent motion. "It's not surprising really, Charles; she's only a 2D, and at best you're an acting -1S, if that, but you're not an easy nut to crack for any Dom. You never really submit.” 

She takes a sip from the glass in her other hand, then passes it down for him to hold for her. “I mean … well, to my knowledge you've never hit subspace, and she's just not strong enough to make you. Normal people just find a different partner, you know, if their current one isn't dynamically compatible. There's no point a 1D trying to Dom a -1S. The sub needs someone stronger to guide them down, someone who can over their control in that way."

Her index finger traces the back curve of Charles' ear and he shivers, pleased, the sensation thrilling down his spine. Raven notices, of course, and does it again, even as she continues, "The only reason I can get you to go this far is because I'm your sister and you were raised with me so you trust me enough to let me Domme you, and even so I still can't actually Dominate you despite the fact that I'm a _4D_. I don't understand why you keep dating Doms that aren't powerful enough for you. It's taking all my willpower to get you down this far."

Charles sighs, turning his cheek against her thigh. "I'm not really down, you know -- I'm just tired, not submissive. Sorry."

The thing is -- the thing is, Charles isn't entirely certain he's even capable of subspace any more. He's no saint; he's been with more than enough Doms since he became sexually active in college that by now he should have found a way, if there was one. And yet he never has. He clings to the lingering memory of how subspace felt when he was a highly submissive child, before the telepathy came and took the option away from him, trying to reach that feeling again, even if it was awful at the time -- instead of finding someone who would make it good, who would take control and give him joy in it, now Charles is a submissive who can control anyone and everyone around him. The irony being that it had felt like a blessing at first, to be uncontrollable by others.

These sessions with Raven help, of course, but it never feels like enough. Like an itch he can't scratch.

"Hmm," Raven says; her leg shifts, and then she's moving, getting to her feet and dislodging Charles from his place. "All right. If this isn't working for you then we'll have to try something else." She turns her head, and when Charles looks up he sees her from a strange angle, catches the glossy blue underside of her jaw. "Hank?"

"Yes?" Across the room Hank pops his head around the kitchen door frame. His mind is all attentiveness and yearning to please; this, Charles thinks, is what it's supposed to feel like. Hank might be blue and furry and built to bench press cars, but he's a meek little kitten for Raven, and it doesn't seem difficult for him at all.

"Could you fetch me the shibari rope from the bedroom, and a blindfold?" Raven asks, before turning back to Charles. "You stay here, and let me take care of you," she says firmly, taking back her glass to set it aside, and she stands there with him until Hank comes back with the requested items, handing them over with head slightly bowed.

"Do you mind if Hank stays?" Raven asks, already measuring out the rope in her hands, and Charles shakes his head. "All right," she says. "Stand up so I can start on your chest, then."

It's something they've done before when Charles' brain won't quieten down, this non-sexual bondage; it's relaxing not to be able to move, to fight, and to feel Raven's hands moving over him, intertwining the ropes and tying clever knots over his clothes. She forms a basic neck halter first to build from, then loops it together into a harness that lashes his forearms together behind his back, his hands resting on his opposite elbows.

"How does that feel?" Raven asks.

"It's fine," Charles says, feeling a little slower now, somehow, like his thoughts have gone from a running pace to a fast walk. "I'm comfortable."

"Good. Put your feet together."

Charles does as he's told, standing with heels and big toes touching when Raven nudges him with her foot; she has meters of rope left, and so she starts working a basic leg bind around his thighs.

"So I guess things aren't going so well with Gabrielle, then," Hank says quietly from where he's sat on the coffee table opposite Charles, his hands resting lax between his knees. He sounds and feels sympathetic, rather than judgmental, so Charles just sighs.

"Not really," he admits, letting his head bow forward a little. "I mean, it's good, we're okay, and I like her, but ... I keep wanting it to be enough so I keep trying, but ... I know it's not rational." The rope is helping, but when he tests himself he's still capable of making his own decisions, of arguing; it's better than nothing, though even this tends to leave him feeling rather ... unfulfilled, after, like he's not quite reached his goal. The fact he can think of testing himself is rather a clue as well. "I'm not sure it would be any better with a stronger Dom, anyway. It always ends up this way, if nothing else breaks things off."

"You're just lucky Hank doesn't mind me doing this for you," Raven says at his feet, her scales rippling but not changing as she kneels down to work on his ankles, wrapping and threading through the rope to pull it tight. "Honestly, Charles, I don't mind either, but it's not good for you never having subspace time. It's not an optional thing -- your brain chemistry needs it, whether or not your mutation’s fucked with that. You need to find someone who can put you properly under, and if that's not Gabrielle, then I'm sorry, but I don't think it'll work out. You need to keep looking. I can't imagine it's super satisfying for her, either, not being able to put you down properly."

It's not untrue, or even unfair, but Charles winces anyway, trying to shift -- until Raven's hand presses him gently back into place, and he relaxes again, the act of obedience soothing. "I know," he admits, letting his eyes fully close. If it were a common problem then maybe there would be a medical treatment for it, but as things stand … Charles is, to all intents and purposes, alone.

Raven pats his knee and gets to her feet, the rope tied off at last. "It sucks," she says, more sympathetically this time, puts one hand on his back, the other on the back of his head, and pushes him down onto the couch. The moment he feels himself starting to tip Charles starts to struggle, can't help it; the ropes pull tighter the more he squirms, and his breath is coming short, and oh God -- he falls onto the couch with a painful bounce of springs, can't move, sprawled there thrashing and entangled by the rope.

"Calm down, it's okay," Raven says, dropping down beside his hip and grabbing Charles by the chin, making him look at her. "It's all right. You always panic at this point and then you're always fine, aren't you? I've got you, Charles. You're okay."

Charles freezes, and he feels like he's choking, but he stares back at her anyway, until Raven's golden eyes are all he's looking at, making them all he can think about, until his pounding heart starts to slow and he sags into the couch, breathing in short shallow gasps.

"You're okay," Raven says again, reaching with both hands to stroke his face, his hair. "You're here with me and Hank and you're safe. Just relax. There's nothing to fight and you can't move, so you might as well relax. Okay?"

It’s like trying to drain away something thick and viscous through a pinhole, the anxious need to get loose fighting Raven’s will inside of him, tearing at Charles’ insides.

"... okay," he says, closing his eyes, and tries to concentrate on his breathing for a while, shivering like a spooked horse and tuning out the soft murmurs between Raven and Hank until there's a soft-padded hand on his cheek, claws carefully held away from his skin. Hank is kneeling beside him with orange juice that he presses to Charles' lips, tilting the glass up when Charles is ready to drink and letting it flow slowly into Charles' mouth.

He is calmer, then, after he's been there for a while, unable to do anything but lay there, accept Raven's hand in his hair, Hank's presence at his side. There's still a niggling, uneasy, relentless part of him that can't be quieted, that insists on keeping him from really relaxing the way he needs to -- that won't, perhaps will never, submit.

Charles tries, and tries, and tries. But in the end, although the bondage is helping the ropes can't conquer that part of him any more than any of the Doms who have ever tried have been able to. He just lies there and listens to the clock ticking and the three of them breathing and wonders if it would be better if he just fell asleep.

"Do you love her?" Raven asks eventually, breaking the silence.

Charles opens his eyes. "I like her, but ... no," he says, with a deflating sort of feeling as he does. Probably a good thing to admit to himself, given how hard he's been fighting to deny the inevitable. "Not yet, anyway. And you know it's hard for me to really trust people. It doesn't just _happen_ , not for me."

Raven gives him a sad smile, and her thumb smooths over his forehead. "I know." She strokes her fingers across his face then says, finally, wearily, "Come on. Let's get you untied."

Charles thinks about that conversation when he's on his way home, walking instead of taking a car, at Raven's order; it gives him time to unwind from the difficulty he has with submitting as well as letting him obey for longer, the effects lasting until he's completed his tasks. It's true that he likes Gabrielle, that he respects her and finds her attractive and likes to spend time with her -- but there's something holding him back, and he has a bad feeling that it's dynamic, that it's that mismatch keeping him from letting himself fall.

It makes him pretty angry, actually, which is not the mood he suspects Raven hoped he would be in for his walk. It's so unfair, incredibly unfair, that he's gone from being -5S as a child to being dragged into this limbo right before puberty, unable to submit or to be truly his own man; chemically he's strongly submissive, but his brain won't let him be what he's meant to be, and so he's stuck. Fucked over by his own physiology, his telepathy, the very thing that has made him who he is -- desperate to submit, and instead made capable of dominating everyone in his path. 

The irony of it is that he's no different from Erik, not really. They just got different ends of the same shit stick.

Charles stalks along the street like a ground-level stormcloud, rumbling thunder to himself and probably to others, too, if their expressions are anything to go by; the people dodging around him look a little alarmed, but none of them seem to know why. He's probably projecting.

He stops on a corner to pinch the bridge of his nose hard between his thumb and index finger and squeezes, digging his nails into the thin skin and dragging himself forcefully back under control; by the time he has his mind back under wraps he's not sure how long he's been standing there, diverting foot traffic like a rock in a stream. Each breath feels like it's rubbing him raw from the inside out. He's angry. He's so rarely truly angry that it stings.

When he opens his eyes he realizes that he's stood outside of a sex store, side-on to the displays and reflected in the window atop a large arrangement of feather teasers, canes and whips.

Why not? His jaw sets hard and tight. Why not buy something new and please his own damn self? Since that looks like it will be the order of things for the rest of his life.

Charles pushes the door of the store open almost too violently; the bell attached to it jingles loudly, and the other patrons turn to look at him in surprise, Doms and subs and couples all browsing the densely-packed shelves. It's the work of a moment to smooth over the startle reflex in their minds; probably unethical, but Charles doesn't really care right now. None of them are going to know, or sue.

Taking care to be quieter, he steps out of the way of the door and glances around to get his bearings. The solo toys are off to the left, so he makes his way over to them and tries not to frown at them too aggressively, feeling prickles running all over his skin.

Plugs and beads, nipple clamps and dildos; in the end Charles picks out a pair of remote-controlled handcuffs with a soft leather lining and a frankly enormous prostate massager, because at this point he feels like he deserves to be properly fucked physically even if he can't manage it emotionally or psychologically. When he takes them up to the counter to pay it's almost an anti-climax, because the cashier doesn't care that Charles is taking the future of his sex life into his own hands for the rest of his days, she just rings them up like they're any other purchase and puts them into the store's branded bag for him to carry them home.

Charles manages to keep his emotional momentum all the way home, and when he arrives he's grateful to find Erik is out. There's a note on the fridge door that says he's off somewhere with Madelyne and won't be back until after dinner, which is good, because it means Charles can go immediately upstairs and jerkily strip off beside the bed, leaving his clothes on the floor before climbing up onto it and laying down on his back with the paper bag rustling at his bare hip.

It feels ... he takes a breath in and rolls over to fetch the lube from his bedside drawer, along with a small towel to keep it off the bedclothes. He places it under his ass, adjusting himself so he's sat squarely on it.

Then he opens the bag.

*

_Erik_

Erik is given to understand that, under normal circumstances, he'd be meeting with the entire team of prosecutors involved in the Hellfire Club trial. As it is Gabrielle has arranged to meet with him alone, just the two of them and Charles, in the privacy of their own home. Erik would rather Charles not be there -- he asked if Charles could wait upstairs, but Gabrielle informed him that given he's a minor, he must have a parent or legal guardian present. 

It makes sense, but that doesn't mean Erik has to like it. He's too aware of the effect these kinds of discussions have on Charles. There are some things Charles needs to know, some things Charles _makes_ him talk about in therapy for reasons Erik has come, grudgingly, to understand, but Erik doesn't miss the way Charles' face will go a little pale, or how he'll suddenly seem so uncomfortable in his own skin. All that is quite aside from the fact he's been so awkward lately around Gabrielle. Normally Erik would celebrate, but Charles seems so ... worried about it.

"It's fine, Erik," Charles says, reaching over to squeeze Erik's hand for a moment and smiling. "Don't worry about me, I'm all right. Just do this in your own time and be honest, okay?"

They're sitting on the sofa in the den, Gabrielle across from them in Charles' usual armchair with a recorder running between them on the coffee table. Erik still doesn't like her, but for now she's the person he has to work with to get the job done, so he can grit his teeth and bear it.

"We'll cover as much as we can this session," she says, flipping to a fresh page on her legal pad. At least she's being professional. "If we need to take a break and pick it back up some other time, we can absolutely do that, okay Erik? If you get uncomfortable at any point, just let me know."

"I won't," Erik says, and when both of them look at him he clarifies, "Get uncomfortable, that is."

He can tell Gabrielle doesn't quite believe him, but she disguises it well enough. "All the same. It's a lot of material, and it's entirely possible we won't have time to discuss it all today."

He nods, and settles back in the sofa, leaning against the soft cushions. Charles' arm is just next to him, close enough that it brushes his, an anchor of warmth. "I suppose we'd better get started, then," he says, and he ignores the way his heart is already beating a little faster, adrenaline seizing up his muscles.

Gabrielle looks down at her papers, and after a moment, back to him. "Please state your name for the record.”

“Erik Lehnsherr.”

She ticks something off her sheet. “What is the nature of your relationship with Sebastian Shaw, Jason Wyngarde, Janos Quested, Azazel Rasputin, Nathaniel Essex, and Emma Frost?"

It's a very open-ended question, and Erik's a little relieved this is how she started -- he wouldn't have known where to begin if she'd just asked him to talk about the times they had sex, or they hit him, or about any of the missions. This is easy to answer. Still, Erik expects it’ll be downhill from here. 

"We are -- were -- members of the Hellfire Club," he says. It's hard not to fidget; all the attention in the room is fixed on him, and he can feel the weight of it on his shoulders, threatening to crush him. "Shaw was the leader. The rest were captains and lieutenants -- very highly-ranked in the organization. It's the reason we were all together in New York: in addition to our planned mission, Shaw was giving his officers an annual review." 

But that's not the only thing she's asking, and Erik knows it. "They're all Dominants. Shaw was Head Dom, so he was in charge, since he's 5D and was the strongest Dom of all of them. Except for me, I guess, but I was raised submissive."

"And as an alleged submissive, what was your personal relationship with the aforementioned parties?" Gabrielle asks, utterly devoid of emotion.

"I belonged to them, as their submissive," Erik says. "I served them as necessary, obeyed them, and, with the exception of Emma Frost, had sex with them."

"Can you tell me about the first time you had sex with one of the Hellfire Doms we've been talking about?" 

It's a harder question than she likely realizes. "No," Erik says. "I don't remember the first time. I remember bits and pieces of things, from when I was very young. Like, I remember sucking cock used to make me gag and I'd have trouble breathing after. I remember having a lot of broken bones. But how much does anyone remember from that age? I was in the hospital a lot, and I remember that, but Shaw said I'd been hospitalized before that, as well. I came to live with them when I was two, so if Shaw knew my DS score already, I suppose that's how old I'd have been the first time."

Charles takes a soft breath beside him, and reaches out to put his hand over Erik's, squeezing it tightly; when Erik glances over at him he has that careful face on, the one he wears to try and look normal. It used to fool Erik at least some of the time, but not anymore. Erik turns his hand palm-up in Charles' and laces their fingers together. 

Gabrielle goes on to ask him for details, making him describe explicitly every time he remembers ever having sex. It's exhausting, and at one point Erik has to get up and pour himself a glass of water to keep his mouth from feeling so dry. They go over anal, oral, times he used his hands -- times he got fucked between his thighs since his hole was still too swollen -- the things Essex made him do to those little boys, all the whips and leashes and chains, the ropes and dildos. She drags it all the way up to night before the raid, when Azazel came into his room shortly after midnight and woke him up to fuck his ass. 

"You mention," she says, after they've been talking for over two hours, "that they would beat you, if you resisted. Did that ever happen in other circumstances?"

This, Erik finds harder to talk about. He doesn't like remembering his own failings -- if he can call them that. It's the only word he can think of, even now. Failure, and its synonyms. Disobedience. A voice deep within him reminds him what it really was: punishment, for not wanting to be hurt. For something that wasn't even about latent Dominance, but just about being human.

"Yes," he says, and she makes him go into detail about all those times, too, every beating, each and every memory he has of being made to go days, a week, without food as punishment for a crime so slight as daring to look a Dom in the eye.

After a long while Gabrielle shifts in her chair, uncrossing and recrossing her legs, turning what has to be the twentieth page on her clipboard. "Erik, to your best estimate, how many times did these people rape you?"

He bites the inside of his cheek, hating the way he flinches. He makes himself say, "I only fought until I was ten. And even then, not all the time. It's hard to say -- I'm sure I invited it more often than not. So maybe four or five times."

"Erik," Charles says quietly, "she's asking by the standard definition of rape, not the number of times that you feel you were raped. We both know those differ by quite a large margin."

He looks at Gabrielle, who is, surprisingly, looking at _Charles_. "Charles is right," she says after a moment, gaze flicking back to Erik. "Let me rephrase. Tell me how many times you had sex with any member of the Hellfire Club, regardless of whether they forced you, were punishing you, or whether or not you feel you brought it upon yourself. This includes any time they anally, orally, or digitally penetrated you."

So it doesn't count, then, if he used his hands or if they fucked themselves against him, or any time he serviced a female Domme. Interesting. "Hold on," Erik says, and he closes his eyes to do the math. 

Before he was twelve, it was about three times a day. Between twelve and fourteen, more like six. How much should he count from when he was younger than five, the years that are so blurry in his memory? Would they have done it more or less, since he was so small? Essex, he knows, would have liked it more, but enough to equal three times a day?

Three is probably close enough, he decides. So, three times ten, then add that to the product of two and six.... Then all of that, by 365 days in a year....

"15,330 times, give or take," he says, opening his eyes again. "That's just an estimate, though."

"Excuse me," Charles says suddenly, getting to his feet; he lets go of Erik's hand last of all. "I need to go to the bathroom. I'll be back in just a moment." He walks away before anyone can say anything, and Erik can feel his watch making its way upstairs on his wrist, all the way along into the master bathroom, though he doubts very much that Charles is peeing with his hand clutching the edge of the toilet bowl.

Erik feels a gut-wrenching surge of regret, and shame, instantly wishing he could take the figure back, wishing he'd stuck to what he said about four or five -- wishing he hadn't said anything at all. He knows Charles will be all right, that it's just sick, but that doesn't make it easier to sense the way Charles' wrist is shaking against the porcelain.

 _Don't be silly,_ Charles says in his head, though even his projected voice sounds, feels, nauseous. _You need to tell Gabrielle the truth or she can't prosecute effectively._

Knowing that doesn't make it any better, though. Erik does the best he can with what he has, though, so he thinks tentative, comforting thoughts, imagining patting Charles' back and wiping his hair off his sweaty brow. Not as good as doing that in real life, but he thinks if he chased after Charles at the moment he'd just make it worse, because he'd only be confirming to Gabrielle what she probably already suspects, and if Charles wanted her to know he was puking he'd have said something.

So he pretends to be very interested in his glass of water, turning it around in his hand and taking an awkward sip, avoiding Gabrielle's gaze. 

The worst part of it is when Charles comes back downstairs and looks perfectly normal; he smells minty-fresh when he sits down beside Erik as if he's been gargling, and his face is too serene, untroubled by their discussion. "My apologies," he says, taking a sip from his own water glass. "Please carry on."

Erik strongly suspects that Charles is projecting his appearance to the both of them, but there's no way to prove it without calling him out in front of Gabrielle.

"I think that's all I want to talk about for today," Erik says after a second. He can do that much, at least. "Can we finish some other time?" Beside him, he feels Charles relax very slightly.

"Of course," Gabrielle says, closing her notepad and clipping her pen back in place. "I'll type this up and send it to you tonight -- I'll need you to add dates to each incident. And then we can make an appointment to continue next week. Would that work?"

"Anything to get me out of school," Erik says with one corner of his lips turned up and Gabrielle laughs. 

He and Charles both see her to the door, although thankfully she doesn't stick around to try to make much small talk with Charles. If she had, Erik might have sunk through the floor and down to the center of the earth right then and there.

"Are you okay?" Erik says quietly once the door is closed and locked behind her and he can feel the elevator making its slow journey back to the ground floor.

"Shouldn't I be asking you that?" Charles' smile is more real now, if not happy, and he touches Erik's shoulder briefly before heading back into the apartment, making a beeline for the kitchen.

Erik follows somewhat more slowly, though he can sense Charles fiddling around in the kitchen already. When he gets there Charles is busy making tea, the kettle full of water and on the stovetop, Charles engaged with the process of fitting the loose tea leaves into the small metal tea balls.

It's only now, with Gabrielle gone and their world turned back to normal -- or, maybe, just because Charles asked the question and made him remember -- that Erik suddenly realizes he feels exhausted. It's as if blood has been drained out of him, and he hadn't noticed at the time that he'd given more than he realized. It seemed so easy, before, saying he would testify, only now that it's really happening, now that he's ... said all that he's said, and there's no going back, it feels .... There's no word for it. It's like he's a boat cut adrift on the open sea.

On lead-like limbs he crosses the kitchen and leans against Charles' back, bending down enough to press the top of his head against Charles' nape. Charles goes immediately still, and Erik turns his head to the side, closing his eyes and just breathing for a little while. Charles still smells, distractingly, of mint.

"If your aim is to make me feel short," Charles says, starting to move again, hands shifting into motion, "then you're succeeding. Good job, Gigantor."

Erik lets out a heavy breath, and smiles despite himself, even though the expression feels tight and worn on his face. "I'm not sure this was such a good idea after all," he says. It's one thing saying all this to Gabrielle -- but he can't imagine himself getting up in front of the International Criminal Court, in front of Shaw and all the others, and saying it to _them._ Just the thought makes it feel like the bottom has dropped out of his stomach.

"In these sorts of cases, testimony can usually be given in a separate room via videolink, if you feel you need to," Charles says as the kettle starts whistling, reaching over to pluck it from the stove and pour the water. "But in any case, I think it's very brave of you, Erik, and I think you made the right choice. You know and I know that no matter how conflicted you feel about Shaw and the others, you also know just what they've done on purpose to your life. There's no shame in wanting justice for that."

Erik makes a meaningless noise and breathes in another lungful of mint and, this time, a hint of Charles' shampoo. After a second he opens his eyes, and asks, "Did you ever prosecute Cain?"

It's the first time Charles has talked about wanting justice for this kind of thing, and considering -- considering what Charles has said out loud, and what he's said by not-saying, Erik would think he has. That maybe he's been in Erik's shoes, himself, and can ... can at least tell Erik what it will be like, when it happens.

"No, I didn't," Charles says, still in that same calm, controlled voice, though his body has stiffened again, limbs and spine rigid. "I didn't get the chance, to my shame. I just ran as soon as I could away from that house and those people, and I never went home again until they were all dead or missing but Raven. Cowardly but effective."

"Oh." Erik lifts his head, pulling back from Charles and stepping to the side so he can see his face, at least in profile. "I don't think it's cowardly. I tried to run a lot, especially when I was younger. I didn't succeed, but I still tried." And Erik always thought himself more disobedient than cowardly.

"Mmm, well, it meant leaving Raven there with them," Charles says, picking up his mug of tea and turning around, cupping it between his palms and leaning back against the counter. He looks ... disturbingly normal, adult and controlled, as if it doesn't matter to him, talking about these things. "In any case, this is not about me. How are you doing, really? It can't be easy talking for so long about so many painful memories. They were very vivid in your mind."

Erik wraps his arms around himself, curling his fingers into his shirt fabric. "I don't know," he says. "If anything, I'm worried I didn't give enough information. Like I'll realize I forgot something. Or that maybe none of this is ... is really what she's looking for. What if it's not bad enough? If it's not severe enough to ... count?" And Erik goes through all of this, and they still go free. And then, they hunt him down.... His gut clenches and he grits his teeth, a muscle twitching in his cheek.

"To answer those in turn," Charles says, taking a sip of his tea and offering a second mug to Erik, who takes it and holds it close to his chest, "Number one, as you know I have her phone number, so you can call her if you remember anything else. Number two, if this wasn't what she was looking for then Gabrielle would have stopped you and asked different questions until she found it. And number three, this is certainly bad enough, but even if it weren't, I could stop all of them with my mind before they got within a mile of this building, so they would have to come through me first. Modesty aside, if Miss Frost is a kitten then I'm a fully-grown tiger." Charles sips at his tea again. "Mmm, this is good. Did you buy a new blend?"

"It's a new Irish Breakfast," Erik says. "I think it's mixed with a little green tea and cinnamon. I got it at the 4th Street Co-op." He makes himself taste a little of his own, closing his eyes and letting the steam waft up over his forehead. It tastes a little bit of sweet potato, too, now that he thinks about it. Strange, but good. "I know I should be reacting more to this. I don't know why I'm not. It just doesn't feel like something I can be upset about."

"You feel what you feel," Charles says, with a little shrug. "It's what you do with it that's more important. You're experiencing the classic symptoms of PTSD, and how those manifest and work themselves out we'll just have to wait and see. But don't try and force yourself to feel things you don't. It doesn't work like that."

"All right," Erik says, even though he still thinks -- he still thinks, since he doesn't react like Charles does, since he can talk about these things at all, maybe what happened to him isn't at all what Charles thinks it is. That they've all grossly misunderstood, and when they find out, they'll think he's an imposter for fooling them like this.

Charles shakes his head. "Just because we don't react the same way doesn't make either of us wrong, Erik. You're overthinking things and it's going to drive you mad. Just do and say and feel whatever's right for you, short of murder or other miscellaneous crimes. Okay?"

"As you say," Erik says, and though he arches an eyebrow at Charles he's smiling a little, all the same.

*

A week later, when Erik gets to school, he can tell something's changed.

People are staring at him, more than usual, and when he catches them at it they look away only to sneak a peek again a second later. He doesn't think too much of it at first, but it's not long before he's starting to take subtle inventory of himself, wondering if he's got something on his face, or if there's a problem with the way he's dressed.

"What?" he finally snaps at a particularly curious onlooker, a sub who immediately flinches back and swears it's nothing, then scuttles off before he can question her further.

That, if anything, is even more damning.

He stops at his locker, opening the combination lock with his power. In the tiny mirror he has magnetized to the inside of the door he can see all the eyes on him, looking more openly when they think he can't see, people bunched up in groups and talking among themselves in lowered voices. He tries to pick someone out, someone who's alone, maybe a Dom he can bring into the bathroom and get an answer from when they're all chatty post-climax.

There's a sudden slapping of shoes on the tile and Erik closes his locker door only to find Madelyne on the other side of it, puffing out of breath and pink in the face, her eyes wide and staring at him. "Come on, idiot," she hisses, grabbing him by the elbow and tugging hard. "Come on, come on! Why is your phone off? What is wrong with you? I've been trying to call you for like half an hour!"

"Mr Gibson doesn't allow phones in class," Erik says, letting her pull him along into a quick walk, her nails digging hot crescents into his skin.

She's been acting strangely ever since they went to that college party, but even when Erik tries to push the issue she always evades him, changing the subject or mysteriously needing to go somewhere without him. It's offputting now that she's suddenly so desperate to speak with him, but Erik doesn't get the sense that now is the time to split hairs. "Listen to me," he says after a moment, his own tone clipped, "what is going on? Where are you taking me?"

But all Madelyne says is, "Not in the hall -- the Spanish classroom, it's empty this period. Now _come on!_ " She looks flustered, even now that the effort of her run is wearing off, is biting at her lower lip as if she might bite right through it.

Madelyne closes the door as soon as they get inside the empty classroom, turning the lock. Erik's imagination is, he admits, starting to run away with him a little: it's impossible not to start guessing at what might be going on, each idea more horrible and improbable than the last.

"Is this private enough for you?" he snaps.

"Erik, everyone's saying _you're_ the Hellfire Club Kid," Madelyne says, turning back to face him with her arms crossed over her chest, hugging her elbows in against her sides. "It's all over school, everyone's talking about it -- is it true?" Her eyes catch his and he's shocked to see they even look a little wet. "Erik?"

Fuck. He should have known -- no, scratch that, they _said_ no one would know, that since he's a minor they can't release his name to the press, something about laws protecting child witnesses -- how did anyone even find _out?_ Surely Gabrielle wouldn't have told anyone, or Charles --

Erik’s breath is coming fast and shallow, hitching in his throat, and his stomach is cramping, a feeling like he’s going to throw up -- how is he going to control this? It's already all around school, and it's not even first period yet -- the rumors must have been circulating since sometime yesterday. Christ....

All right. All right, he tells himself, ignoring the rapid stumble of his heartbeat. As far as you know, it's a rumor. There may not be anything substantiated unless you admit it, so _stay. calm._

He lets out his breath as slowly and evenly as he can, and says, "Why would they say that?"

Madelyne swallows, hard. "Joanie said that Ben Sears said that Rob West in the senior class was doing research into the case for his thesis project, and he realized that Dr Xavier is a mutant psychologist and he's working on the case, and anyway he's too uptight to have had you as a teenager, and you appeared in school right after everything happened, and you're a mutant. And you're a strong mutant just like the Hellfire Kid, and you're foreign, you have an accent, right? And so everyone is saying it's true and that's you. Is it you, Erik?" Her breath is coming in big, alarming gulps after blurting all that out. "Because if it is you can tell me, I won't tell anyone, you know that. But I need to know. Is that you?"

His head pounds like he’s on the verge of a migraine; he wants to press his fingers to his temples, rub it out, but that would give too much away. He feels sick to his stomach, dizzy, and it's hard to ground himself here in this reality when part of him keeps wanting to go careening back into the past. 

"I'm foreign, a mutant, and Charles is uptight? That's the evidence against me? Outstanding," Erik says. He has his power strung up through the pipes in the building, could bring it down around their heads. He doesn't, of course. That would be far more damning than the rest of it.

"Erik," Madelyne says in a stronger tone, her lips pursing as she frowns. "Is it true or not? I have to get to class sometime today, and I'm skipping right now to try and tell you what's going down, so don't be an asshole to the messenger."

"Why do you want to know?" He takes a half-step back from her, arms coming up to wrap around his chest automatically, and it's as good as an admission of guilt, he knows that, but he can't help feeling defensive. "What does it change, if it is true?"

"For one, I'm a non-mutant human," she says, hugging herself tighter. "Are we really friends or are you just pretending to like me but really you wish you could put me out to graze down on the farm with the other animals? Or kill me?"

"Honestly," Erik says, "I hadn't even really thought about it."

"That I'm human? Or what your plans were for me after your club eliminates non-mutant civilization and you can do what you want?" If her tone were angrier it would be easier, but Madelyne is crying now, tears running down her face and smearing her mascara. "I want to be really mad at you but I'm scared and I'm scared for you and this really sucks, Erik."

 _For fuck's sake._ He reaches out awkwardly to rest his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it once. He's not sure that really makes it any better, though. "Nobody's killing humans,” he lies. Not _all_ humans, anyway. “Shaw's not in charge anymore. So as far as what would happen to you after human supremacy is eliminated, that's really a non-issue."

Madelyne gives him a long, sceptical look, but finally she steps forward into his space and puts her arms around his neck, tugging him into a hug for a few seconds before she steps back, wiping away her tears, suddenly all business, everything else put away. "All right then," she says, though her voice is still a little thick. "We need to decide what you want to do about everything, what spin you want to put on it. I can call Daddy's spin doctor and ask her what she thinks we should do, she's really good at this stuff."

"Can 'deny it' be an option?" Erik says dryly. He's pretty sure there's no spin in the universe that is going to make a school full of humans accept the idea of him being Hellfire. He purposefully didn't tell Madelyne that he doesn't necessarily mean he thinks Shaw's wrong, either, he doesn’t expect that particular detail will stay secret for long, either. Especially if he makes contact with another cell and assumes Shaw's old role. 

She manages a small smile, but shakes her head. "Daddy always says never deny anything that's true, because it always comes out. That's why he's still a senator after fifteen years."

Great. Well, he's not wrong. It will come out, sooner or later. "I'm testifying against them. That's part of the reason I'm not in jail right now."

"Oh, is that why? I'd assumed you blew the judge or something."

Erik gives her a dirty look, but Madelyne just smiles serenely. There's the other matter, too, of course -- the real reason he isn't in jail. But once he reveals that, there's no taking it back. The whole sordid story will be open for the world to see ... and Erik's not an idiot, he knows where this is going, that if a high school boy can put the pieces together then it's only a matter of time before someone else does. Particularly at this school, where kids will talk to their parents, and their parents are some of the most powerful and influential people in the country.... 

But Erik also can't see this ending any other way. Everyone will find out, and the only reason they don't already know is because they're too distracted by him being a freedom fighter to finish putting two and two together. Either the rest of this comes out on its own, or Erik controls it. In the end, that's an easy choice to make.

He makes a show out of hesitating, all the same, trying to act the way he thinks Charles would if Charles were telling someone else this information. It's a bit disingenuous, he thinks, playing the victim card when he knows how complicit he really was, but a victim is all anyone is going to see. 

"There's another reason, too," he says, and he meets Madelyne's eyes, almost wishing he didn't have to say this, that it could stay his secret forever. Too late; he lost that option when he spoke to Gabrielle Haller. 

"What is it?" Madelyne asks, immediately, lowering her voice. He wonders if some part of her, even an unconscious part, knows what he's going to say without him even having said it yet.

"The other charges," Erik says.

"Which other -- oh." And it's strange to see the blood drain from her face as Madelyne realizes what he must be talking about, what he must mean. "Oh, shit. Erik."

"The good news is, I don't think we'll need the spin doctor," Erik says, but Madelyne doesn't laugh.

"Erik, I'm so sorry," she says, reaching out to touch his arm -- almost -- before pulling back as if she's afraid she might hurt him now. "Oh God. I don't know what to say."

"Why say anything?" Erik asks, finally uncrossing his arms and frowning at her. "Everyone wants me to talk about it, but that's just an excuse for _them_ to talk about it." Even Charles, who is usually different from the great 'everyone else.' 

"I don't know, if I didn't say anything it would seem kind of rude," she says. "Like, _I'm the victim of horrendous tragedies! Okay cool, see you in class!_ Like, I just ... look. I know I've been weird lately, since the party where you were a bit -- but I guess it all, um, makes more sense now." And she steps in to hug him again, more cautiously than before, if just as fleeting. "I'm sorry."

"What about the party?" Erik says, feeling his brows draw together; he gathered that she was put off, a little, but surely she knows him well enough that it hardly came as a surprise.

Madelyne hesitates. “Well … ”

“Tell me.”

“Well, it was … really fucking awkward,” she says, a flush now covering over the paleness of before. “I mean, you were going to suck that guy off right in front of me! Which, I mean, getting changed in front of you is one thing, we’re both subs. But he was just talking about us like we were meat, Erik! I don’t want to go to those kinds of parties, okay? I’m not -- I’m not into that.”

“I didn’t know it was going to be like that,” Erik admits, pushing his hands into his pockets, flexing his elbows. “Seth didn’t … mention it.”

“Maybe check next time, then,” she says, then gives him an awkward smile. “Okay. Never mind that, what are we going to tell people about all of this? I’ll be your wing-girl.”

Erik forces himself to laugh. “I don’t know. Say it however you like, just make sure everyone hears about it by the end of the day.” 

"Okay, then, well, I guess I'll make sure people think this all the way through, then. Assuming that's what you want?"

"They'll figure it out eventually, anyway," Erik says. "If not now, then certainly when the trial starts. I might as well get it over with."

She nods and slips out into the now-empty hall with one last glance back at him, and then Erik is alone.

He waits there a little while, listening to the muffled sound of classes going on in other rooms, and pulls out his cell phone, turning it on. He's missed several texts from Charles. Erik doesn't read them. He doesn't have to; he already knows what they must say. He puts his phone away again and hitches his satchel up onto his shoulder, pushing the door open and making his way across the hall and up the stairs. 

His English class is nearly over when he slips in, but Mr Gibson doesn't say a word. He must be keyed into the rumor mill just as deeply as everyone else. Erik doesn't pay attention for what's left of class, and he spends most of the day defending himself from various accusations exactly as he had with Madelyne, although as the day goes on he finds it difficult not to get curt with people. 

Erik's own rumors spread just as quickly as the old ones, and by the end of the day there's more pity in people's eyes than antagonism. Knowing the only way out is through doesn't make it easier to put up with, though, and Erik stops wasting time in the halls between classes. He goes to lunch only because he knows better than to get in the habit of avoiding it. Sonia, who sits at their table, bitingly tells him that getting raped doesn't make him not a murderer, and refuses to talk to him for the rest of the hour. Erik's a little relieved, at that; he doesn't like Sonia, and if she'd been anything but an asshole about it he'd resent having to be gracious.

He thinks about just going home at the end of the day, already exhausted, but Suzanne catches him in the hall on his way out and grabs the strap on his bag, says, "I hope you aren't thinking of skipping track practice."

"No," he says, and then, since she's watching, he's forced to reroute and head back down the stairs to the locker rooms to change.

It's remarkable, how quickly people move to get out of his way when he opens up his locker -- especially the Doms, some of whom go so far as to bring their stuff over to another bench. It's hardly contagious, Erik sneers at their backs, and resists the urge to jam their combination locks in retaliation. He changes into his clothes quickly, for once conscious of his own nakedness, and grateful once he's covered again. He's bent over tying his shoes when he hears someone clear his throat behind him. Erik glances over his shoulder and sees Lucas standing there, hands in his pockets looking like he'd rather swallow a live rat than be here right now.

Erik straightens slowly, turning round to face him with his arms crossing over his chest. It takes a second for him to piece together: right, bending over, probably had ass in his face. At least some things never change.

"Hey," he says, when it looks like Lucas isn't going to be the one to speak first.

"Hey, Erik." A shuffle of feet, and Lucas' eyes won't quite meet Erik's, either, skating past him every time. "I, uh. I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. For having sex with you, I mean. I feel like a total dick."

Erik stares at him for a second. Around them, people have gone silent -- or, at least, quiet, too-obviously trying to listen for his reaction. Finally, Erik says, incredulous, "Seriously?" 

Sorry for fucking him -- like Lucas personally made it his business to hurt him in some way, like Erik wasn't happy to do it. He probably, Erik realizes with growing irritation, even expects to be praised for this later on, like he's a _particularly good person,_ for saying he's sorry he got off.

"Yeah," Lucas says, shuffling again. "Like, you don't have to accept my apology or whatever, but I wanted to say I'm sorry, so you, uh, know. That I am."

It's dead silent now, and Erik can feel everyone staring at him, doesn't want to count how many of those people are people he's fucked. A lot of them are. 

"Well, you should be," Erik says at last, and he keeps his gaze steady so that when Lucas looks up, he can't help but meet his eyes. "Your technique was shit."

"Oooooooooooh," someone crows from behind Erik, with a sound like slapping a back, and there's a round of uncomfortable laughter as Lucas goes red in the face, mouth tightening. He doesn't reply; he just turns and leaves, body tight and rigid as he stalks out, fists clenched at his sides.

Erik can feel his own cheeks heating up, and he sits down on the bench to keep lacing up his shoes, pulling the strings tight -- tighter than he has to, his heart still racing. Luckily no one else comes up to him. Maybe they've all been scared off. Or maybe they agree with Lucas, and it makes them uncomfortable, thinking they've fucked something Shaw has fucked. Like Erik is permanently infected, now, with the stain of the Hellfire Club, and it will never wash away.

After practice, in the showers, for the first time since Erik can remember, no one slips into his stall seeking a quick blow job. They're all done and out of there in record time, and Erik walks home alone, headphones jammed over his ears and his scarf wrapped twice around his face.

When he gets home he finds that Charles has ordered in, little cardboard boxes of Chinese food sitting out on the coffee table and an old, soft blanket draped on the arm of the couch, one that usually lives in Charles' bedroom because it feels so nice to touch. Charles is sitting in his armchair, a book in his lap, not even pretending to read this time.

"Hi," he says, and sets it aside. "So your day was pretty horrible."

"That's euphemistic," Erik says, and he drops his satchel and coat in the doorway, for once not even bothering to hang them up. He settles onto the sofa with a feeling like a man who hasn't sat for a year, reaching for the blanket to drape it over his knees. "You'd think I was Typhoid Mary."

Charles winces, and gets up from the chair to come and sit next to Erik, his weight shifting the cushions. "I'm really sorry. I suppose it was always going to come out sooner or later, but that doesn't make it any easier." He bends forward and picks up Erik's leg by the calf, propping it on his own knee so he can get to work on Erik's shoelaces.

"It's better than being expelled as a terrorist," Erik says, watching Charles' fingers deftly untying the knot and forcing himself to relax back ever-so-slightly into the couch, though he still feels tense all over, rigid and knotted up. It seems awfully submissive, he thinks, Charles getting his shoes, but if it makes Charles feel better to do something for him then it's not any of Erik's business. "To be honest, I'm surprised they only just figured it out. It seems so obvious."

"It does to you because you know," Charles says, shifting to the other foot. "And I wouldn't let them expel you. Not unless you did something worthy of being expelled while attending the school. If any of the teachers give you a hard time then let me know. All right?"

"Yeah, all right," Erik says, and he unfolds part of the blanket, tugging it up toward his shoulders. "You could always make them all forget again."

Wouldn't that be nice, he thinks acerbically -- he already knows what Charles will say, but that doesn't stop him wishing. That's one thing Shaw got right: he'd rather sit at home and be instructed individually by Charles than have to face everyone right now, day after day.

Charles snorts and sets Erik's foot down, placing his shoes off to the side, out of the way. "Using telepathy to fix your problems doesn't really fix them. It just papers over them. Well. In this case, anyway." He pauses for a moment, the expression on his face becoming tentative before he says, "Not that it signifies against the terribleness of your day, but I broke up with Gabrielle this morning over breakfast. So I expect she's having a pretty bad day too, with you outed and me ending things, if you wanted a little schadenfreude to ease your pain. I know you don't like her very much."

Erik's pulse spikes for a moment, but he thinks he manages to keep too much satisfaction from showing on his face. "Oh," he says, as evenly as possible. "... You broke up with _her_ , then?"

"Yes," Charles says. "Why, does that make a difference?"

"I was just curious," Erik says, although he won't pretend he isn't surprised; he always thought it would be the other way around. Dominants are so fickle, and he hadn't imagined Gabrielle would be satisfied with one submissive. It seems a little demanding, actually, for Charles to turn a Domme down like that, that he would simply ... _reject_ her.

Charles' face does something complicated. "Yes, well," he says, "We both know that you find my submissive behavior to be substandard. Back to the issue of the day, though -- look, I know it's hard for you that the other students know now. High school is always difficult, because teenagers are hormone-driven sociopaths who are still learning how all their parts work."

Erik lifts an eyebrow at Charles over the edge of his blanket, and tugs the it closer around himself. "How do you even know what high school is like? Didn't you graduate when you were my age?"

"I graduated at sixteen," Charles says, with a wry twist of his mouth. "That's plenty enough high school to know it's the worst. Now, do you want this food? I can put it away if not but it's a shame to let it go cold."

Erik reaches over to snag a box of lemon chicken off the table and settles it in his lap, snapping apart the cheap wooden chopsticks. He feels sick to his stomach, a little, but he knows that's just in his head, and it's better he eat than starve. "Well, can _I_ graduate next year? I'm ahead in math and science, and I've already met the language requirement."

Charles picks up a box of his own, unfolding the top so he can start eating. "You're still very behind on interacting socially with your peers, though," he says, his chopsticks loaded with noodles. "Put bluntly, I think it's more important for you to experience more socialization than to go to college early. Even if it’s difficult right now, you need to learn how people are so you know how to get on with them, or get around them. Interacting with me doesn't count towards your final grade in Interpersonal Relations 101."

"Well, it should," Erik says grumpily, stabbing his chopsticks into the box. "I can't imagine anyone else I would particularly want to spend time with, ever."

Charles smiles. "That's very sweet," he says, "but as we both know, telepaths aren't standard issue people. You won't learn normal from me." He pops a piece of broccoli into his mouth. _You'll thank me when you get to college and you're not fumbling around getting belittled for being too young and incapable of normal human interaction._

"Normal human interaction is overrated," Erik says, and he makes himself take a bite of his food even though the smell makes his stomach turn a little. Maybe, he thinks, he can get an internship -- a lot of his classmates are thinking about it, and all the seniors do. It would get him out of school for a few hours every day, at least.

"That sounds like a good idea," Charles says, and somehow he encourages Erik through eating half the box of chicken before finally giving up, then talks him into watching some nature documentary about the ocean, which at least is long enough that they're still watching it by the time Erik normally goes to bed.

*

It takes less than a week for it to hit the evening news. Suddenly, Erik's name is everywhere: the newspaper, blogs, twitter feeds of celebrities. One tabloid even surreptitiously managed to get a picture of him to accompany their headline: he's apparently walking to school, satchel slung over one shoulder and his head tilted down to look at something on the screen of his phone. There are three links to news stories about him on the front page of reddit alone.

"Hellfire Club Kid to testify against Sebastian Shaw"  
"Ex-terrorist teenager alleged victim of sex abuse scandal at hands of HC"  
"CNN's timeline of Erik Lehnsherr in the Hellfire Club"

He reads them all, of course. What else is he going to do? Ignore them? Maybe he should know better, but Shaw raised him too well as far as that's concerned; he can't resist reading anything that has the Hellfire Club name on it. The comment sections, at least on reddit, all seem to take the same approach -- Erik's a victim, or in some cases, a hero, and anyone who disagrees is summarily downvoted into oblivion.

>   
> **freedomofpigeon** 893 points 3 hours ago  
>  The way the mass media are tearing this kid apart and drooling over the gory details makes me sick. Erik Lehnsherr was kidnapped, raped, brainwashed and coerced into everything, he's not a terrorist he's a victim. Talking over and over about what was done to him this publicly is basically taking his rape and shoving it repeatedly in his face. It's disgusting. You wouldn't make someone keep staring at the body of their murdered baby, would you, so why do this.
> 
> **kdurham** 798 points 5 hours ago  
>  Wow, what a surprise, Fox News is all over this trying to insinuate that it's his fault he got raped because he's a terrorist instead of noticing, uh, he was two when they took him and those bastards raised him that way, he didn't go around tearing down buildings age two and then the HC decided to punish him for his crimes with some good oldfashioned rape. jfc.
> 
> **scissorbrother** 992 points 1 hour ago  
>  I'm sick and tired of people on TV having a nature vs nurture debate instead of acknowledging the shit that actually happened, it's pathetic that they can't even take his side a little bit here 
> 
> **fade_99** -68 points 1 hour ago  
>  getting raped doesn't excuse mass murder. subs cry rape and then they get away with anything. my dad died because of lehnsherr, so fuck him, and fuck all of you playing like he's some kind of martyr. reddit circlejerk is at it again: if they didn't have the rape kit results you'd all be in here asking where's the proof.  
> 

But Erik's well aware that the relatively liberal denizens of certain websites aren't the majority of people. Even on Facebook, some of his school friends have comments on their walls from cousins claiming the school will get blown up any day now, and his inbox was full of messages and friend requests from total strangers before he changed his privacy settings so he wasn't searchable anymore. 

Charles doesn't watch the news any more, but Erik does. CNN and MSNBC mostly seem to fixate on the rape charges, rehashing them over and over, and wasting their time inviting in 'expert psychologists' who claim to understand Erik's mental state. None of them come close. At least they appreciate what it means for the case that Erik is going to testify, even if they can't seem to figure out whether he's supposed to be the good guy or the bad guy -- there's the old footage of the Flatiron Building destruction being replayed over and over again, as if to remind viewers that he was the sole cause of those deaths and hundreds of thousands of others, lest they get a mind to feel too sorry for him.

After he gets an invitation from Fox News to be interviewed on one of their shows, Erik turns to the channel only to find himself watching an angry old man ranting about how "the way the liberals and subs’ rights people are coddling this kid is a sign of just how little they care about the lives of the God-fearing Americans who have died at the hands of this teenage terrorist."

"The fact Bill O'Reilly is still on the air is a sign of just how little Fox News cares about accuracy, impartiality, and basic journalism," Charles mutters from where he's doing something on his laptop, fingers hitting the keys much harder than usual. 

Ever since this started, Erik has noticed Charles has seemed tired and strained, the way he did when Erik first came to live with him, but Erik doesn't know what he can do to make it any better. The crowds outside the building all the time make it hard for Charles to concentrate or sleep, all their thoughts concentrated on their penthouse and the people inside it, and Charles refuses to use a suppressor. He did go far enough as to hire a security contractor, who sent over a grumpy bodyguard to keep people out of the building and follow the two of them when they go out, but it doesn't seem to have helped all that much.

When Charles has gone to bed and his sleeping pill should have kicked in, Erik logs onto Purgatory and checks the forums. He already knows what he'll find, but that doesn't stop his stomach from sinking when he reads the thread titles:

> **Is Erik Lehnsherr really The Kid or a government imposter  
> ** Erik Lehnsherrs addres and school details  
>  BURN THE TRAIOTR  
>  Revenge Planning  
>  the 411 on Dr Charles Xavier  
>  the hellfire club doesn't tolerate traitors  
>  My friend's sister goes to lensher's school and she says he's a slut not a rape vic 

His screen pings before he can even finish scrolling.

_You have one (1) unread private message._

>   
> **swineherd: new situation huh**  
>  I never thought Lehnsherr would turn on the rest of them like this. Not entirely convinced it's not either a government scam or that that doctor hasn't brainwashed him into it -- you know he's supposedly the world's strongest telepath, right? No way to know but I wouldn't be surprised. He has a rep for being self-righteous. Probably thinks he's helping.
> 
> Anyway it makes it harder to get the info you wanted on the DL, everyone is staring at Lehnsherr's files right now. Might have to wait.

Erik's stomach clenches, hard. Charles wouldn't do that -- he wouldn't force Erik to think anything that wasn't Erik's own thought. If he did, Erik wouldn't still sympathize with the cause, would he? 

_Probably thinks he's helping._

Erik closes his eyes for a long moment, flexing his fingers, then curling them against his laptop again. If he'd been brainwashed, how would he know? Would there be signs? Fingerprints in his mind that aren't his own? 

It's possible, he thinks, that Charles _did_ brainwash him. That much is undeniable, no matter what Erik wants to believe. He has no way of proving it either way. If Charles had done it with intent, he'd have used telepathy, and Erik wouldn't even be questioning the matter right now. But if he did it _unintentionally_.... 

He'll need to stay on his guard, Erik decides. The only weapon is to think critically about everything, not to accept something as fact just because Charles says so, or because Charles looks sad and Erik wants to make him feel better. Erik certainly hasn't changed his mind about Shaw, though; it wasn't _Charles_ who made Erik think that Shaw ruined him, ruined the Hellfire Club. Erik figured that much out on his own.

But that doesn't mean he didn't have help. 

He puts the thought aside for now, but it's with a new sobriety that he opens his eyes and starts typing his response.

>   
> **Magneto: re: new situation huh**  
>  I understand. 
> 
> I've been practicing coding in PHP and SQL, like we talked about. I found Lehnsherr's Facebook page before it disappeared, but I wasn't good enough to penetrate yet. No great loss, though; I work for a security firm that just hired out a personal safety officer to one Dr Charles Xavier. 
> 
> Your contacts interested in getting a shot at Lehnsherr, somewhere the good doctor isn't around to see them coming? My friend has agreed to, shall we say, 'take a smoke break' just long enough for a well-timed conversation. I can make the arrangements. Are you in NY? Can we meet?

The reply comes almost immediately.

>   
> **swineherd: re:re: new situation huh**  
>  I can be, and my contacts would definitely be interested. I'll allow you to set the day and time, but I set the place. Let me know when and I'll let you know where. It may take me a while to make the arrangements -- up to six months, even. Is that okay?

It's more than okay. Erik will need time to figure out how to slip the bodyguard, although he supposes if all else fails, magnetizing him to the fridge by virtue of his own metal skeleton will work even if it's not the subtlest plan in the world. And six months sounds ... reasonable. Hellfire's in hiding; it would take at least that long to get in touch with a contact, communicate through code and drops .... 

Erik types out a quick reply to that effect and quits Tor. He considers staying up late and fiddling with the program he's trying to write -- when he told swineherd he was learning to code, that much at least was true -- but he knows he'll regret it when he has to be up early for school in the morning. He gets up, pads quietly over to the sliding door that opens out onto the balcony and lets himself out into the dark night. Peering over the rail he can see a few lone reporters still parked down on the sidewalk, keeping watch, never mind that it's one in the morning and a weeknight. 

He double-checks the latch when he goes back inside and then, on impulse, goes around to check all the other doors and windows as well. Not that he thinks it's terribly likely a journalist will come crawling through the skylight at four AM, but it doesn't hurt to make sure, especially with the bodyguard off-duty for the evening. Only when he's certain that everything's well and truly locked does he head upstairs. He doesn't have to worry about stepping softly, at least; Charles’ sleeping pill usually has him dead to the world for eight straight hours. He hadn't wanted to take it at all at first, but Erik convinced him....

Now that Erik thinks of it, with Charles' telepathy well and truly muted, right now would be the perfect time for a motivated assassin to slip into his bedroom and slit his throat. 

Erik reroutes halfway to his bedroom and goes back down the hall, opening Charles' door to peer in at the dark lump huddled beneath the bed sheets. If he'd lost blood, Erik would sense it. Hemoglobin. Charles is only sleeping, and as Erik's eyes adjust he can even see the lump rising and falling slowly. Erik leaves him be, but just to be safe, he tags the doorknob and Charles' windows in the back of his mind; if someone tries to go in or out in the middle of the night, it'll ping Erik's power and wake him.

*

CEREBRO  
 _Fish in a barrel: the media strikes again_

> In a move that surprises nobody who follows the mainstream American media, the news this week that ex-Hellfire Club member Erik Lehnsherr is going to be testifying against his former compatriots has been taken in a multitude of different ways. None of which, I might add, seem to consider him as a human being, rather than either a rabid, slathering mutant monster or a paper victim there to be pitied and held up as an example to all the other mutant children out there as to what will happen to you if you hold mutant supremacist beliefs.
> 
> I understand it, but that doesn't mean I have to like the fact that it's difficult for people to do a 180 on seeing this boy as a dangerous terrorist when they find out that he was in fact kidnapped as a toddler and raised by the Hellfire Club in a physically and sexually abusive environment. It's not easy to stop hating someone and feel sorry for them instead, and so we get this mixed response, where the press wish they could just continue hating Erik Lehnsherr and spit on his (newly revealed) name instead of trying to walk a tightrope between the two camps.
> 
> It's nothing new to see mutant victims villainized by a media intent on finding reasons to continue uncontested in their prejudiced view of mutants; when a mutant child misbehaves, it's a felony. When a human child misbehaves, it's an understandable accident. Never mind that the first child was trying to water her grandparents' garden and misjudged the amount of water she would need (see the Sarah Taylor case) and the second child actually deliberately shot his brother, albeit intending to scare rather than injure him, leading to his paralysis and later death (the Brady Hammond case).
> 
> Erik Lehnsherr is caught in a trap here -- he committed terrible crimes against a great number of people, but was raised by a group who had every minute of his life to abuse, brainwash, and twist him into being one of them. Unlike the rest of the Hellfire Club Erik Lehnsherr never had a choice about becoming a mass-murderer -- he was brought up to be one by the very people he should have been protected against. And now the media is trying to burn down the life he's managed to build for himself since their arrests and ignoring the fact that this is clearly a very damaged young man who needs support and help, not to be witch-hunted.
> 
> I only hope that Dr Xavier, who it has been revealed as the boy's current guardian, is able to keep the worst of the media from damaging what Erik Lehnsherr has reclaimed. The fact that he is testifying should be lauded, not land him in a tar pit of media ooze in which he may slowly suffocate.

 

*

_Charles_

It takes two weeks for Charles to crack.

"I don't think this is a good idea," Mr Howlett grumbles as Charles straightens his tie once again, arms folded across his barrel-like chest and his regular scowl deeper than usual, like someone's drawn it on with permanent marker. "You hired me to keep them away from you, not to follow you into their maw."

"I'm doing this," Charles says, finally satisfied with the knot sitting high at his throat and lifting his chin. "It's the only way to start getting them off our backs; it's what they all want, why they're still waiting out there. And frankly I'm sick of it. We're all sick of it." He looks over at Erik, who is leaning against the marble countertop, watching him fix his still-unruly hair with a shuttered expression on his face.

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," the bodyguard says.

"No, it doesn't," Charles says, with a tight smile. "Erik, you don't have to come outside with me if you don't want to. It's okay if you'd rather stay here."

Erik lifts an eyebrow. "In the men's room? What, am I expecting a client?" He pushes himself off the counter and comes to stand closer to Charles, folding his arms over his chest and meeting Charles' gaze in the mirror. "No, I'm coming with you. I'm not hiding in here like a child; I'm not afraid of them."

"Well then that makes one of us," Charles says, turning to Erik and brushing imaginary dust from his shoulders. "Okay. No more hanging out in the bathroom, then; outside it is." He gives Mr Howlett a nod, and the man slips out the door ahead of them before holding it open for Charles and Erik to pass through.

It feels like a long walk across the lobby floor to the main entrance but it's really only a few steps, and then Mr Howlett is holding that door open too, and Charles can hear shouting, feel the gathered journalists outside start to slather at the bit when they realize just who's coming out.

"If you would be so kind," Charles says without raising his voice, and can't quite resist using a little telepathy to carry it, enough that they all fall quiet for a moment as he takes his place on the sidewalk, looking back at all of them staring at him, staring at Erik, at all the lenses swinging into place to film him.

"I've decided that it apparently is necessary for me to make a further statement to the press," he says calmly, making them all strain to hear him, refusing to shout, "as my previous statement, that I cannot comment on an ongoing case nor on one of my patients, seems to have gone ignored by the media. My name is Dr Charles Xavier, as you know, and I am a psychologist who specializes in mutants and mutation-related issues. I have been engaged as an expert in the Hellfire Club case by the US government, and am currently acting as guardian to Erik Lehnsherr, formerly of the Hellfire Club."

Next to him, Erik shifts, and Charles catches a hint of something rebellious in the tenor of his thoughts -- but there's no time to think about that now, and _Erik Lehnsherr, still sympathetic to the Hellfire cause_ would hardly be an improvement. When he glances aside, Erik's head is downturned, his hands behind his back, the perfect picture of submission.

"I cannot comment on the investigation, the case, or on Erik himself without violating numerous confidentiality clauses," Charles continues, looking back to the press and lifting his chin a little higher and setting his shoulders, making sure he's standing firm. "What I can comment on is this: there have been no people harmed, no charges filed, and no complaints on my part since Erik came under my care, which is presently set to last for the duration of this prosecution. This besieging of our lives is intrusive, causing considerable distress to myself -- a telepath and quite prone to being kept awake all night by the constant presence of the media thinking loudlyand directly at us about how best to find a scandal -- as well as to Erik and our neighbors. I would suggest that even if the press is extremely interested in following me to my work, where they cannot enter or even photograph without violating the rights of my private patients, or in following Erik to school where he goes to classes and, hopefully, learns things, that they at least go home and sleep in their own beds so that I can sleep. That is all."

He turns on his heel before anyone can start shouting questions and pushes immediately back into the building, dragging Erik along with him by the wrist and letting Mr Howlett keep back the swarm of journalists who try to follow; his heart is pounding a thousand beats a minute, but the doors are glass and he needs to look strong until he's out of sight.

Erik tugs his arm free the moment they're inside -- Charles catches the aftershock of pain still reverberating through Erik's mind and cringes a little, because he hadn't realized how tightly he'd been gripping Erik's arm. But then Erik links his elbow with Charles', leaning into him, and after a second he glances over his shoulder at Charles to say, "No assassination attempts. That was anticlimactic." When Charles looks at him, he's smiling.

"I'm sorry to disappoint," Charles says dryly, on a slightly shaky breath. "I'll try to plan a more exciting press conference next time." He wants to loosen his tie, but not yet; he presses the button for the elevator and tries not to appear impatient on the outside. After a pause he says, "How was that? I think I may have been a little too aggressive; I'm rather cranky from the lack of real sleep. Damn. Do you think it's too late to go out there and make a better statement?"

"Far too late," Erik says, and when the elevator doors ping open he nudges Charles forward a little until Charles follows through, leading them both into the lift. Erik moves away, now, over to lean against the gold-mirrored wall, gaze turned toward the floor lights as they flash with their ascent. "It was fine. If you were softer they'd keep at it. At least like this, they may actually decide to go away." 

Erik may be trying to sound steady, but there's no hiding from a telepath that Erik feels just as unsettled by all this as Charles does. For Erik, the worse part is the loss of control rather than the invasion of privacy, and he proves just as much when he says, "Why won't you let me give a statement? I'm the one they really want to talk to, anyway."

"Well, firstly," Charles says, with a tired, wry smile, finally loosening his tie, "you're a minor and they are jackals. I've no intention of putting you out there as bait. Secondly, what you're likely to say would probably be like throwing gasoline on an oil fire. Telling the press you still believe in the Hellfire Club's agenda would be a first-class ticket to being murdered by an angry mob."

"Humans," Erik says, mouth twisting a little. The elevator reaches their floor and the doors slide open; Charles goes out first, Erik trailing after him like a little, frustrated black cloud. "I can say 'fuck off' just as eloquently as you, I'll have you know."

Charles opens the front door and walks inside, trusting that Erik will shut it after himself. "I'm sure you can," he says, trying not to picture the results. "That's why I've got us permission to decamp to the Westchester house for the summer. As soon as you're done with exams we'll head out of the city. I can commute in for my appointments, and you'll have the run of the place; it'll be a good break before we have to prepare for the first session of the trial in October."

"Really?" Erik's tone has lifted a little. "They're letting me leave the city?"

"To my house in Westchester, yes," Charles says, trying to sound upbeat about the prospect. The truth is that the thought of spending weeks in that house, which is a prominent feature in all of his worst nightmares, is a horrifying one, but it's true that they can't stay here, not when things are like this in the city. "It has enormous grounds, which you'll have the run of, and the house is far enough away from the periphery that the press won't even be able to see us from the outside. They can't come on the land because it's private. And it'll be cooler, too, without all these buildings trapping the heat."

"Let me guess," Erik says. "I'm not allowed to leave the premises."

When Charles looks around Erik is standing in the gallery with his arms crossed, a frown thinning out his lips and making him look older than his fifteen years. Charles sighs. "It's the best I can do, Erik," he says tiredly, taking a seat on the stairs and letting his tie finally hang loose on either side of his throat. "Either we stay here in the city and get hounded or we go to Westchester. There's a lake, and gardens, and a frankly ridiculous house and library; you can invite your friends up if you want to. But those are the two options. If you'd rather stay here we can of course stay here." It's not as though Charles will sleep any better in Westchester.

Erik's only silent for a few seconds before he shakes his head, hands dropping back down to his sides. "No," he says. "It's fine. Westchester it is." He crosses the gallery and comes to sit next to Charles, propping his elbows up on his thighs. "I'd like to see where you grew up, anyway."

Charles manages to smile again, lifting a hand to pat Erik's shoulder. "All right, then. I'll make the arrangements with Homeland Security." It’s too hot, really, to sit this close, but Charles can’t bring himself to care right now.

“It’ll be fine,” he says, reaching up to put his arm around Erik’s shoulders, uncertain just who he’s trying to reassure. “It’ll be great. You’ll see.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-graphic descriptions of sexual and physical abuse of a minor


	10. Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you oodles and oodles to **baehj2915** for beta-ing this chapter for us! Stellar feedback, as always. We love you.  <3
> 
> See the notes at the end of the chapter for content warnings!

_Charles_

The kitchen of the Westchester house is cool in the mornings, the old stone walls holding the shade even as sunshine pours in through the windows and the open back door, along with the wild scent of the overgrown garden outside. It's delicious where the warm rectangle of August light overlaps Charles' bare toes, and he sips at his tea with unhurried calm, watching birds flit by above the hedgerow. It's the last morning here after two months out of the city, and he means to savor its small pleasures.

He can hear Erik upstairs; he's just finished packing, from the feel of it, and is sat on the floor typing on his laptop. Most likely he'll be down in a few minutes. Erik is hungry, will be wanting his breakfast. And no wonder, given that he's shot up to six feet in height somehow over the summer, better nutrition and a late growth spurt kicking his body into overdrive.

Charles relaxes further into his chair, closing his eyes as the sunlight creeps further in over his feet. It would be untrue to say that it hasn't been difficult staying here again, but some parts he's enjoyed.

He hears Erik clattering down the stairs, and a second later Erik's dropping his bags in the doorway and coming inside. "Hey," he says, walking past Charles toward the coffee, which has been brewing since before Charles came downstairs this morning.

"Good morning," Charles says. "Did you sleep well?"

"Pretty well." Erik pours himself a mug of coffee and takes several long sips before he speaks again, lowering the mug to cup it between both hands. "What about you?"

Only woke up the once from a nightmare, which is an improvement. "Well enough,” Charles says. “It's so quiet out here -- I suspect the city will take some getting used to again. You were up early."

"I went for a run this morning," Erik says, and he comes to sit in the other chair at the table next to Charles, setting his coffee down on the surface. When he relaxes, stretching out his legs across the floor, he's impossibly long. "I'm going to miss the grounds here. Vastly preferable to dodging tourists on Park Ave."

“Perhaps I can request a dispensation for us to come out here on weekends sometimes, then. Since you haven't run away or destroyed any buildings I'm sure we can argue good behavior."

"Mmm. Assuming they've already forgotten about the car," Erik says, smirking at Charles. He closes his eyes, head tilting back to expose the line of his throat -- a gesture that would seem submissive, if it weren't for the way Erik carries himself now, like he owns himself at last. It’s gratifying to see; at least there’s been some benefit to coming out to this house in the middle of nowhere. Still ...

"They let us come here this summer, even if they did have to send _them_ along,” Charles says, eyeing the military detail spread out over the grounds, visible through the open door -- quite a lot of plastic guns, all just for one teenage terrorist. By now they’re just part of the furniture, though.

Charles flexes his feet, his ankles now warmed, too, by the sunlight. It's not difficult to feel relaxed, looking at Erik so comfortable in his own skin, like the feeling is infectious. "Anyway. The cleaner should have been through by the time we get back, so the apartment will be dusted and aired and so on. I can't say I'll miss the commute, but I think it's done you some good, being here. Don't you think?"

Erik just shrugs and doesn't say anything, which is to be expected. Erik has very little insight into his own psychopathology, and it's not likely that he'd consider behaving more Dominant to be a good thing. In fact, if Charles pointed it out to him, he'd probably try to repress it all over again. It’s not worth pushing, so Charles just smiles again and gets to his feet, walking deeper into the sunny rectangle until he's stood in the doorway looking outside at the hedges and wild-grown flowerbeds and cracked, grass-strewn pathways, all gone to seed in the absence of a family, of someone to care about it. If he tries, he can almost shut out the buzz of military minds, although after a summer with no incidents, they’re all much more laid-back than they’d been when they first arrived here.

He should probably hire a gardening firm to come out and take care of the grounds, Charles thinks, taking mental note. It's one thing to enjoy the thought of the old place moldering away, but quite another to see it so disgraced. His father always loved it, even if they never lived here while Brian Xavier was alive. That's reason enough.

"I booked the car for ten-thirty," he says. "So we have a couple of hours yet. Was there anything you wanted to do before we go?"

"Yes," Erik says after a moment's thought, draining the rest of his coffee and getting up to carry the empty mug to the sink. "Let's go down to the lake. I want to swim before we leave."

"All right," Charles says. "Let's go get our trunks and we can swim."

Erik makes a face. "I already packed," he complains. "I don't want to dig all that out again. Come on, let's just swim in our boxers. It's the same thing."

At least Charles is wearing dark-colored underwear today. "Not quite, but okay, then. I'll race you," he says, and he turns and dashes immediately out the kitchen door before Erik can so much as react, laughing when he hears an outraged shout from behind him.

The path is uneven under his feet, but somehow Charles knows it still, knows every stone of it when he's running -- walking he would trip, stumble, maybe fall, but he can run every inch of this estate like the hounds of hell are after him. He might not have Erik's long legs, but Charles is fast. Their escort are alarmed at first, but he brushes them away, and concentrates on running.

He can hear Erik racing along behind him, swearing as he tries to dash over the uneven stones and catch up, but Charles still makes it down to the waterfront first. Erik all but barrels into him a second later, pink-cheeked and laughing as he slaps Charles on the back. "I guess it's true what they say about small but fast," Erik says, grinning at him.

"Watch it," Charles says, but he's grinning too, a little out of breath. "Half my age and half a foot taller and you still couldn't beat me." He shoves his hair back from his forehead with one hand, wiping away sweat. The lake looks flat and serene in the breezeless morning, the reeds at the edges only rustling when unseen birds and frogs shift through them. "Bit of an embarrassment to your age group, really."

Erik's brows go up. "Yeah? Well, race me ten miles in the park this weekend and it'll be a different story," he says. "We'll see how cocky you are then, old man."

"I'm twenty-eight!" Charles starts unbuttoning his overshirt, shrugging it off and setting it aside on the end of the dock.

"Like I said. Old."

Erik strips off his shirt as well, and Charles ... it feels strange, suddenly, to be looking at Erik shirtless, because unlike when he was a skinny fourteen-year-old, Erik has filled out now, firm flesh toned and tanned from a summer spent outdoors. It shouldn't be weird. Erik is ... like Charles’ child, really, a child he only raised in its teens for the past year and a half, but ... Charles stomach drops, and he distracts himself by tugging his undershirt off over his head and setting that down before starting on his pants. When he looks up again Erik is down to his boxers, and it's normal again, almost ridiculous really, the pair of them stood there in their underwear on the wooden dock. Charles laughs.

"Come on then, whippersnapper," he says, and he strides past Erik to drop down onto the end of the dock, dangling his feet for a moment, before pushing himself off and down into the water.

It's cold, surging up around his body and then his head, entirely submerged for the few seconds before Charles buoys back up to the surface, gasping at the chill; he's no sooner back in the sunlight than Erik is jumping over his head and into the water with a loud splash that sends waves rocking across the lake, spattering Charles' face.

"Fuck, it's cold!" Erik gasps once he surfaces again, wet hair plastered against his head and glittering red in the bright sun. He grins at Charles and swims closer to him until they're treading water side by side, and after a second, he says, "Did you know, the American eel inhabits all accessible freshwater along the eastern coast? They like to hide under the mud close to shore. There's probably one underneath us right now."

Charles smacks Erik gently on the side of the head, fondness rising up inside of him and replacing the weird feeling from earlier. "Come on, Steve Irwin, if we're going to swim before the car gets here we'd better get moving," he says, and kicks off into a slow breaststroke across the lake.

They swim for about an hour, sometimes doing lengths and other times just horsing around. Erik takes a positive delight in dunking Charles under the water until Charles fights back by making him feel like he has eels all over his body, and as he thrashes Erik violently swears that one day, when Charles least expects it, he will get him back for this. Quite possibly with an eel in Charles' bathtub.

It's a nice way to finish their time at the house, and Charles watches it recede through the car window later with mixed feelings, bad memories and new, better ones fighting for dominance in his mind as they follow a pair of armored humvees into the woodland that surrounds the lower drive and the house vanishes from sight. Not that the military escort would really stop Erik if he wanted to escape -- those cars are made of metal, of course. It would be down to Charles, and Charles is eminently distracted.

He can't stop thinking about how ... weird it felt when they got out of the lake and Erik was wet and dripping and nearly naked, laughing at something Charles said while his boxers clung to his long thighs, wet and nearly transparent, outlining the new muscle there and -- Charles would like to pretend that's all he saw, but it wouldn't be true. Across the seat from him Erik is doing something on his phone, ignoring all else, and it leaves Charles free to screw his eyes tightly closed and try to banish the crawling feeling running up and down his spine, and the strange warm sensation inside his chest, like something is trying to emerge into the light of day, something that shouldn't be there at all.

 

*

Rémy has his fingers threaded through Charles' hair, keeping him in place as they make out on the couch, his body pressed along Charles' close enough that Charles can feel him breathing in and out like it's his own breath, their mouths connected. Rémy's a good kisser, and Charles is feeling rather breathless, pressed down against the arm of the couch with his own hands running up and down his new domfriend’s broad back. They’ve only been going out for a few weeks, but things are moving along well enough that Charles is starting to think about introducing him to Erik.

That said, considering this was supposed to be a flying visit, over and done with before Erik got back from school, things have gotten a little derailed. Charles hears the click of the front door opening, and startles, pushing Rémy up and off him as in the hallway Erik calls, "Charles, I'm home!"

"Chèr -- " Rémy says, hand reaching for Charles' cheek again, but Charles nudges it aside, running his fingers back through his hair and straightening his clothes, a flustered, hot feeling rising up inside him at the thought of Erik coming in to find them making out.

"That's Erik," he says, rubbing the back of his hand over his swollen mouth. "Not in front of him, okay?"

Rémy gives Charles a firm look, but doesn't argue, just reaches for Charles' hand instead and holds it, giving him a quick smile. "All right. Whatever you want."

Erik is slinging his bag off his shoulder as he walks into the den, then pauses in the doorway, his satchel hanging from one hand, gaze caught on the pair of them sitting there on the couch. It's difficult to say which is attracting more attention in Erik's mind: Rémy's black-and-red eyes, or their clasped hands. Slowly, Erik's satchel drops the rest of the way to the floor. "Hello."

"Hello," Rémy says, before Charles can say anything. "I'm Rémy, perhaps Charles has mentioned me?"

"In passing," Charles says, with a small smile, trying to defuse the sudden awkward tension in the room. Erik isn't quite staring -- he is blinking, at least -- but he's not dropping his gaze, either, and it's almost a challenge, the stiff line of his spine and the tilt of his head. "Erik, Rémy was just dropping by to bring me back my sweater. I left it at his family's restaurant the other night."

Erik's gaze flicks over to look at Charles. "You don't have to make excuses to me," he says. He looks back to Rémy. "So you're Charles' domfriend, then."

"I guess so," and Rémy gives Charles a wry look, the corner of his mouth quirking up. "What about it, chèr? You want to go steady with me?"

Charles smiles, but from across the room Erik mutters, "I should have stayed at work.”

Charles shoots Erik a frown before turning back to Rémy. "I think you should go help your parents with the late rush," he says, leaning forward to peck Rémy on the cheek. "I'll see you Thursday?"

Rémy glances at Erik, and Charles catches the androgynous cut of Erik's suit catching his curiosity -- with classic submissive tailoring, but without the corseted shape, it's disconcerting in its mishmash of dynamic cues, not to mention the strong red tie, more Dom in shade than sub. Remy doesn't say anything aloud, just raises an eyebrow before saying, "Of course, Charles. Until Thursday, then." And with a sense of mischief he lifts Charles' captive hand to his mouth and kisses the back before Charles can tug it away, his odd eyes sparkling.

"Off with you," Charles says, unable to hold back a laugh, and Rémy just grins, getting to his feet. "No need of an escort, I know where the exit is."

Once he’s gone Charles looks back at Erik, whose sulky expression hasn't changed much even with Rémy departed. "That was rude," he says, brushing imaginary lint from his thighs.

Erik turns a slightly incredulous look in Charles' direction. "Rude?” he says, eyebrows rising. “I didn't realize by coming home on time I'd interrupt the two of you all but shagging on the downstairs sofa. Would you like me to rearrange my schedule to be more convenient for you?"

"You know that's not what I'm talking about," Charles says. "You muttering to yourself -- not very quietly, mind you -- as though Rémy is unwelcome here, and that it is distasteful to you that we speak to one another in a way that shows we like each other, was rude. If you want to be rude to me then we will deal with that separately, but being rude to my guests is not acceptable, Erik."

"All right," Erik says, and he walks past Charles, disappearing into the kitchen. There's the sound of the refrigerator door opening, and then closing again.

God. Charles can _hear_ Erik thinking that he has no intention of changing his behavior, and it's infuriating not to be able to call him out on it. Charles tries not to tell Erik off for things he's thinking but not actively doing unless they're directly harmful, but it doesn't make it any less aggravating.

If he'd known dating again was going to lead to this sort of behavior ... well, Charles would still have done it, because if he's started noticing how grown-up Erik is getting -- at _the age of fifteen_ , a boy Charles is still responsible for -- then it's definitely high time he got back on the horse. No matter how often he's tried to tell himself it's nothing, that he's not ... interested, that it's just awareness brought on by close proximity and Erik's constant sexual escapades being shoved in his face, Charles can't shake the guilt and self-loathing that creeps in on its heels. Dating Rémy, who is a confident, _adult_ Dominant with a sense of humor and a strong interest in Charles, is the perfect antidote to that. It’s blue balls and nothing more, and Charles is ashamed of himself for it but sensible enough to know it for what it is, instead of over-interpreting the facts.

Erik comes back into the living room with a bottle of water open in one hand, and sits down on the sofa in the spot Rémy just vacated, setting his bottle atop his thigh. "You're right," he says after a long moment, and it's palpable that this is taking great effort for Erik, who is internally cringing from himself even as he speaks. "I was rude. I just didn't expect him to be here, is all."

Charles manages a smile, though he's still irritated by Erik's behavior. "Thank you," he says, though Erik hasn't _quite_ apologized -- just acknowledged that he was out of line. "And I didn't mean for him to still be here, either, or I would have let you know -- he really had just popped in for a few minutes and ended up staying longer."

"It's fine," Erik says, and he turns to look Charles in the eye, his voice remarkably firm. "It's none of my business."

"Very true." Charles runs a hand back through his hair again. "So, how was your first day at Stark? I'm excited to hear all about it."

Erik relaxes a little at the change in subject, and falls into describing to Charles the project he's working on, and his supervisor, who isn't Tony Stark but who _works_ for Tony Stark. It's all very technical, involving a combination of engineering skills and computer programming, and Charles has to borrow a fair bit of background knowledge from Erik's mind to follow along, but it's clear Erik finds it all engaging enough, and that's the important thing.

"... start college," Erik finishes at last, smiling at Charles and squeezing his water bottle in his hand. "Stark has offices everywhere, so no matter where I end up I should be able to maintain the internship."

"That's wonderful," Charles says with genuine pleasure, beaming at Erik and reaching over to pat him on the knee. "It sounds like you had a great first day. I had thought it might all be orientation and HR, so I'm glad to hear it was so interesting."

"Yeah, well, apparently Tony Stark hates that kind of thing, so we're doing it all online. I can probably write a program to do it all for me, actually," Erik says, and for a moment he's distracted, considering the specifics, before his attention snaps back to the present. He finishes the last of his water and drops the empty bottle aside, shifting on the sofa to lean against Charles' arm, stretching his legs out under the coffee table. "I'm starving. Let's go to that Berber restaurant for dinner; I'd kill for a good tagine right now."

"All right," Charles says easily, happy to fill that wish. Erik seems so content now, it would be a shame to taint that even if Charles probably shouldn't reward his earlier rudeness. "Let me go get changed and we'll go out. Do you want to call ahead and reserve us a table?"

"Sure," Erik says, and he squirms next to Charles for a second, twisting to pull his phone out from his back pocket before dropping his weight back down on the cushion again, leaning into Charles hard enough to press his side into the couch arm, pinning him there. "Maybe for eight?"

"That's fine with me," and Charles' mouth twitches. "Are you going to let me up to get changed or am I stuck here?"

"Stuck here," Erik says, turning a quick grin toward Charles before his attention's back on his phone, tapping out the restaurant name in the maps application. "You look fine.You don't need to change."

Charles snorts and knocks the heel of his hand gently against the side of Erik's head, a playful cuff before he pushes Erik up and off him, Erik almost as heavy now as Rémy was earlier. "Some of us like to dress up for dinner," he says, getting to his feet anyway and ignoring Erik's noise of protest at being moved against his will. "Behave yourself, or I'll spend all evening telling you about my last date."

Erik gives an exaggerated shudder. "Please. Spare us."

"Big baby," Charles says, relieved that the tension seems to have been defused, and goes off to get changed.

 

*

_Erik_

Erik stays aware of the discussions online, for the most part, the arguments from both sides about his testimony against the Hellfire Club. It's impossible to shut himself away from it entirely, even though sometimes the things he reads make him so infuriated he can't think about anything else for hours at a time.

Erik and swineherd keep in touch, but it's not until a month after they've returned from Westchester that he finally receives a PM saying the meet is on. _I'm alone this time,_ swineherd tells him in the message. _My contacts are paranoid. They need to know you're legit before they agree to come in person._

Frustrating, but understandable. Erik arranges to meet him in the Starbucks at Columbus Circle -- busy enough that no one will take notice them, no matter what their topic of conversation. _Put a net neutrality sticker on the back of your laptop so I can find you,_ Erik tells him. _I'll be the one wearing a red hat._

He doesn't wear a red hat, obviously. He takes care to dress as neutrally as possible, nothing about his dress to suggest either Dominance or submission, even removing the pin with the single silver bead from his satchel. He doesn't make the mistake of trusting swineherd, even if they've been speaking for almost a year now. He drops a few ball bearings in one jeans pocket and a handful of paperclips in the other -- two nights prior to the scheduled meet he pulled a fully-loaded Beretta .45 semi-automatic pistol from the hands of a would-be gangster in Queens, and now he tucks it into the back of his pants, tugging the tail of his shirt down to cover the handgrip.

It's an effort to keep his excited anticipation down to a minimum, and Erik takes several deep breaths, forcing down feelings and trying to sink into a sense of calm, of confidence. He's relying on Charles being too preoccupied with his appointments to notice what's going on. Charles has been monitoring him less and less over the last year, so provided he doesn't suddenly have something he needs to ask, and as long as Erik can keep his emotions on an even keel, Erik should be safe for now.

Ditching the bodyguard is the hard part; the man has a nose like a bloodhound, and he's infuriatingly immune to all the usual tricks. In the end, Erik arranged for the bodyguard to find himself in a rather compromising position, with Erik naked post-shower, kissing the man in the hall and grabbing at his cock through his jeans. The bodyguard turned him down, as Erik knew he would, but it was effective in that the whole ordeal embarrassed the man enough to make him want to escape Erik and go for a smoke out back -- just long enough for Erik to slip away.

On the train, Erik goes over his shields one last time. He knows from previous conversation that swineherd's mutation is to do with persuasion; he uses every trick he knows to shut himself off from psychic influence, guessing that while they may not be strong enough to affect Charles, swineherd is unlikely to be anywhere near so strong. Better to be safe than sorry.

The café is busy when Erik gets there, but he spots his mark almost immediately. Sensing the only metal-chassised Macbook in the place with a rectangular sticker on it takes all of about a half a second. The Dom sat behind it is short and blocky, with thin dirty-blond hair and thick-rimmed glasses that sit on the end of a long broad nose. His expression is calm, but it's two minutes past meet time and Erik can tell swineherd's getting antsy. He's tapping a finger on the edge of his laptop, a subtle but dead giveaway -- but even so Erik takes the time to order a drip coffee at the bar, just to make sure he looks like he has a reason to be there.

Swineherd is typing something into his computer when Erik approaches, frowning at the screen. Erik sets his coffee cup down on the small round table and slides into the chair across from him. Swineherd looks up -- freezes -- then swears violently under his breath, eyes widening before narrowing into a scowl. "What the fuck," swineherd hisses, still staring at Erik. "What the actual fuck. _You're_ Magneto?"

"I'm still surprised the name didn't give it away," Erik says. He's running on borrowed time now. The clock started ticking the second swineherd recognized him, and already Erik's adrenaline is pumping through him, making his heart beat faster. It's not entirely an unpleasant feeling; whatever else it meant, Erik always loved going on missions. He liked the thrill.

"I thought you were a fanboy," swineherd says, pushing his glasses up his nose with one finger and closing his laptop. "I don't have time to play games with infant traitors. Don't contact me again." He picks up his laptop ready to put it in his satchel, and Erik tugs it out of his grasp with his power, catching it with his hand before anyone can notice and setting it back down on the table, resting his own fingers atop it.

"You have a few choices now," Erik says. "You can go back to your contacts, whomever they are, and tell them you failed. They won't accept that excuse, of course; they'll want to know _why._ You'll tell them you were sat two feet from Lehnsherr and you walked away. Best case scenario, you lose all your connections. Your reputation is dirt. No one works with you again, and you go back to Kansas or wherever it is you came from and try to find something new to do with your life. I guess it's never too late to go to grad school." Erik pauses, just a beat. "Worst case scenario -- and the more likely one, as I am particularly well-qualified to say -- is that they kill you. No one likes a loose end, after all." Erik picks up his coffee cup and takes a sip, closing his eyes until he's swallowed. He sets the cup down again. "Of course, there is a third option."

"Please, do entertain me," swineherd says, his tone unimpressed. "What would you suggest I do, then -- I'm sure your high school teaches classes in high-end information merchandising."

"Shaw's finished." That much, Erik thinks, all of them can agree is true. Maybe some parts of Hellfire don't accept it yet, but they'll figure it out sooner rather than later. "He's in prison. So are Wyngarde, Frost, Rasputin, Essex, and Quested. Our fearless leader and all five of his officers. Maybe you don't get how Hellfire works, but I'll tell you this: we don't exactly hold elections." No, everyone was hand-picked by Shaw himself to serve in the higher ranks. It meant giving up their lives altogether, if they hadn't already, but all had been willing to make the sacrifice. Not that there had been other options. "The strongest mutant is the one to rule. I wonder, do you know who that is now?"

Swineherd takes a sip of his coffee, slowly, without taking his eyes off of Erik. "Perhaps," he says. "What's it worth?"

Erik's lips curve into a thin half-smile. "Let me put it this way: you're not doing me a favor. I'm doing you one. See this through, and not only do you get out with your life and reputation intact, but you still get paid the full amount by your contacts for bringing me to them. I'll make sure of it." He laces his fingers together atop the table, feeling more secure, now. He and swineherd want the same thing, will both benefit from it. This will happen. After so long.... "Right now, I just need to make contact. I still believe in our cause, but with the Club scattered across the globe and without a central, powerful leader, they're helpless to fight for it. I can change that."

"Hmm." Another sip of the coffee. "Here's the thing. Nobody expects me to be a hero; I'm a middleman, plain and simple. Everyone knows where you are and who you're living with. The fact you were here on this day, that I was also here, does not in fact help the Club reacquire you.” Swineherd gives Erik a sardonic look over the tops of his glasses, his entire expression unimpressed. “Now, if you're looking to make contact, I can facilitate that. It's a coup for me, you know that and I know that. But cut the threatening crap unless you're going to follow through yourself. Is there anyone in particular you'd rather speak to, or is it Dealer's Choice?" He gives Erik a thin smile.

Erik lifts an eyebrow, but decides to drop the pissing contest for now. He's had a long time to think about who he wants to meet with, but in the end, it doesn't matter who Erik thinks would be more or less persuadable; the only person of import is the person who's acting lieutenant. "Who's in charge right now?"

Swineherd's face makes a complicated motion, like he's trying to hide disgust. "Victor Creed, at the moment," he says, setting down his coffee cup. "Though how long that will last I couldn't say. He's hardly the cerebral type, but the Club members seem to be reassured by his brawn in this time of weakness."

Victor Creed. He wouldn't have been Erik's first choice. He's vicious, more mercenary than vigilante, and he's always held far more admiration for Erik's ass than Erik's ability. Not to mention, his power makes him hard to kill. Erik won't have an easy way out if things turn sour.

"Creed, then," Erik says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small card, with a date, time, and place written on it, and a single quarter. He hands the card to swineherd and says, "Here's where we'll meet. This should be plenty of time, I hope." The quarter he picks up between thumb and forefinger. The face of George Washington smooths out, and in its place he carves a likeness of Sebastian Shaw -- in profile, presidential. Erik offers this across the table to swineherd as well. "Proof."

Swineherd turns the card over to look at the blank reverse, taking the coin almost absently in his other hand. "I'll pass this along," he says, tucking them both into his satchel along with his laptop, "but just a brief thought -- won't your new sugardaddy object to this playdate? I can't imagine this is something he approves of. He has a certain reputation."

"Let me worry about Xavier."

"Rather you than me," swineherd says dryly. "How _do_ you intend to get around the telepath living with you when planning to rejoin the Club? It seems he might be somewhat of a barrier."

Erik doesn't bother going into detail about Charles' mind-reading habits, or whether Erik's skilled enough to keep certain things from him or not; it's not the kind of conversation he's interested in getting into with swineherd, not now that he's already got what he wants from him. "He's a soft touch for me," Erik says, smiling slightly. "I'm handling it. As you can see, I'm here."

Swineherd nods. "Very well. I'll leave you to it, then." He gets to his feet, slinging the strap of his satchel over his shoulder; he could be any IT worker in any of the businesses around the city center, nondescript in both face and dress. "Don't disappoint Creed. It's no skin off my nose, but it may cost you yours. He's not interested in excuses."

Tell me something I don't know, Erik thinks, and turns back to his coffee. "Thanks for the tip."

"Stay lucky, kid."

And then the man is gone, slipping out between the other patrons and disappearing out the door into the foot traffic on the street. Erik tracks the coin as far as the corner, but after that it's lost in a sea of other change, on its way to Victor Creed.

 

*

It's difficult to keep himself from thinking constantly about swineherd, and Creed, and the message that surely must be finding its way into his hands any time now. Erik throws himself into school and his internship, losing months to a string of projects that primarily serve the purpose of distracting him from incriminating thoughts. He ends up actually winning a few awards for them, which is a pleasant side effect, and gets to meet Tony Stark, who's taken an interest in the high school sophomore he's got working for him who can "control metal with his _mind._ " Stark's words, not Erik's.

At the end of November he learns he's expected to be in competition with a few other students for their class' valedictorian come senior year and discovers a whole new side to his school, one which ends with someone tearing all the pages out of his textbooks when he leaves them on the cafeteria table, and his essays and problem sets mysteriously disappearing from teachers' inboxes. Erik's faintly baffled by the effort some people seem to be going to, and switches to using e-books and turning his assignments in via Dropbox. After that, the shit stops happening, though for all he knows the GPA war rages on against more vulnerable targets and he's just oblivious to it now. He does have to wonder which of his classmates is desperate enough to mess with a known terrorist’s schoolwork.

But it's hard to pay attention to things like that when the first part of the trial is looming on the horizon, in December; it feels like Erik can't escape it, no matter what he does. It's there, like a black shadow on the edge of his awareness, all the time -- he's made his decision, but that doesn't stop him from wondering sometimes if it was the _right_ one. Once he does this, there's no going back. He'll have dug Shaw's grave, and thrown him in it. He'll have his revenge, but he'll also have the responsibility of seeing the Hellfire Club into its new era. He isn't sure he's ready for that.

He still runs into reporters a couple of times a week, trying to get him to pose for a photo or make a statement. He avoids them for the most part, if only because he thinks if he let himself get interviewed by _Newsweek_ Charles might finally actually up and kill him. Having the bodyguard around helps to some extent. No one seems to want to come close when Erik's got a man with those features trailing him around half the time. Erik can't say he blames them.

The bodyguard's sudden and near-constant presence in their lives, Erik can accept -- but Charles' involvement with Rémy is starting to become a distraction in itself. Erik tries very hard to like him. He really, really does. He wants Charles to be happy, and if Charles insists that dating people is the way to go about that, then who is Erik to tell him any different? But at least Gabrielle Haller had _class._ Rémy LeBeau, on the other hand, is -- there's really only one word for it, Erik thinks. He's skeevy.

Charles brings Rémy along with them on their trip to Coney Island, and they walk with one of Rémy’s arms seemingly glued around Charles' shoulders, flinging Dominance all over the place like he has something to prove by it. As they stand in line for cotton candy and Rémy tells Charles what to order Erik reminds himself, for what feels like the thousandth time, that Rémy isn't _his_ domfriend. So it's really none of his concern if Rémy's compensating for something or not.

Charles shoots Erik a sidelong, long-suffering look. _He's not throwing Dominance around,_ he says silently, seemingly content to stay just where he is. _Gabrielle is a very restrained Domme. This is pretty normal._ He turns back to Rémy and says, "What if I don't want a blue one? What if I want a pink one?"

 _Don't look at me like that, I'm keeping my thoughts to myself,_ Erik says back at Charles, fairly certain he's allowed to think whatever he likes as long as he doesn't make it public knowledge. And he just so happens to _think_ it's excessive. He turns his gaze up toward the sky, not interested in witnessing any more public displays of affection from dream team over there.

They pay for their cotton candy and wander off down the boardwalk, the bodyguard a gleam of metal in the back of Erik's mind following some twenty feet behind. Erik listens in silence as they talk about Rémy's job at the restaurant, then about Charles' pro bono project he's taken on with a new local mutant center. Erik drops the deaf-and-blind act for the sake of that subject, falling into step closer toward Charles. "You haven't had any trouble with protesters?" Humans and Hellfire-aligned mutants alike have been making their objections to the integrationist centers well known, essentially since their genesis ten years ago.

Charles smiles at him this time and shakes his head. "Not so far. Of course, most of them know me by sight, so I expect that they'd hesitate to take me on. Others might not be so lucky. It's a terrible shame really, since the centers do a lot of good. I won't pretend that they're perfect, but they're better than nothing, and when they get so much negativity put on them of course they don't operate at their best."

"I didn't find my local center much help growing up," Rémy says, with an elaborate Gallic shrug. "I mean, I like your enthusiasm, chèr, but those places mostly tick things off on a sheet of paper, hand it to you and say yessir you're definitely a mutant. Well, I knew that already, born with these eyes, so thanks for nothing."

"Some of them are like that," Charles says, "but don't tar them all with the same brush. There are people who work there who genuinely want to help! That's why I'm volunteering, they can't afford anyone like me full-time."

"What counts as help?" Erik asks. "People leave those centers and find themselves with targets on their backs."

"Is that the fault of the centers, or of the people who want to stop young mutants from asking what they consider to be the 'wrong places' for help?" Charles counters, hands flying up in a frustrated gesture. "You can't blame the centers for that, they're trying to give training, emotional support and financial aid to those who need it. The ones to blame for the system not working are the government for not giving the program enough funding and the 'activists' who don't seem interested enough to suggest an alternative but are happy enough to piss on everyone else's parade. If you want to fix something, then fix it, don't break it even more." Charles' eyes are alight, passionate, his cheeks a bit flushed with it, and his step has quickened, enough that he's almost out of Rémy's grip. "I'd like to see Humans First argue that educating mutants on how not to lose control and cause harm is a bad thing."

Erik smiles a little, always entertained when Charles gets so passionate about these things. It's nice to see him show real emotion from time to time, instead of the control he tries to keep around Erik. "The fact remains, though," Erik says once he's sure Charles is finished, "that if you label your building 'mutant center,' you're clearly identifying everyone who walks in and out of your door as being a mutant. Some humans don't care what you're doing in that center or why -- they just want to kill mutants, and now you've done half their job for them."

"Well, some non-mutants are murderous scum," Charles says, "as are some mutants. If it wasn't one place, one thing, it's be another, and we could hardly name them bloody Garden Centers. Mutants aren't a special breed of sunflowers."

"Speak for yourself," Rémy says, poking Charles in the cheek with one finger, and Charles snorts, lets himself be gathered back in as they reach the queue for the Cyclone. "I am the 4D here," Rémy continues -- privately, Erik rolls his eyes -- and tucks his hand around Charles' waist, "and I say no more talk of blowing people up. We're here to have fun. So you have to do what I say, agreed?"

"Oh, hardly," Charles says, but he doesn't continue the topic of conversation, either.

It itches at Erik the rest of the time they're waiting in line, a part of him rankling at being told what to do by Rémy fucking LeBeau. He has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from dragging the conversation right back the second he opens his mouth. He doesn't like that Rémy seems to take his position as Charles' domfriend as a foundation from which to expand his Dominance to include Erik, too -- which would be fine if he just wanted to fuck Erik then move on, but that's not the case, and so: it itches.

They have to queue for ages to get on the Cyclone, and when they finally do Rémy insists on getting them the front car. It's a ricketty, rocky ride, the wind whipping their hair back and the view of the city in front of them like an endless sea of skyscrapers for the few moments they're at the top before they zoom back down the other side of the coaster. Erik is more impressed by the metal structure than the ride itself, but when they get off Charles looks a bit woozy, blinking hard and lifting a hand to his head, almost stumbling off the ride.

"Are you all right?" he says, catching Charles' elbow and trying to balance him a little, concern spiking up from his gut. Charles is pale, sweat beading at his temples. "You aren't going to throw up, are you?"

"No, no," Charles says, but he wobbles a little, closing his eyes. "I just feel a bit dizzy, that's all. It'll pass."

"Come on, sit down," Erik says, and he wraps his arm around Charles' back instead, guiding him over to sit on a nearby curb, kicking away someone's discarded styrofoam soda cup. He crouches low next to Charles, trying to get a good look in his eyes, a little worried something might be really wrong. Charles was fine on all the other rides, after all....

 _I'm fine,_ Charles says, and Rémy comes to sit beside him, pressing a hand down on the back of his neck and guiding Charles' head down between his knees.

"Stay there for a minute, chèr," he says, keeping his hand there, where a collar would sit if Charles wore one. "Don't try and boss your way through it, just let it work itself out. It's my job to boss through things, you're the patient one."

Erik had, if temporarily, forgotten Rémy exists. He draws his hand away, feeling a bit like a third wheel all of a sudden. There's an abrupt urge of _anger_ on the heels of that, because he should be the one taking care of Charles, not letting some stranger who's only known them for a few months come in and intervene. Erik grits his teeth and makes himself stand up, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets and wishing he could feel less fucking useless. But then Charles' fingers close around Erik's wrist, holding him there, and he feels a foreign sense of reassurance mixed with dizziness that can only come from Charles.

After a second, slowly, Erik pulls his hand out of his pocket and twists his wrist in Charles' grasp to clasp their hands together instead, squeezing once. It's easier, then, and he can look back down at Rémy still kneeling on the pavement next to Charles, without feeling that irrational resentment.

"Was the rollercoaster too much for you?" Rémy asks, his tone teasing now, shifting his hand to ruffle Charles' hair. "I didn't know you were such a wilting flower."

"Get lost," Charles says, and for a moment Erik feels a rush of pleasure until Charles finally lifts his head and he's trying not to smile, mouth twitching and ruining his disapproving look. "My brain is a finely-tuned instrument, unlike some other brains in this immediate vicinity," Charles continues. "Now, let me up."

"If you insist," Rémy says, and helps Charles to his feet, one hand supporting his elbow as if Charles doesn't know how to stand up by himself.

"Here," Erik says after a second, "eat this." He pulls a ginger candy out of his pocket and offers it to Charles. He's learned from trial and error over the past two years that when Charles' telepathy gets imbalanced, it's usually associated with a drop in his blood sugar levels. He's gotten in the habit of carrying hard candy around with him most of the time, just in case. "Better, now?" He smiles at Charles, trying to look encouraging.

"Thanks," Charles says, turning his attention to Erik and taking the candy, unwrapping it and popping it into his mouth. "This is much better than those cherry ones," he adds after a moment.

"Mmhmm. Spicy," Erik says, grin widening.

Rémy is looking between them, an odd look on his face, but when Charles glances back at him it disappears behind a smile. "Shall we go get some of those beef bratwurst?" Rémy asks, putting his arm around Charles again. "My treat."

"Big spender," Charles says teasingly, and they're back in that couple groove that drives Erik up the wall.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and types out a text to Madelyne as he trails along after Charles and Rémy toward the brat stand.

 

>   
> **Erik:** _What are you doing tonight? At this rate, if I sleep at home, I'll be sensing the bedsprings moving all night. The domfriend's even making sausage references. Disturbing._
> 
>  

Madelyne texts back almost immediately.

>  
> 
>   
> **Maddie:** _Gross. Come sleepover here, you can sleep in my room with me and we can watch horror movies all night._

 

He types back affirmation and tucks his phone back away right as Rémy is getting the bratwurst from the vendor and carrying them over toward one of the picnic tables, third paper plate balanced on his forearm.

"Here you go," Rémy says, handing the first one to Charles and the second one to Erik. "I got all the trimmings, only way to eat them."

"Thanks," Charles says, picking his up. Erik manages a smile for Rémy, even though it's forced. He knows he's being unfair to the man, that Rémy is just trying to be -- well, trying to be whatever Charles wants him to be, and he must be doing a good job, because Charles has kept him around so far. It's not Rémy's fault that Erik isn't feeling particularly inclined to share.

"Crap," Charles says suddenly, wiping at his front with a paper napkin. "I got mustard on my favorite cardigan." He looks so honestly dismayed by it that Erik can't help but laugh.

"Oh no," Erik says with mock upset, and he fixes Charles with a grin. "Not another cardigan incident. I barely recovered from the last one."

"That was entirely your fault and you know it," Charles says, and actually flicks a fallen piece of sauerkraut at Erik across the table. "Any injuries you sustained were earned fair and square."

"It wounds me that you would say that, Charles," Erik says. He uses a very serious tone, tilting his head just-so and looking down his nose at Charles, although the entire effect is undermined significantly by the threat of a smile still tugging at the corners of his lips. He feels lighter already, like things are half-normal, and if they could stay like this -- if they can be like this, Rémy or no Rémy -- well, then maybe, just maybe, Erik won't mind so much.

"Cardigan incident?" Rémy asks, but Charles just shakes his head.

"It would take too long to explain, and we swore a blood oath never to discuss it," Charles says, his mouth twisting in interesting ways as he tries not to laugh. "If I told you I'd have to kill myself, right after I’m done killing you."

Erik snorts into his bite of bratwurst and accidentally sprays sauerkraut onto his plate, pressing the back of his hand over his mouth in reflexive chagrin, though his eyes still flick up at Charles across the table, warm contentment settling just behind his sternum. "You're such a little old man," he says fondly, once he's swallowed. " _Cardigans._ Really."

"Can it, fridge magnet," Charles says, and laughs out loud when Erik reaches over to shove him in the head.

"You're just as bolshy as Charles," Rémy says to Erik with a wry smile, though there's a hint of frustrated confusion there around the edges, too. "Is he giving you lessons in behaving badly?"

"Hey," Charles protests, still smiling, apparently oblivious to the way Erik's heart suddenly feels like a stone that's dropped to the pit of his stomach, the muscles in his belly all clenching up tight as heat floods his cheeks.

He snatches his gaze away from Rémy immediately, glaring at a knot in the wood table, violently fighting the part of him that wants to react ... poorly. _Bad boy._ He wrestles the memory down, but there's no helping the way he still wants to get on the ground, how he has to curl his hands into fists to keep them from turning palm-up on his thighs.

"What," he says after a moment, when he's finally got his words back -- and it feels like his mouth is full of ash, like his tongue is carved from wood. "Would you rather I be kneeling?"

"What? No," Rémy says, sounding very confused now. "I was just kidding, Erik. Stay as you are, you're fine."

"Come on, let's go to the bathroom," Charles says suddenly, getting to his feet and putting his hand on Erik's shoulder, squeezing. "Rémy, we'll be back in a minute."

Erik gets to his feet, feeling like he's been put on autopilot, and follows Charles through the blurring crowds. What Charles says to him, the two of them locked in tight in the single-occupancy restroom nearest the tables, is no different from anything he's said before -- makes no difference, really, like everything he's said before. That Charles buries the flashback before Erik has to experience it fully goes unacknowledged, but Erik can still feel it throbbing in the deepest part of him, insidious and soon to spread again, like a cancer.

Erik's been -- he's -- he doesn't want to think about it, much less put it in words, but he feels like he's lost his grip on the pieces of himself that are slowly unraveling, like he's unknit himself when he wasn't paying attention and it's just now that he's finally waking up and seeing the extent of the damage he's done. With the trial in just one week, he isn't sure he'll be able to keep himself whole. He has the sense that he'll pull himself too far, will come undone. He's quiet when they rejoin Rémy to finish lunch, and he buries everything else down as far as he can. It might not last. But for now, at least, it's easier to let himself go in the easy blue sea of repetition. Of habits he almost forgot he's meant to have.

 

*

_Charles_

There’s just one more hoop to jump through before the trial, and so on Tuesday Charles takes Erik to the Mutant Center with him instead of sending him to school in the morning, walking across Central Park to the new building where the university has set up the Center. It’s a good site -- the facilities are great, and being attached to Columbia means that research studies can be run easily and quickly, without having to spend months gathering large enough cohorts of subjects. Still, Erik feels nervous as he’s walking alongside Charles, his mind unsettled and flitting from one thought to the next.

“What’s bothering you?” Charles asks, as they dodge around a falafel vendor who’s just setting up for the day. “You’ve had these tests before, you know it’s nothing to be worried about.”

“I don’t know,” Erik says, pulling his coat closer around him, all but hugging his stomach as they walk. “I’m always nervous. Not about the test, just -- the results.”

Charles thinks for a moment, hands in his pockets, before he says, “Well, it doesn’t matter any more what the result is -- I doubt you’ve gone down a level, and frankly Psi level is something to be envied in and of itself. If you’ve gone up, then, well, we’ll have pizza for dinner and celebrate. If not, we’ll have pizza for dinner and do something else.”

Erik manages a thin smile at him and ducks his head a little as they go through the front doors at the Mutant Center, Charles holding them open for Erik, trailing behind. He doesn’t seem terribly reassured; his mind’s still jumbled up, and he’s nauseated, his attention flicking around for the nearest trash can, just in case.

“It’ll be fine,” Charles says, and pats him on the shoulder before striding over to the counter and resting his elbows on it, leaning forward to look at the lady behind it. “Linda! How are you today?”

“Very well, Dr Xavier,” she says, smiling back at him; lovely woman, x-ray vision, uses it to keep an eye on her rambunctious children. “And you?”

“I’m fine, Linda, thank you,” Charles says, gesturing for Erik to come forward and join him at the counter. “Linda, this is Erik; Erik, Linda. Erik’s here to get tested today.”

Erik stands next to him, tapping one finger on the formica and staring down at it like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. “You should have my old files, too,” he says suddenly. “Under the name Max Eisenhardt. From before.”

“Oh,” Linda says, and colors slightly before recovering; Charles gives her a small nod, and she simply says, “I’ll take a look for you, hon. Just a minute.”

Charles can hear her mind working even as she types the name into the computer and waits for it to churn through the database. She’s wondering if she’s met Erik before, if that means that Sebastian Shaw was here in the Center and she didn’t realize it at the time, a sick sense of relief and horror running through her even as the computer beeps.

“Here we are,” she says, and sets the pages to print to add to Erik’s file. “I’ve got them. There’s a form you need to fill out, Doctor, do you want to take it and go sit?”

“That’d be great,” Charles says, taking the folder and a pen from her and smiling again, smoothing over the worst of her anxiety with his mind -- a kindness, really, and one that will keep talk from spreading too badly through the center. The last thing Erik needs is the whole staff coming to gawk.

Charles takes the paperwork over to the waiting area and sits down, propping the folder on his knee to start filling it in. Erik sits next to him, frown deepening.

“Why do you fill out the form?” Erik says after a second. “It’s my test.”

“Because I’m acting as your father here,” Charles says absently, writing in Erik’s date of birth.

Erik grimaces, but says nothing to that, just drags his fingers anxiously back through his hair -- he’s thinking how he used to pretend Shaw was his father, too, when Shaw filled out the paperwork. It makes him uncomfortable, just seeing the parallels, and after a second he gets up and moves to Charles’ other side.

“Trash,” Erik says by way of explanation, nudging the rubbish bin with the tip of his shoe. “Last time I was here I puked on the carpet. Embarrassing.”

“Do you think you’ll throw up this time?” Charles asks; he’d decided to try and act as though this were perfectly normal throughout, to put Erik at ease, but perhaps they need to talk about it. “I can prevent that from happening, if you want.”

“Yeah. Thanks,” Erik says, but his eyes stay on the trash can all the same.

Charles lays down the pen on the folder, then holds them out to Erik. “Here. You do it.”

Erik looks at him, relieved, and takes the pen and folder, settling the paperwork in his lap to finish filling it out. His handwriting is neater than Charles’, and narrower, and he writes slowly, like he’s trying to avoid making a mistake. “How long have you worked here?” he says, as he fills out the dates of previous tests and their results in the assigned box.

“Since I graduated,” Charles says, folding his hands over his stomach and settling in to watch the pen moving, reading Erik’s answers to see if there’s anything he didn’t know. “They’re always crying out for more help, and I don’t need them to pay me, so I do it pro bono. I’ve met some of my private patients here as well, though I work on a sliding scale for them as to whether and how much they pay me for private sessions.”

“That’s nice of you,” Erik says, though it’s clear he’s mostly trying to distract himself. The last test result he fills in was from a year before he came to live with Charles, when he tested Psi-level. “Too bad our schedules never overlapped, I guess.”

Indeed, Charles thinks, with a certain frustration. If they had, he might have been able to rescue Erik from the Hellfire Club years sooner, prevented at least some of the damage from being done. “A shame,” he agrees, keeping his tone neutral.

“Well, not really,” Erik says, skipping down to start to fill in the medical history section. “I make it sound like it was a coincidence, but it wasn’t. Shaw knew who you were, so he looked up your schedule to make sure you were never around.”

“Of course he did,” Charles says, covering his pointless frustration with a wry smile. “Whatever else I might say about him, he’s no fool. I’d have made him think he was a peanut butter sandwich and had you away from him before he’d got past reception.”

Erik snorts, amusement getting past the web of anxiety he’s drawn around himself. “You’d have regretted it, too. I was a horror as a child. I’d have destroyed everything you cared about, out of spite.” He’s run out of room on the medical history section and is continuing on by writing injuries and surgeries between the lines of the typed instructions for the next item.

From what Charles has seen in Erik’s memories, he doubts very much that that would have been the case -- Erik was an incredibly obedient child, had been trained in the worst way possible to be -- but he decides not to question it. Let Erik keep that illusion, unless he himself decides to challenge it. “Still,” Charles says, looking at the growing list and feeling sorrow inside of him like a rising tide, “I could always buy more things. I’d just have been happy to have you away from that life, and safe.”

Erik’s finally finished the medical history and is at age of mutation presentation, where he pauses, pen poised over the page. “You’d know the answer to this one better than I would,” he says, glancing over at Charles. “It’s before I can remember.”

“Around one, I think,” Charles says, “from the CIA’s files. Close enough for government work, anyway.”

Erik writes down ‘12 mo.’ and it’s the end of the form, except for Charles’ signature; he passes the folder and pen back over, lacing his hands together in his lap again.

“There,” Charles says, and nods his head towards the desk. “Why don’t you take that over to Linda and she can pass it through so the doctors know you’re ready?”

Erik obeys, exchanging a few muffled words with Linda at the front counter before he returns, sitting back down next to Charles and stretching his legs out, jittering one knee up and down.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Charles asks, projecting calm in the hopes that Erik will take some of it in and feel better about the whole thing. “Or I can wait out here, I have email on my phone.”

“You can come,” Erik says. “You aren’t going to shoot eye-daggers at me if I’ve not gone up enough levels, are you?” He forces a laugh, like he’s joking, only they both know that’s the least of what Shaw did if Erik hadn’t seemed to improve quickly enough on his test from year to year.

“Of course not,” Charles says, reaching out to squeeze Erik’s hand. “I’m happy whatever happens in there, you know that. I couldn’t care less if you had powers at all, so long as you’re happy and healthy.” He’d hug Erik right here and now if he weren’t so aware of everyone else in the reception area, some of them trying not to be noticed watching them together -- they know, after all, who Erik is. Charles can’t help but wonder if he would have hugged Erik anyway, if it weren’t for the creeping spectre of that odd attraction that still surfaces from time to time, but thinking like that could drive him mad, so he puts the thought away.

“A human me? Perish the thought,” Erik says, making a face, but before Charles can answer he hears someone calling, “Erik Lehnsherr?”

“Over here, Joy,” Charles calls back, getting to his feet. “Here we go then,” he says to Erik, waiting patiently for Erik to follow -- though the boy still looks rather pale.

They follow the nurse into the hallway, and she casts a smile over her shoulder before saying, “We’re in room one today, Charles. You’re sitting in?”

“Not to judge, just for moral support,” Charles replies, following her inside.

The testing room is no different than any other exam room; they’ve already got the phlebotomy tray sitting out, and Joy smiles at Erik when he sits down on the cushioned patient’s armchair, taking off his coat and rolling up the sleeve of his shirt above his elbow. “Good veins,” she says as she ties a tourniquet over his arm and then rubs an alcohol pad on his skin, over one of the raised green-tinted veins. “Nice and easy.  How are you doing today, hun?”

“Fine,” Erik says, and his gaze follows as she unwraps the butterfly needle and tubing from its packet, pausing with the needle poised over his arm.

“Deep breath and a tiny sting,” she says; Erik nods, and then she’s pushed the needle into his vein, blood instantly darkening the clear tubing. “Hard part’s over,” Joy says as she plugs in the gold-capped vial and blood spurts into the vacuum, mixing in with the clear fluid that’s supposed to interact with the Ability Stimulating Hormone in Erik’s blood to give them a near-immediate result.

Charles watches the vial as it shifts from red to rich blue, then keeps getting darker, until the liquid inside is entirely black, even when Joy detaches it from the needle and holds it up to the light.

“Well, that’s pretty definitive,” she says, with eyebrows rising; she feels nervous, actually, and Charles isn’t sure why for a moment until he sees that she’s thinking about all the things she’s seen on the news -- the things Erik’s done, and how strong he was before, compared to now. “Congratulations, Erik -- you’ve just scored omega class on the ASH test.”

“Are you sure?” Erik says, staring up at the black vial, and Charles says, “Well, that’s what mine looked like last time I was tested.”

“Oh,” Erik says, like it hasn’t sunk in yet, dazed-sounding, as if he expects someone to take it back. “... All right.”

“It makes sense,” Charles says, casual, trying to make the both of them calm. “Erik has been able to work at the molecular level for a while, but he broke into the subatomic level recently. His control is coming on in leaps and bounds, too.”

“I guess we’re having pizza for dinner, then,” Erik says, giving Charles an unsteady smile, and Charles smiles back, can feel the corners of his eyes crinkling with genuine pleasure.

“I’ll even let you pick the toppings,” he says, as Joy removes the needle from Erik’s arm and gives him a piece of cotton wool to press to it.

“What does this mean for the trial?” Erik says, holding the wool down until Joy can tape it for him. “Will they still let me leave the city? Are they -- will they tell Shaw?”

Oh, yes. Charles had almost forgotten about that.

“I guess they’ll have to, since it’s pertinent to the case,” he says, with a small shrug. “It’s not as if he can do anything about it, Erik -- he’s going to be under suppressants, and on the other side of the room. The worst he can do is shout names at you, and I don’t think he’s the sort.”

“I don’t know,” Erik says. “I think he’d be proud, probably. Or maybe not, since we aren’t on the same side anymore.”

Charles glances over at Joy; she’s listening while pretending not to be, and he says to her silently, _I’d be obliged if there wasn’t gossip about this. Erik has enough on his plate._

“Oh!” She startles, glancing round at Charles as if he’d goosed her, and thinks, _Of course he’s listening -- of course I won’t -- don’t worry, Dr Xavier -- shit I can’t stop thinking,_ while Erik gives Charles a quizzical look, clearly aware something is going on.

 _I’ll tell you later,_ Charles says, then out loud, “Thank you very much, Joy. Could you email a copy of the results over to my office? Thanks.”

Erik rolls his sleeve back down over his arm and grabs his coat as they stand, Charles’ hand on Erik’s back as they step back out into the hallway and turn to head out.

“It doesn’t matter what Shaw thinks,” Charles says, waving at Linda as they cross the reception area to the outside doors. “I understand if you feel that you still want his approval, but what matters is what you think, okay? He has no further influence on you than you allow him to have.”

“I know that,” Erik says, pulling his coat back on and grabbing the doors for them with his power, this time. “Still. It’s hard not to think about it. It’s strange to think that, if he were here, he’d pat me on the head and say ‘Good job, my boy,’ and be happy about it, but since he’s not, he’s probably going to be angry, because I’m not _his_ omega-class mutant. That’s all.”

Charles can’t keep _himself_ from thinking about the trial, now, and confronting Shaw again -- however indirectly; being in the same room as the man and being unable to read his mind or fight back, given the suppressor he will have to wear, sends shivers down his spine, and he can’t help but think it would be better for all concerned if he and Erik couldn’t see Shaw, and Shaw couldn’t see them. That way Erik wouldn’t have to see that hateful man’s face as he tells the court everything Shaw did to him, and wouldn’t be sitting there knowing, more than likely, what Shaw was thinking. After thirteen years with the man Charles has no doubt Erik learned very well when to duck and when to roll over.

“You’re _your_ omega-class mutant, now,” Charles says, lifting his hand to ruffle the back of Erik’s hair. “Don’t give him the gift of your thinking about him for even a minute until we have to at the trial.”

“Right,” Erik says, but of course it’s easier said than done. Charles knows that better than anyone.

 

*

Departure day comes, and it's an eight hour flight from New York to Amsterdam, which is bad enough, but then there's the time spent going through the special customs procedure arranged for Erik, and waiting for the platoon of American soldiers who’d accompanied them to be appropriately fed through the usual procedures. It takes almost three hours, involves not one but _two_ tests of Erik’s mutation, and finding their baggage where somebody thoughtfully put it aside without informing anyone else of where it was, before they’re finally piling into the waiting car provided by the ICC to be driven to The Hague (the city, not the court, Charles prays), which he’s told will take another hour, depending on the traffic.

Charles is tired enough as it is, but standing at the curb while the driver puts their suitcases into the trunk and trying to work up the will to keep living Charles can't hide the way his body is trying to shut down into sleep. He sinks gratefully into the back seat once the attaché unlocks the doors for them -- secured, he's told, to ensure they didn't have any unwanted guests in there with them waiting -- and leans his head back against the seat, closing his eyes before Erik and his personal Special Forces sergeant have even climbed in the other side.

"Please tell me we're going to our hotel," he says to the attaché, a young man named Jasper, who takes a seat across from them along with two other soldiers as they pull away from the curb at last.

"Yes, sir," Jasper says. "You’ll have two hours to relax and get settled before meeting with the General Intelligence and Security Service."

Next to him Erik makes an exasperated noise -- thankfully, quiet enough as to be nearly inaudible.

Charles opens his eyes again and looks down his nose at Jasper, more out of the inability to move his head than any direct malice. "Are you joking?" he asks, taking in Jasper's neat, corseted suit, the collar sitting snugly around his throat, his perfect hair -- he doesn't look like the sort to make a joke, more the efficient, quiet, order-taking type. "We haven't slept in over twenty hours, have been in the air for eight, the airport for three, and now are driving for a further hour. I'm sorry, but there is no chance that we will be conscious let alone lucid in three hours' time. We'll have to reschedule."

"I'm afraid that won't be possible," Jasper says, at the same time as Erik fixes Charles with an even gaze and says, "It's an interrogation. They don't want us lucid, they want us vulnerable and easy to read." Erik doesn't feel nearly as surprised, or offended, by that as one would expect, although he does nudge Special Forces to his left with his elbow and say, “Isn’t that right, Sarge?”

A pause, and then Jasper continues, as smoothly as if he hadn't been interrupted at all. "As I'm sure you can understand, Dr Xavier, it's matter of national security."

Charles makes himself sit up straight, lips tightening before he says, very carefully, "I am here to give expert testimony, as a leader in my field, not as a prisoner but as a respected psychologist. Erik is here as the victim of terrible crimes against him to bravely testify against those who raised and abused him. And we are being treated as if you are taking us to Guantanamo Bay. I insist on being allowed at least eight hours to sleep and recover ourselves before we attend any meetings." He pauses for effect, then leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees, looking right at Jasper. His eyes are burning from dryness, his brain muzzy and displeasure roiling in his gut. "You wouldn't like me when I'm cranky."

Jasper opens his mouth, likely to apologize before spewing more of the same, but before he can speak Erik has his hand on Charles' knee, says, "It's fine. Let it go." And pulls his hand away only to drag his fingers back through his hair, turning his head toward the window, staring out past Special Forces at the city as it zips past outside.

"I don't know about you, but I want to sleep," Charles says to Erik a little more sharply than he means to; he turns his attention back to Jasper, frowning. "Don't make me make your driver turn this car back around."

"Can't we just get it over with?" Erik says, and he doesn't turn around to look at Charles. His tone is thin, on-edge, tension drawn through every part of his body from the stiff back of his neck to his hand, curled in a fist on his leg.

Charles -- pauses, then sighs and sags back against the seat, letting the seatbelt slither back into its slot. "How long do you expect this to take?" he asks Jasper, who looks rather relieved that Charles has backed down.

"It's hard to say," Jasper hedges, "but I wouldn't think very long. It is for your own safety, sir."

Next to him Erik hasn't relaxed at all, his mind a heated blur of exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, and resignation, all so tumbled-together that it's impossible to tell where one emotion ends and another begins. He's staring out at the landscape and barely processing it at all, as if something in him has short-circuited.

Charles extends his mind to touch Erik's, offering reassurance and apology for his snappish tone. Erik sends back a distracted sort of acceptance. "In that case, then," he says aloud, closing his eyes once again, "I'd like to request that we have the meeting as soon as we arrive at the hotel. Get it all done with so that we can sleep. Is that feasible?"

"I'm sure that can be arranged," Jasper says, pulling out his tablet to start typing something on the screen.

When they arrive at the hotel, the representatives of the Netherlands' security agency are waiting for them. They are introduced to the men and women who are to serve as their bodyguards while they're here (as if the camo-wearing Americans weren’t enough), and then split into separate rooms for interviews. Unsurprisingly, Charles' is fairly straightforward, more a formality than a true security check. However he's kept waiting for Erik for a long time after he's been released himself, and since there's no way Charles is just going to go to their suite and go to sleep without knowing that Erik is okay, he waits, exhaustion weighing him down as he sits in the rock-hard armchair outside the room, trying not to give in to it.

After a good three hours have passed, Charles decides enough is enough and reaches out for Erik and the agents in the room with him, saying, _What's taking so long? Surely you can release Erik for the time being. He's the witness, not the bloody defendant._

The agents don't respond to him, though, and loathe to push the issue and risk harm to Erik or their relationship with the ICC Charles waits another half an hour until Erik finally emerges from the room, looking pale. Charles immediately gets to his feet and puts his arm around Erik's shoulders -- a bit of a stretch, these days -- saying, quietly, "Are you all right? Did they do anything, say anything ...?"

"I'm fine," Erik murmurs, but he stays close to Charles all the same, leaning in toward him. "I suppose they just wanted to make sure this wasn't all an elaborate plot to save Shaw, or blow up the ICC, or something."

Charles makes a scoffing noise, shooting a glare at the agents as they come out of the room after Erik, and he guides Erik out of the room, feeling rather like an angry mother bear, ready to claw anyone who comes too close to either of them. "Because living with a telepath isn't good enough," he says, intensely annoyed. "They're better able to determine your intentions than I am, are they? Ugh." Normally Charles reins himself in more than this, but he's too tired to give a shit any more about propriety and what his mother would have said.

"Well, they agreed not to make me wear suppressors," Erik says, lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Of course, that could be pragmatic more than anything else.They know I could get them off in about five minutes."

Another thing they could have asked Charles about, rather than troubling Erik with it. "Come on," he says instead of giving in to the urge to turn around and give their followers a piece of his mind. "There's a bed upstairs with my name on it. If you're lucky there's one for you, too."

"If I'm lucky?" Erik says, and he's smiling a little as he turns to raise an eyebrow in Charles' direction. "What do I have to do to earn it?"

Charles snorts. "Pray the ICC splashed out enough money for a room with two beds. Otherwise you get the bathtub. Age before beauty."

This time Erik really laughs, and after a second he lifts his arm to wrap it around Charles' back, mirroring Charles' posture so they're linked together the rest of the way upstairs.

When it comes to hotel rooms, at least, the ICC does not disappoint. They've paid for an expansive suite with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large living room with kitchenette. The floor-to-ceiling windows look out over the city, and Erik goes to them immediately, leaving his bags with the bellhop to pull the curtains all the way aside.

Against the bright daylight backdrop Erik is a tall silhouette, his details blurred until he's just a dark shape, lean and broad-shouldered, and a mind, exhausted but curious, fascinated with what he sees. Charles feels a surge of fondness, but his own tiredness wins out, and so he says, "I'm going to bed. Wake me up if a Hellfire Club assassin breaks into the room and not before."

"All right," Erik says, and Charles chooses a side at random -- walks through the door on the left and finds himself at the foot of a truly enormous bed, white and incredibly fluffy with duvets and pillows and towels piled neatly on the end of it. He toes off his shoes and manages patience long enough to unfasten his belt and let his trousers fall to the floor, but the moment he can Charles steps out of them and climbs up onto the mattress without even moving the toiletries, just crawls up to the head of the bed and … doesn’t fall asleep.

It’s all very well Erik not having to wear suppressors, but Charles knows full well the day will be hard enough on him anyway, and Charles … will not be at his best. Given that telepaths are required to wear them in court by international statute, and the fact that the mere thought of wearing a suppressor makes Charles want to vomit.

He falls asleep eventually, but it’s a restless night, waiting for the trial to begin.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Contains some age difference lusting that I expect will bother 0% of anyone reading this fic if you *cough* get what I mean *cough*. Worth mentioning anyway, though. Also contains references to past child physical and sexual abuse.


	11. Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so very much to **baehj2915** and **Subtilior** for betaing this for us! Y'all're the shit. 
> 
> Content notes at the end of the chapter.

_Charles_

The treatment they received yesterday notwithstanding, the hotel they've been put up in is very fancy indeed, and Charles can't fault the facilities, even as the child of a very rich family. The Steigenberger Kurhaus Hotel is five star, and everything about it is beautiful, from the vaulted ceilings to the glass-roofed conservatory where they're meeting Gabrielle for breakfast to discuss the pre-trial preparations for the day.

Charles feels her coming before she enters the conservatory, and he pauses for a moment in his conversation with Erik, croissant torn into two parts in his hands, ready for jam. "Gabrielle is here," he says, setting the pieces down and wiping his fingers on a napkin.

Erik hasn't eaten anything, his plate of fruit and toast of-yet untouched. He puts down the strawberry he was playing with all the same and reaches for his coffee instead. He's still drinking it when Gabrielle joins them, taking the third seat at their table and smiling at Charles -- the expression's lost on Erik, whose eyes are closed. 

"Hello, you two," she says, adjusting her seat and setting her bag down next to it. "I hope you slept well."

"Like the dead," Charles says, with a small smile for her. It's difficult trying to be casual with her in this professional context when they used to be intimate outside of it -- she’s been there for breakfast with the two of them before, and things are so different now that it feels off-kilter, the usual patterns broken. "I must say, your international colleagues are a bit merciless. They swept us up as soon as we landed and kept us in meetings for hours instead of letting us get some rest after the journey."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Gabrielle says, with a wince. "I'd like to say the worst is over, but we'd all know I was lying, I'm afraid." She settles her hands atop the table, glancing between them. "I'm given to understand a happy birthday is in order?"

Charles glances across at Erik, who is playing with the handle on his coffee cup, eyes downcast. "Yes, we're celebrating Erik's sixteenth today," he says, nudging Erik with his foot under the table. "He's like the Queen; one now, when we celebrate publicly, and one in May, when he was actually born. Bad timing, but at least we'll get a second shot in the spring."

"Well then, happy birthday, Erik," Gabrielle says. 

Erik glances up at last, at Charles, rather than Gabrielle. He looks tired, even though it's already two PM back in New York. "You know they chose this day because it was the day Shaw _found_ me," Erik says dryly, hand dropping to the table top.

"I know." Charles manages a small, sympathetic smile. "If you want, we can drop it and move things to May permanently instead? I didn't want to presume, since this is the birthday you're used to."

Erik shrugs. "It's fine. I'd never get used to May, anyway -- I'll always consider this my birthday, even if I'll still technically be fifteen for another five months after this." He tries to do something with his face, but for the most part he ends up grimacing. After a second he turns his attention to Gabrielle, meeting her eyes across the table. "So how does this happen, then?"

"Well," Gabrielle says, taking the cue to change the subject gracefully, "since plenty of the trial has already occurred at this point, we'll skip most of the formalities. There's no jury, unlike what you might see on TV -- there will be three judges present, myself as elected Prosecutor, and the defense team. The laws are very similar to what they are in the US, though. The accused have the right to examine the witnesses -- not the same as confront their accusers, but since you're testifying, it amounts to the same thing. And guilt must be proven beyond reasonable doubt, prior to which point the defendants are presumed innocent -- etcetera. Most likely, you will provide testimony two times, and will be eligible for reparations paid by the UN if Shaw and the others are found guilty, the same as the families of the deceased will be."

"The press...?" Erik prods.

"The assembly voted that the Hellfire Club proceedings should be left open, unfortunately," Gabrielle says. "Although this could be good, in a way -- public opinion is vastly against the Hellfire Club, and as such I wouldn't worry about any of your testimony being held against you by the media. I know they've been a bit disappointingly ambivalent about you so far, but I would expect this will lead to a rather significant improvement of your image as far as they're concerned."

"Great," Erik says. "Top priority for me, as you know." His voice is cold, but Gabrielle, at least, knows better than to take offense. 

"Shaw will be there...." Gabrielle says, almost warningly, but Erik cuts her off a second later with a shake of his head.

"I know. Right to examine the witnesses."

"He'll be sitting with the other five of them in the back row, on the left hand side," Gabrielle continues, undeterred. "They'll all be wearing suppressors, but just in case, we have bailiffs, UN police, and snipers posed at multiple locations to take them down if necessary."

"May I ask," Charles says, as neutrally as he can, "when I need to put the suppressor band on? I'd prefer to leave it as late as possible." The thought of it is ... he manages to swallow down the sick feeling it brings up inside of him, the old nightmare plying cold fingers on the back of his neck, like a too-tight collar.

"You really must wear it right from the get-go," Gabrielle says, turning a sympathetic gaze his way. "If you don't, we'll be all but inviting the defense to move to throw the case out, citing undue influence. We don't want anyone suggesting you're manipulating the judges. Or the witnesses."

Charles closes his eyes for a moment, then makes himself open then again, makes his face normal. "All right," he says, even though it isn't. "Just so you're aware, without my telepathy interfering I'm a -5S. You may find that my behavior is a little different."

"That shouldn't matter," Gabrielle says, patting his arm once. "You aren't testifying today, and even if it does change your dynamic presentation, as long as it doesn't alter your _testimony_ I can't imagine it will make a difference. Courts have strong submissives on the stand all the time."

"All right," Charles says again, and looks down at his croissant only to find it shredded -- he doesn't remember doing that, but his fingers are covered in flakes of pastry. "Damn. I'll just go and fetch another one. Please excuse me."

He gets up from the table and uses the short walk to the buffet to try and calm himself down, using breathing exercises to slow himself inside, to counteract the effects of stress on his body and mind. If he's going to be vulnerable later, he needs to be as calm and shored up as possible, not give in to the urge to tear the headband he'll have to wear off and defend himself. It doesn't help that he's been aware of the Hellfire Club's presence ever since he woke up this morning -- not here in this building, but close enough that he caught a whiff of Shaw's mind and has been in a hypervigilant state ever since, almost waiting for him to jump out from behind a curtain and attack.

When he comes back to the table Gabrielle and Erik are sitting in silence, practically ignoring one another. Charles takes his seat and breaks the quiet by saying, "So what _will_ I be doing today?"

"You're here to support Erik," Gabrielle says, looking pointedly at Erik, who is staring at the black surface of his coffee like he's forgotten he's present here at all. "It will be a long day for everyone, but we can get through it. Yes?"

"I'm sure we'll be fine," Charles says, pulling out a warm voice instead, burying his own worries under a deep bedrock of concern for Erik; this, at least, he knows how to handle. "Erik is a very brave, strong young man, and I know that whatever happens, we will all be very proud of him. Wouldn't you agree?"

"Very much," Gabrielle says, and they both ignore the faintly dirty look Erik is giving them. It's such a typically teenage response that it makes some of the tension feel like it's eased a little, now, and even Erik finally manages to take a second tiny sip of his cold coffee as they finish breakfast.

The anticipation ramps up slowly, though, once they're in the car, watching the city go by outside. Jasper sat beside Gabrielle on the opposite side from Charles and Erik, checking his tablet while Gabrielle reads through her papers for the hundredth time. Charles can feel her performance anxiety, Erik's regular anxiety, and his own, and he has to concentrate hard to project a feeling of calm, of reassurance, trying to paint himself with it as well as everyone else.

"We're almost there," Gabrielle says after a little while. "I wish we could stay out in the hall until it's time, Erik, but I'm afraid it doesn't work like that." 

Erik says nothing, just lifts one shoulder and goes back to staring out the window. He's faintly green around the edges, his hands both twisted into fists on his knees. Charles reaches over to him and places his hand over Erik's, but it doesn't seem to do any good.

"And, Charles, you'll be needing to put this on, now." She draws a small box out of her bag and sets it on her lap. When she opens the lid she reveals what Charles already knew was inside: the slim silver suppressor band he'll be forced to wear around his head, over his temples, for the duration of the trial session.

He stares at it for a long, silent moment, feeling nausea rearing its head again and wondering where will be the least offensive place to vomit. But then he looks at Erik, and thinks, _Grow up, Xavier. This is not that time. You can do this for Erik._ It's not as if he hasn't worn them for court before, either -- but knowing he will be in the same room as Sebastian Shaw and his ilk while powerless and submissive is a hard thing to consent to.

As if that weren't bad enough, the slender needle that has to prick the skin at his temple always stings like a bitch, no matter what they say about it being barely noticeable.

"Okay," he says reluctantly, gritting his teeth and squeezing Erik's hand once before letting go.

"Here," Gabrielle says, and she lifts the suppressor out of its box, leaning over to place it on his head -- but before he can help it Charles flinches away, shoulders jerking up around his ears as he ducks off to the side.

"Sorry," he says, his breaths coming a little fast. "Reflex. It's fine. Put it on."

"You need to hold still," Gabrielle says. "The needle might break if you're not careful."

"Metal needle?" Erik says suddenly, surprising all of them. It's the first he's said in what must be over an hour, now -- since mid-breakfast. He's looking at Charles, turned away from the window at last, knees angled toward Charles'. After a second, he nods toward the suppressor band, and then: "... Let me?"

Charles gives him a wan smile. "All right. Thank you." He watches carefully as Erik lifts the damn thing out of its box between thumb and forefinger, clearly examining it. Then when he brings it over towards Charles' head Charles sits very still, closing his eyes so he doesn't have to look.

There's a weight touching his hair, sliding down around his brow, and then a prick at his left temple, a sharp twinge that has him wincing, but then everything goes quiet, muffled, like being shut in a box of cotton wool, and Charles sways even though the car is keeping steady, dizziness washing over him like the feeling of standing up too quickly, as Erik snaps the catch shut at the back to clamp it in place.

"There," Erik's voice says after a moment, and his hands drop away. "How do you feel?"

"Deaf," Charles says, making his eyelids lift so he at least looks alert and slumping back into the seat, concentrating on trying to feel like himself.

"It's just for a few hours," Gabrielle says, although that feels like poor consolation at the moment.

Erik's still looking at him, a small frown on his lips, and he lifts his hand like he plans on touching Charles but then, thinking better of it, balls it up in his lap again. "Are you all right?" he says quietly, as if he means the words for only Charles to hear.

"I'll be okay," Charles replies, dredging himself up from the deeps and blinking hard, trying to come back to focus. "I just hate these things. Being suppressed is horrible, everyone else is like a shambling zombie, all mindless and dead inside. It's like living in Resident Evil."

"We're here," Jasper says suddenly, interrupting them. 

The car is slowing, indeed, pulling to a stop in front of a tall white-and-glass-window building, the structure of it so clean as to appear sanitary. Charles takes a deep breath and turns to smile at Erik, putting away his own shit to deal with later. "Are you ready for this?" he asks, as the driver comes around to open the door. "I know it's hard, but I really am proud of you. Remember that."

Erik looks like all the blood has been drained out of him slowly over the past several hours, pale and drawn, but he just presses his lips together and nods. After a second he lifts one hand and drags it back through his already-perfect hair. Having lost his telepathy doesn't mean Charles can't see the way his fingers are trembling.

"Let's do this," Erik says, and his voice comes out steadier than Erik himself looks. 

Charles nods and slides out of the open door onto the sidewalk, stepping aside to make room and looking up at the building as he waits for the others. So. Here is where it happens -- here is where Erik confronts his past, and chooses his future. Charles can't help but feel like today is going to be a battle between him and Shaw for Erik's soul. Either Erik will see Shaw and the other Hellfire members today and testify against them -- or he'll remember how things were before, and Charles' work will all have been for nothing.

*

_Erik_

Erik can't help it -- when they enter the court his gaze immediately goes to the front of the room, to the chairs set behind the desk to the left, fully expecting to see all of them there and waiting for him. But the row is empty except for a few dark-suited Dominants who, Erik realizes after a dull moment, must be the defense team.

"This way," Gabrielle says behind him, prodding him forward, and Erik lurches into motion again, walking up to the very front of the room and sitting down in one of the hard chairs behind the prosecution's desk. All of them have a computer set up before them, logged-in -- no keyboard, but a mouse. Erik struggles to ascertain their purpose; right now the screens are blank, showing nothing. Charles sits beside him and gives him another of those reassuring looks, though he says nothing. It might be that he has nothing to say, but it's strange not to feel the emotion at the same time, to get that push of mental energy to back up the facial expression.

Erik grips the underside of his seat and looks around the room. It's remarkably small, no room for an audience, although Erik senses their metal in an adjacent observation room, hidden behind a panel of mirrored glass. He can see the door through which he thinks Shaw and the others will come on the left side of the room, small and unassuming, leading god-knows-where. 

He's on edge for what feels like forever, jumping at every rustle of paper or cough, expecting it to be them. But it never is, and eventually the anticipation has welled up inside him so strongly that he can feel it pressing against the underside of his skin, like he's a pressure bomb waiting to explode. Eventually even that wears off, until Erik's hyperconscious of each moment that ticks past, the movement of the second hand on Charles' wristwatch. _What the hell is taking so long?_

No sooner has he started to get irritated, to wish this were over and done with already, than that small door opens, and there they are. 

An army lieutenant enters first, wearing the blue uniforms of the UN police, but just behind him walks Sebastian Shaw, five-foot-ten and wearing a bespoke suit, Dominant-cut despite the subdued color of his tie. He looks exactly how he always did, ageless and slim, only he and Erik must be of a height now. Strange, Erik always thought he was so impossibly tall .... 

Shaw meets Erik's eyes across the room, suddenly, as if he caught the thread of Erik's thought, and his mouth makes a thin smiling shape, but his eyes stay cold, no reflection of the smile at all. Erik feels the bottom drop out of his stomach, and his heart stumbles in his chest -- he looks away before he can help it, the reflex surging up as if it never left. 

I can't do this, Erik thinks suddenly, wildly, and he has the overwhelming desire to get out of his seat and run from the room -- to start in one direction and not stop until he's dead. He can feel Shaw's presence in the room like a weight bearing down on him, and he should be on his knees -- no, on his stomach, as low as he can get, to beg forgiveness. Shaw will punish him, but it's no less than Erik deserves. 

It takes an unexpected squeeze of Charles’ hand on his knee for Erik to remember where he is. He startles, heart leaping up into his throat, but just as quickly he's settling again, even if it's only to the thrum of nausea that surges through his entire body. 

After several long minutes he dares to glance across the room again. Shaw is sitting, now, and all the rest of them are there as well -- Emma Frost still in resplendent white, all of them with narrow suppressor bands around their wrists (or brow, in Frost's case). He almost doesn't recognize Azazel and Wyngarde. The former is red no longer, black-haired and olive-skinned, and the latter ... Erik's surprised to find that, without the benefit of illusion, Wyngarde is _ancient_ , easily eighty years old. 

_I don't know if I can do this,_ Erik thinks, explicitly at Charles this time, and for a moment when there's no response he feels -- hurt, empty, anchorless, before he remembers. 

He reaches for Charles' hand instead, clasping his palm and squeezing it tight. 

"They have no power over you here," Charles says quietly, turning to face Erik. "There is nothing they can do to you any more. No matter what they say or how they look at you."

Erik swallows, and nods, tries to will himself to believe it. "I know," he says, even though he's not entirely sure that he _does_ know.

The judges enter soon after, three of them in dark violet robes. Two humans and one mutant. One of them looks at Erik and Erik stiffens slightly, but then the judge's gaze is sliding away, to their seats behind dark computer monitors at the front of the room.

The court session is called to order. Erik is faintly stunned to realize this is, technically, part twenty-nine of the trial -- how much has happened already, without Erik realizing? He presses his hands flat against his thighs and tries to pay attention to the formalities, but all he can think about is the six people sat across the room and the metal on their bodies: suppressors, cuff-links, tie pins, the warmth of skin against the back of Shaw's wristwatch.

Suddenly Gabrielle is standing and Erik feels a surge of dizziness crash through him -- he hadn't realized they were already at this part, that things would move so quickly --

"... calls Erik Lehnsherr to the stand as an insider witness," Gabrielle finishes saying. Charles squeezes Erik's hand one last time, then Erik stands, walks up to stand behind the wide podium that is sat almost directly in front of the defense.

He swallows down bile and keeps his head down, exposing the back of his neck even though there's no one there to put a collar on him. They make him swear to be honest and Erik repeats the words with one hand upheld, even if five seconds later he could not have repeated what they had him say. All he can hear is the surge of his own blood in his ears. He looks everywhere but at the six people who now seem to be the only ones in the entire room -- the entire world.

After, Gabrielle directs him to sit in a chair in the center of the room, facing the judges. Erik balks for a moment -- doing so will put his back to Shaw and the others, and he doesn't trust them behind him, suppressors or no. It puts his back to Charles, too, reducing this room to Erik and these three strangers. And Gabrielle. He makes himself sit, all the same, and automatically uses his power to adjust the chair for his height, stiffening a little only when he notices one of the judges staring at him. 

"Can you state full your name for the record please, Mr Lehnsherr?" Gabrielle is standing to his side, equally able to look at Erik as at the judges.

Someone has placed a glass of ice water on a coaster next to the computer screen on his desk. He watches a bead of water cut a path through the condensation, and opens his mouth. "Erik Magnus Lehnsherr." His voice sounds ... normal. Surprisingly.

"Thank you, Mr. Lehnsherr -- do you mind if I call you Erik?"

Erik almost does a double-take, before the part of him that's still _Erik_ , still rational, reminds him: she's playing a role, here. She doesn't want him to be seen as an adult, or as a compatriot of the Hellfire Club. She wants to remind them all that he's a child, because that will, in the judges' eyes, make everything he says the Hellfire Club did to him, with him, sound that much worse.

"I don't mind," he says.

"All right then, Erik," Gabrielle says, smiling at him. "I'll start off asking you a few basic questions. Just be as honest as possible, and give simple answers. If I need more details, I'll ask for them." She waits for him to nod before going on. "How old are you, Erik?"

Well, Erik thinks dryly to himself, never let it be said that Gabrielle Haller doesn't play hardball.

"Sixteen."

A pause. "Is that your biological age?"

"No. I'm fifteen, biologically." It feels like a lie to say as much, even if Erik knows it's true. It's hard to integrate that knowledge with his own concept of himself, which has always believed he's six months older than he really is. It puts into sharp focus just how much of Erik's life has been altered and reconstructed at Shaw's hands, even if now isn't the time to truly appreciate that. 

Christ, Erik thinks, flattening his hands against his thighs and resisting the urge to look at the six defendants over his shoulder. If he stood up, the court would practically see his marionette strings.

"Then why would you say you're sixteen, when I ask how old you are?" 

"I only recently found out my real birthday. I'd been celebrating my birthday today, and as I used to understand it, today I'd be turning sixteen." He keeps looking at Gabrielle, not at the judges, not wanting to give into the temptation to read the expressions on their faces.

Gabrielle's expression is artful, composed in a mask of mild, but pleasant, confusion. "What is today, then, if not your birthday?"

A breath. Easy. Just answer the question. "Today is the day I was brought to live with the Hellfire Club, according to Mr Shaw."

"Would that be Mr Sebastian Shaw, one of the defendants?"

"Yes."

"And what is your relationship to Sebastian Shaw?" Gabrielle leads him through the same questions they practiced months ago, slowly letting Erik explain the way he was told he was brought to live with Shaw, and then directing the court to look at evidence on their screens regarding the circumstances of Erik's disappearance in 2003. It's the same stuff Erik saw a year ago, in that folder in Charles' study. 

It's surprising, then, when she doesn't immediately ask him about sex, but instead directs the conversation to talk about Erik's activities as a member of the Hellfire Club. He talks about his first mission, when his only job was to carry a bomb, zipped up in a brightly-colored plastic backpack with a picture of Superman on it. Erik never felt afraid; he could feel the wires, knew exactly how long was left on the timer. It was easy to carry it in, and walk away without it. Erik remembers thinking it was the least painful way he'd ever earned an ice cream cone.

She asks him about things he saw the others do, has him explain in detail every mission, from who was involved to the dates and times everything happened, to the intended effects of the crimes. After that it's all about his own jobs, individual assassinations he carried out, the instructions he received and the rewards for doing a good job. The punishments, for mistakes. 

Erik reaches for his water, eventually. He's lost track of how long he's been speaking when the judge calls for a twenty-minute recess. It's only then that he realizes it must have been an hour and a half, already. When he stands his legs feel weak and unsteady, like he's forgotten how to use them. 

Charles insists that they leave the room for those twenty minutes, and he takes Erik for a walk around the building, a slow, steady amble with no true destination in mind. Charles doesn't say much, but his presence makes Erik feel better, nonetheless.

"You're doing a great job," is almost the only thing Charles does say, and before they go inside again Erik turns to press their bodies together, wrapping his arms around Charles' neck and resting his brow against Charles' shoulder, breathing in the familiar warm scent of him until the rapid patter of his heart finally slows back to normal.

Erik returns to the stand, and this time he sneaks a glance from beneath his lashes to the left as he crosses the room -- the six of them are less than ten feet away, close enough that two strides could close the distance between them enough for a hand to reach out and touch. Looking makes him feel like he's been jolted with an electric shock; he jerks his gaze away almost as quickly, forcing himself to stare down at the surface of his desk as soon as he's back in place.

The court reconvenes, and this time, Erik gets a sense of the narrative Gabrielle is trying to construct: she's introduced the figure of Erik-as-terrorist, has displayed all his crimes early on before the defense can, and now she will tear it all down.

"Erik, why did you do all of those things?" she asks, folding her hands neatly behind her back, her tone one of sad curiosity. "What was your motive in carrying out these crimes?"

The answer catches in the back of Erik's throat, and for a moment he doesn't answer. It would be easier, maybe, if he ignored his own ideals and blamed Shaw for everything, if he let himself be painted as a mindless puppet, but Shaw is not the only one here, and the judges are not the only ones who will be reviewing this case. He is keenly aware of the cameras in the observation suite just next to him, machinery clicking as someone snaps a photo of him. 

He goes for neutrality. Even that feels evasive, somehow, though. "It was my duty as a member of the Hellfire Club to participate in missions to the best of my ability."

"And who taught you that duty?"

His mouth feels dry, but he makes himself speak anyway. "The defendants. Mr Shaw, in particular."

"I see. And what would happen if you were derelict in your duties?" Gabrielle says, settling the tips of her fingers on the edge of his desk, watching him.

"If I didn't participate in a mission?" Erik asks dubiously.

"If you like."

"That would never happen," Erik says. "Missions are everything. The entire organization revolved around them; you would no sooner miss breathing, or sleeping."

"All right," Gabrielle says, "and were there other rules you were meant to follow?"

"Yes," Erik says, and he stops himself before he can provide a few examples, remembering what Gabrielle had told him about keeping his answers simple and allowing her to ask him to expand.

"Did you ever disobey any of those rules?"

Erik can feel Shaw's eyes on the back of his neck, boring into him, and he wants so badly to slip off his chair and onto his knees right here and now; he feels like he's been caught in the act of betrayal. And maybe he's right. That's exactly what this is, after all -- betrayal. "Yes, I did."

Gabrielle nods, slowly. "What happened when you disobeyed?"

So they're here, then, and Erik has been led like a horse to water. Now it's time for him to drink. 

"I would be punished."

"How?"

Erik twists his fingers into fists, digging his nails hard into the flesh of his palms, and keeps his gaze fixed on the table. He lets his eyes trace along a grain of the wood, and doesn't look at Gabrielle, or the judges. "He -- Mr Shaw -- would hurt me. He'd beat me, or he'd use his power on me." The same thing, really. Mr Shaw saw no demarcation between natural strength and strength by mutation; Erik wondered sometimes if he even knew where the line was, or if it was simply a continuum of the same act, hitting Erik hard enough to bruise, or hard enough to shatter bone.

"How often did this happen?" Gabrielle asks.

"As often as I would disobey," Erik says a bit dryly, but he knows what she means, and so before she can revise he continues on. "More often when I was younger. At one point it was multiple times a day that I'd be punished in some respect. Around the time of the arrests, it was down to a couple of times a week."

"And if for some reason you _were_ to neglect your duty participating in the missions of the Hellfire Club," Gabrielle says, and she walks two steps, heels clicking off the tile floor, "is it reasonable to suspect this would be the response?"

Erik's stomach feels hard, like he swallowed something inedible and, inside him, it's slowly turning to stone. He wants to protest that he would choose to go on the missions any day -- that it was _always_ his choice, that he believed, _believes_ , in the cause above all else, but that isn't the question she's asking, and so he forces himself to say, "...Yes."

Some part of him expects ... something else. For her to gloat, maybe, at having made it seem like Erik only did anything to escape the threat of pain, but Gabrielle just continues on the same thread of questioning as before, as if this epiphany were merely incidental.

"How severe were these physical punishments? Were you ever impaired in any way?"

"Yes," Erik says again, and when she prompts him for examples he finds himself telling her about when he was seven and Shaw broke both his legs after Erik tried to run away from home one day. When he was thirteen and Shaw made him lie on his side while Shaw snapped every single one of the right-hand ribs, each with a simple flick of his fingers -- the cigarette burns on the small of Erik's back, the times he'd go so long without eating anything that he'd pass out. "Even if it was something minor," he finishes, "like spitting instead of swallowing, he'd beat me so badly I could barely move for days."

Gabrielle's mouth tightens for a moment, but she sounds very calm when she says, "So Mr Shaw would punish you for performing sex acts incorrectly?"

Erik nods. He can almost hear Shaw's voice, speaking from memory as clearly as if he were standing over Erik right now, _I don't know why I bother trying to teach you anything._ "Yes," he says. His voice sounds strained to his own ears and he reaches for the water, taking another sip.

"Were you sexually involved with other Hellfire Club members besides Mr Shaw?"

He confirms it, and when she asks for names, he says, "Almost everyone. Of the defendants, I frequently had sex with Azazel, Wyngarde, Essex, and Quested. All but Emma Frost, that is." 

"And how old were you the first time you performed or were used for a sexual act?"

Erik lets her guide him through his own sexual history, answering her questions as neatly as he knows how. He can tell that the media find it shocking, because the number of cameras on him practically doubles, but he's far more aware of the metal sitting behind him, and the eyes still boring into the back of his skull.

Shaw is rubbing his thumb along the curved steel of his wristwatch, a steady, rhythmic movement that makes Erik feel caught up in its sway, until after a while he almost feels seasick from it, his own pulse pounding to that same beat. He grabs the edge of his seat and tries to focus on something else -- on the words coming out of his mouth, or the copper in the computers, but it's impossible to ignore it now that he's noticed. Shaw's skin burns against the metal, and Erik shudders involuntarily, all the muscles in his legs seizing up until it's all he can do not to launch out of his chair and just ... and just _run_.

Erik has just described the last sexual encounter he remembers, when Azazel came into his bedroom in the middle of the night a few hours before the raid -- _don't wake up, malchik, you sleep, just roll over_ \-- when Gabrielle says, "... results from the rape kit of Erik Lehnsherr upon his arrest 2 January 2016, on your screens as Exhibit M" and the computer monitor in front of him flares to life.

It's a photograph of himself. He almost -- he nearly doesn't recognize that it's him, at first, but after a moment he remembers them taking it. It was the end of a long night, and they'd not yet splayed him out on the table and swabbed him with their tools and instruments. There was just the human nurse, taking photos of him, of each part of his body and then these last two, front and back -- he remembers how he could barely feel the metal in her camera at all, how numb he was to everything, like he was watching it all happen from the bottom of the ocean.

The first thing he notices is the collar around his throat, black leather cutting a stark line across his greyish skin. He's far skinnier than he remembers being, ribs and hipbones jutting out, his clavicle like a razor blade. He's staring right at the camera but his gaze is dull, like he doesn't even see it. The suppressor bracelets almost look like manacles on his wrists, and he's ... he couldn't begin to count the bruises, even if he wanted to. All in varying stages of healing, painted across his body: red and black and yellow. One half-healed broken rib still bulges against his skin, bone white beneath its wrapping of flesh.

The contrast of wound-on-skin is so stark he can even see the perfect shape of Shaw's fingers around his upper arm, just above his elbow, printed there in dark blue. He tries to imagine Charles grabbing him like that, yanking him around hard enough to leave that sort of mark, but it's impossible. 

"...click to page 2 to view blood and DNA test results," Gabrielle is saying to the room at large, but Erik ignores her, twisting in his seat to look over his shoulder.

From the defendants' bench Shaw is looking back at him, steady and unwavering, and when he catches Erik's gaze he smiles, slowly, like his lips have been parted by a knife.

Erik turns around again, but he feels like someone has stuffed cotton in his ears; his mind is buzzing, but the rest of the world is shut off to him now, as if behind a veil -- it takes him a moment to process Gabrielle's next question.

"Did any of the defendants tell you why you ought to have sex with them?"

Erik clasps his hands together in his lap, under the desk, and tries not to look at the photo of himself that's on the monitor just a few feet in front of his face. "Mr Shaw said it was because I was a submissive. He said submissives are obligated to obey Dominants, and to service them in all ways. Including sexually."

Gabrielle tucks a lock of her long black hair behind her ear, fixing Erik with her gaze, and says, "What did Mr Shaw say your DS score was, Erik?"

"He told me I was a -1S."

"And ... what is your _actual_ DS score?"

Erik swallows, and pushes down the feeling of bile rising in the back of his throat, trying to make himself sound as steady, as neutral, as possible when he answers. "7D."

The judges must know this already, but that doesn't stop a couple of them from looking at each other, brows raising and frowns deepening.

"The prosecution submits into evidence the results of DS genetic testing for Erik Lehnsherr, as Exhibit N." The photo of Erik is replaced by the image of a DNA test result print-out. It's exactly the same as the copy Charles showed Erik the first time they met in his office, with each of the Dominant chromosomal mutations listed in neat order, 1 through 7. 

  


Gabrielle asks him more questions, predominately about sex -- ostensibly to try and support the rape charges, the way she supported the charges under the Rome Statute earlier -- and then, after what feels like days, she dismisses Erik from the stand. 

His legs feel barely capable of supporting his weight as he stands and walks, slowly, back to the prosecution's desk. He doesn't look at the Hellfire Club this time as he passes by, just keeps his head down and ignores the flush that heats his cheeks, knowing they must be watching him, not wanting to imagine what they're thinking right now.

"Here," Charles says quietly when Erik drops into the seat next to him, and hands Erik a glass -- it's not water, some kind of juice; Erik drinks it gratefully, emptying it in a few long swallows.

"You did great," Charles murmurs, taking the glass back from Erik even as the prosecution are saying something at the front of the room, voices Erik ignores. Charles pats Erik's hand, squeezing it for a moment, and then looks past Erik, to the left side of the room, his gaze fierce and the line of his mouth grim. Erik doesn't need to follow his gaze to know where Charles is looking.

It feels abrupt, in a way, when the judges dismiss the court for recess again -- to reconvene at a later date, as yet undecided. Gabrielle reserves the right to recall Erik as a witness, although Erik has the unyielding sense that the rest of his testimony will be given under cross-examination. He glances at the defense one last time, surreptitiously, some reflexive part of him still not wanting to be caught looking a Dom in the eye. They're being led out through that small door, the six of them one after the other. Erik watches them until they disappear, shut out of sight, although he can feel Shaw's wristwatch another hundred yards before he makes himself tear his attention away.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Contains references to past child sexual abuse, and explicit references to past child physical abuse.


	12. Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at [this awesome edit](https://www.dropbox.com/s/c4y92znrmu7wpmz/Test%20scores%20Erik%20%26%20Charles.pdf?dl=0) of the DNA test sheet that **Yukisa** made! It's super cool (big improvement on our original) You should definitely check it out if you're enjoying the epistolary stuff :3

_Charles_

Charles had hoped that after the trial proper he and Erik would be able to go back to the hotel -- Erik needs a break after today, and Charles needs to get the damn suppressor off. But as soon as the Hellfire Club have cleared the room Gabrielle turns in her seat and gives them both a small, tired smile, her hand coming to rest on the back of her chair.

"We've booked a meeting room upstairs to go over the day's testimony," she says. "Can you gather your things? I'll take you."

"Oh." Charles feels disappointment run through him, but this is part of the job; so he just glances at Erik and says, "Of course."

Erik looks as tired as Charles feels, but he doesn't complain, just follows alongside Charles as Gabrielle leads them upstairs to a small, brightly-lit conference room. It's impossible to ignore the guards that accompany them, one on either side, more following behind, as if they were Hellfire and not witnesses for the prosecution. The room is empty when they arrive; Charles waits until Gabrielle has taken a seat, and then Erik, before taking his own beside Erik, folding his hands in his lap.

"Are we waiting for anyone else?" he asks after a moment, resisting the urge to scratch at his temple where the suppressor needle rests under his skin. He's not allowed to take it off while anywhere near the building -- best not touch it, either, in case that could be construed as tampering -- but he can't help his awareness of it, like a knotted tie high up against his throat, keeping him from properly swallowing.

Gabrielle gives him a sympathetic look, like she knows what's thinking. "Just the rest of the prosecution team," she says, and she's no sooner finished speaking than the door opens again, letting in the other four prosecutors, still wearing their heavy, hot-looking violet robes.

"Good afternoon," one of them, an older gentleman, says once they've taken their seats, reaching across the table to shake Charles' hand, then Erik's. "I hope we haven't kept you waiting."

"Not at all," Charles demurs, folding his hand back with the other one. "It's been a long day, though -- how long do you think we're likely to be? I think Erik and I could both do with a nap before dinner."

"Not long," the man says, dropping his thick file folders onto the table. "We just wanted to review the testimonies and see how you're feeling," he's looking at Erik, "before we let you go."

"I'm feeling fine," Erik says bluntly. He's leaning back in his chair, long hands resting on the table top, and Charles doesn't need telepathy to sense his exhausted irritation. 

"I know it can be a difficult process," Gabrielle says, the line of her mouth soft. "We all are very appreciative of what you're doing here, Erik -- it takes a lot of courage to do what you did today. I really admire that."

"Hear hear," Charles says.

"Well, the testimony seemed to go well," the oldest of the prosecutors says. "Of course, next time we're here we'll have to see how it holds up under cross-examination, but I can't imagine anything less than successful. This is very much an open and shut case, with Erik's testimony. As long as you're honest, I don't imagine there's anything they can say that will change that."

Charles nods, relieved to hear it. "And next time is when I'm scheduled to testify?" he asks.

"Yes," Gabrielle says. "After the cross-examination you've been put on the docket as our expert witness on Erik's case. The upside for you of course is that your reputation precedes you, meaning your opinion holds weight; the downside is that the defense will be working twice as hard to discredit your findings so they can call Erik's testimony into question. It's really their only avenue to argue the case."

Well, that sounds worrying -- under normal circumstances that sort of thing wouldn't bother him, but if Charles is wearing the suppressor, made more submissive than normal and facing intense questioning aimed at putting him off-balance ... well. He'll just have to manage. "All right," is all he says, lowering his eyes to the tabletop and focusing on the woodgrain.

"We wrote up a document with the anticipated questions you can expect from the defense," the older man says. "One for you, Charles, and one for Erik." He picks up a set of files and offers them to Erik, who leans across the table, reaching to take them --

"Get back in your seat," one of the guards barks, and there's a clatter of movement, shuffling feet -- 

Charles looks up in time to see the plastic gun lifting, and he just ... reacts, flinging his arm across Erik's chest and shoving himself into the narrow space between Erik and the table, between Erik and the guard, reaching up to grip hard around the suppressor band, ready to pull it off. "Stop," he shouts, his heart slamming against his ribs, his eyes wide and shaking all over -- "Stop it, he didn't do anything -- " His fingers tighten on the metal, needle or no needle, ready to tear it from his skin.

"It's fine," Erik says; his voice sounds shaky, and he's holding up both hands, surrendering. "Charles, it's fine. Leave it."

Charles twists where he's sprawled in Erik's lap, keeping his body in front of Erik's, to look at him, meeting Erik's gaze, and after a moment Erik reaches very slowly to uncurl Charles' fingers from around the suppressor, laying Charles' hand back down on his thigh.

"Put the gun away," Gabrielle snaps, and Charles hears movement, but doesn't turn, too busy panting, freaked out and anchorless, stalled out between thoughts.

"It's all right," Erik says again, and he squeezes Charles' hand lightly, giving him a tremulous smile. His eyes are very steady, gazing into Charles', pale grey. "Sit back down."

Charles wants to say something, anything -- but instead he gets to his feet and slides across back into his own chair, taking a seat and trying to look as if he's in control. He can see from the corner of his eye the odd look Gabrielle is giving him, and so he keeps his gaze low, evading hers.

"I can take the files," he says, and reaches out to take them from the prosecutor, setting them down on the table in front of him.

Even the other prosecutors look alarmed, and one of them, a woman, is giving the guard who drew his gun a very disapproving look, her arms folded across her chest. 

"That's all we had to discuss," the older man says, seeming remarkably steady considering what just happened. "You're free to go whenever you like. Thank you for giving us your time."

"Thank you," Charles says, and he gets to his feet again, picking up the files and holding them awkwardly against his side. "Erik?"

Erik slides his chair back very slowly, like he thinks anything else will get him shot, and stands, glancing back at Charles with a worried look on his face before he follows the guards out of the room and into the hall. Neither of them speaks again until they're back in the car, settled in across from Jasper and well away from the ICC. 

"Here," Erik says quietly, and Charles feels a slight sting at his temple; then the suppressor band is lifting off his head under the influence of Erik's power, floating down to rest in his lap. There's a distinct headrush; Charles lets out a choked sound and presses his hand to his forehead as the voices flow back in quicker than he can re-erect his shields, along with a righteous fury he no longer has any target to fairly vent it on.

"Better?" Erik says, and Charles turns to look at him with what even he can feel are crazy eyes.

"I need to go back there right now," he says, his hands making fists on his thighs. "We're turning around. I need to speak to whoever is in charge of the guard detail. This is _fucking_ ridiculous! Jasper, tell the driver to go back."

Jasper looks a little scared, actually, his face going pale -- Charles can feel himself projecting, his rampant emotion almost echoing inside the car, magnifying as it bounces off the walls. "Dr Xavier ... "

"Charles, calm down!" Erik says, alarmed, grasping onto Charles' wrist and holding tight. "It's not a big deal. It's fine. Let's just go back to the hotel and sleep, okay?"

"That stupid bastard was going to shoot you for putting your hand out to take something you were offered, I will not calm down," Charles snaps, feeling like the top of his head might blow off -- he's so angry, and angrier still for having so meekly done _nothing_ back there, just ... let it pass as if it didn't matter. "This is outrageous -- you're giving testimony at great personal risk and they've put men on guard duty who have the self-control of lobotomized apes -- "

"So file a complaint!" Erik says. "Just file it _later_. All right? This day's been bad enough, I want to sleep now. Please."

Charles looks at Erik, and then looks at the guards flanking Jasper, both of whom look a little wild-eyed; the one on the right is wondering if he should be drawing his weapon. "Don't even try it," Charles says, fixing him with a steady glare that drains the color from his face before he leans back into the car seat to fume, clutching at his head with both hands as the headache kicks in. It takes most of the journey for him to get his shields back up, and by the time he does he's calmer, enough at least to know that half his anger is directed at himself.

This is the other problem he has with the suppressor -- the aftermath problem. It's like being kicked in the head with the thoughts of thousands of people at the same time as shooting up several DS scores, and if he's emotional at all it gets out of hand very quickly, with his usual restraints having been neatly cut by the absence of the need for them. Charles feels almost hungover by the time they reach the hotel, and he walks through the hotel with a hand to his head, trying ineffectually to push out the pain.

"I'm sorry," he says to Erik when they're finally alone in their suite, still rubbing at his temples. "When that thing comes off I get a bit ... I'm sorry, that was entirely inappropriate."

"You're fine," Erik says, dropping down onto the sofa and toeing off his shoes, hands lifting to start to loosen the tie around his neck. "I -- believe me, I'm angry, too, but I just can't deal with any of that right now." He gets the knot undone and tugs the tie from around his neck, letting it fall to the floor. 

And now Charles feels guilty, too, for making Erik have to deal with him when he was ... like that.

"Go to bed, don't sleep out here," he says, coming forward to pick Erik's tie up and hang it over the arm of the sofa where it won't get stepped on. "We'll order room service when you wake up. Whatever you like. It's on them, anyway."

"Strawberries and champagne, then," Erik says with a dry smile, and he closes his eyes for a moment, tipping his head back, before he finally pushes himself up, seemingly as if with great effort. "Thank you, Charles," he says before he goes, pausing with one hand touching Charles' upper arm. "Really."

"For what?"

"For everything," Erik says, and he doesn't elaborate, just goes, walking slowly across the suite and disappearing into his darkened bedroom, pushing the door shut behind him.

*

The area around the arrivals gate is crowded with family members and cab drivers waiting for their pick-ups, but Charles doesn't have to look to know where to go when they wheel their suitcases out of customs and onto the main concourse. He just turns to their right and weaves his way through the crowd, Erik following closely behind with their military escort, his mind all tired grouchiness and longing to be home that Charles can't begrudge him. Still, Charles rather wishes he had looked beforehand when he finally sees Raven, who is wearing Charles' shape right down to his favorite shirt and his worn old brogues, and is holding a sign that says MY CLONE AND HIS BOY.

"Really, Raven?" Charles asks, trying to frown at her, but she just smirks and leans over to plant a kiss on his cheek, her eyes all mischief.

"I came to pick you up, didn't I?" she asks, turning her smile on Erik, who looks bemused. "Hi, Erik. How's it going?"

"Fine," Erik says, shifting his duffel bag further up his shoulder. There are dark shadows smudged under his eyes, but he manages a half-smile for Raven all the same. "How was Buenos Aires?" Raven's been out of town for the past month, on tour with her latest show.

Raven nudges Charles with her elbow, and they start walking slowly towards the exit, slowed further by the way she links her elbows with both of theirs, placing herself firmly in the middle. "Hot, sunny, beautiful," she says, and it's disconcerting for Charles to see himself saying things in an entirely different way than he ever would himself, like looking in a funhouse mirror. "Hank hated it when he came to visit, of course; too hot for fur, and saltwater mattes him something awful so he couldn't even go for a swim to cool off. Still, the show went down well."

They emerge into the parking lot, and Raven steers them towards the ancient town car that Charles usually keeps in the garage under the apartment building, parked rather haphazardly in an end bay. He doesn't use it himself, since he doesn't have a license, but sometimes Raven borrows it, and she doesn't have off-street parking. There are only a few other people in the parking lot, and so they're more or less alone when Raven says, "So I hear that someone is rather more of a special snowflake than I'd been led to believe."

Charles frowns, and takes a look in her head to see what she means, then winces, because Raven's rather annoyed, too. "It wasn't mine to tell," he says, though the look she gives him tells him how much she cares about that.

"What?" Erik says, looking up from his phone at the two of them, and Raven says, rolling her eyes, "You're a wizard, Erik, what do you think I mean?"

"Erik hasn't read _Harry Potter_." The trunk of the car pops open and Charles lifts his suitcase in, settling it in place and stepping aside so Erik can put his duffel beside it. "Raven saw on the news about you being 7D, Erik. I suppose we should have expected it would make the press after the session yesterday."

Erik frowns, and the phone disappears into his back pocket. "It doesn't change anything," he says. There's an uncharacteristically defensive edge to his voice, and Erik folds his arms across his chest, fists buried out of sight. "I'm a submissive. In every way that matters, anyway."

"I mean, it's up to you if you're going to _choose_ to be Clark Kent, but fyi everyone knows you're Superman now," Raven says, closing the trunk. "I -- "

"That's enough, Raven," Charles says, opening the passenger side door of the car and getting in, settling back against the leather seat and closing his eyes. And for once, Raven listens. She falls quiet, and Charles can feel it when she shifts back to her normal self, a sort of change in perception that whispers over her mind; the driver's side door opens and closes, and once all three of them are in the car Raven pulls out of the space and drives them slowly out onto the road.

"So how was the Netherlands?" she asks after a long silence, punctuated only by the sound of tires on asphalt.

"We didn't see much of it," Charles says. "We were pretty much rushed to and from the airport at either end. I'd have liked it if we could have spent a day there to celebrate Erik's birthday, at least, to make up for it being the day he was testifying."

"It's okay," Erik says from the backseat, and when Charles opens his eyes to look at Erik in the rearview mirror Erik is back at his phone, typing a text message out to a friend. "You can just buy me extra cake instead." A slight smirk tugs at his lips, then vanishes as quickly as it appeared.

Raven snorts. "Well, we have always been good at using money to substitute for effort in this family."

"We'll do something nice," Charles insists, too tired to think now of what that something could be. Silently, he asks, _Is it being made much of on the news, then?_

 _Yeah,_ Raven thinks, with a more sympathetic pulse towards Erik, her earlier ire dying down. _You must have known it would be, Charles, I mean -- 7D? There's what, five known in the US? Six now, with Erik. Half the media think he's the most dangerous Dom alive, and the other half want to train him to be the next President of the United States, citizenship or no._

 _I'd hoped perhaps that wasn't the part they focused on the most,_ Charles says, as they bypass a truck, their old car groaning in complaint at the heavy foot Raven's driving with. _Given everything else Erik testified about ..._

 _Yeah. I suppose I forgot about that, too,_ Raven thinks, and winces. _I mean, fuck me, Charles, I know you'd said he was badly treated, but ... I should have thought about that before getting cranky with you. Sorry._

 _It's okay,_ Charles says. _You came to get us, and that's a big help; I couldn't face a long cab ride with a stranger right now, so. Thank you._

 _What do you think Rémy will say?_ Raven glances sidelong at Charles, though her hands stay steady on the wheel. _You're his subfriend and you're living with a 7D and he didn't know. Might be awkward._

 _What do you mean?_ Charles asks, frowning at her. _Erik is ... well, my ward, I suppose, it's not romantic. He's not even really sixteen yet, even if he thinks of himself that way. He might look like an adult but he's not._

Raven snorts out loud, amusement ringing through her mind. _Charles, he's a 7D and even you must have noticed he's filled out since you first took him in. Erik's good-looking_ and _he's an über-Dom! Any Dom would be concerned about it if their subfriend was living with that._

 _Yes, Erik's grown to be quite handsome, but it doesn't signify,_ Charles says, feeling a bit huffy about it now. _It's not like that._

But far from dismissing the thought, Charles' words only succeed in turning Raven's amusement into scrutiny, and he can feel her consciously not turning to look at him, keeping her eyes on the road only by force of will. _Of course not,_ she says, almost too firmly. _Charles, I was mostly teasing. I know you wouldn't go there._

 _Of course not,_ Charles echoes, making his tone solid, unquestionable, and ignoring the pang inside of him that says it's not quite true, the queer tug behind his navel that sometimes makes him look differently at Erik these days, no matter how hard he tells himself not to. _Just because you cradle-snatched Hank ..._

"I did not," Raven practically shrieks out loud, though it's half a laugh, and she takes one hand off the wheel to smack Charles in the thigh with her palm, a resounding slap of a sound. "You take that back!"

Erik glances up at them from the backseat, lowering his phone. "What's all this?" he says, and although his tone's light there's no missing the brief twinge of irritation on the fringe of his thoughts before it's dismissed; no one likes feeling like they've been intentionally left out of conversation.

"Charles is trying to claim that I cradle-snatched Hank, which is a filthy lie," Raven exclaims indignantly, her scales rippling all over and flashing turquoise in the light. "Hank is the same age as me, you asshole! He just looks younger because he's so fluffy."

"Raven thinks that Rémy might be concerned that I'm living with you, now that everyone knows you're biologically a 7D," Charles explains, since he knows well enough that Erik will only sulk if a full explanation isn't forthcoming. He tries to make it as casual as possible, because it really is nothing, and certainly nothing to concern Erik with. "I was merely pointing out that not everybody will automatically assume that I'm attracted to my sixteen-year-old ward simply because we live together, other than my sister, who has a filthy degenerate mind, clearly."

"Wait," Erik says, suddenly leaning forward in his seat so his head and shoulders are between Charles and Raven, turning his head to frown up at Charles. "...You mean you're _not_ attracted to me?"

Charles ... something inside of him hitches, catching, like it's snagged on a hook somehow, but he can hear that Erik is amused, just teasing, thinks nothing of his words and what targets they might hit -- and so he just rolls his eyes and says, "Oh, desperately attracted. You'd better ring Rémy for me and tell him I'm leaving him for you," and shoves gently at Erik's head, knocking him into the side of Raven's seat.

Erik laughs, and there's such a sudden surge of affection from him that Charles wishes he could be sure that all this is, lately, is awareness, the same way he might notice someone on the street or in a coffee shop, that he could just notice and set it aside. But with Erik's history ... with Erik's history, Charles can't help but feel nauseated by himself.

"We'll need to get you driving lessons at some point," he says, the first thing that comes to mind to change the subject. "Hopefully then you can avoid any walls that might come racing up to meet you."

"Why?" Erik says, accepting the new topic easily enough; he drops back against his own seat again, the phone resurfacing from his pocket. "We live in New York. When will I ever need to drive anywhere?"

Charles' heart stops beating quite so quickly, and he relaxes, looking into the backseat at Erik. "You won't always live with me, you know. At some point you'll want to move out, and you might not stay in New York." Charles will be sad, of course, once that day comes, but Erik can hardly stay forever. He'll have his own life to lead, once he's grown and no longer needs Charles. "Depending on where you live you may find yourself needing to be able to drive."

"Right, if they ever decide to let me leave Manhattan without a dozen plastic guns held to my head," Erik mutters. "Besides, what makes you think I'll want to leave? I'm happy where I am." The last is accompanied by a sense of something almost like determination, as if Erik's made his mind up all in the past few seconds, certain and forceful.

"Erik is a responsible pet owner," Raven says, her mouth twitching. "He's adopted you for life, Charles."

Charles makes an exasperated sound, and subsides, accepting that this is one conversation he's not going to win, with either of them. He's relieved when they finally make it back to the apartment and he can disappear up into his own room to try and sleep off the inappropriate thoughts.

*

_Erik_

Knowing what Raven said about the media's response to the news that Erik's a 7D (biologically, anyway) doesn't quite prepare him for seeing it himself. He checks all the usual blogs and forums, reads interpretations that range the gamut from feeling even worse for him, since he was 'forced' to believe he was a sub, to drawing tenuous connections to studies that have found minor correlations between DS scores over 5D and 'dark triad personality traits', with the not-so-subtle insinuation that being 7D somehow proves Erik is narcissistic, and psychopathic, and Machiavellian, and therefore playing this game toward his own mysterious ends.

Of course, there are plenty who don't bother trying to politicize it. Reddit, for example, seems to just think it's fucking cool, and the comment sections are full of people trying to one-up each other comparing DS scores. 

Erik doesn't waste much time reading those threads, though; his interest is more on the reaction to the trial in general, and the reception of his actual _testimony_ \-- not this bullshit about Dominance, which hardly seems relevant. In this, most media outlets seem to agree: no one questions the veracity of his testimony, and even Fox News has stopped accusing Erik of being a murderer, instead doing a total 180 to fawn over him like he's the some kind of hero. The part of Erik that resents the damage he's doing to the Hellfire cause by bringing down Shaw rebels at that -- how dare they diminish the good things he did for Hellfire simply because they stand in opposition to Western human-centric values? -- but there's another part of him that can't help being relieved, too. With public opinion more sympathetic to him, now, he will find it easier to rebuild Hellfire, and spread its influence into the mainstream....

He doesn't even wait for Charles to fall asleep. Reckless of him, maybe, but Erik doesn't have the patience to sit around downstairs and pretend to find Facebook fascinating when he still hasn't checked Purgatory, has no idea what kind of resistance to expect from would-be allies. So instead he waits for Charles to be enmeshed in watching some frivolous television show and then pulls up Tor, keeping his surface thoughts as dull and uninteresting as possible as he navigates to the website and logs in.

**Current Events >>Hellfire Club Trial>>Watch Lehnsherr testify on ICC website livestream**

>   
> **animalfarmer:** I can't believe Shaw would deliberately keep down a 7D mutant already in the Hellfire Club, it's so fucking stupid it blows my fucking mind. Lehnsherr could have been our fucking KING and instead Shaw played stupid fucking games and fucked it all up so now he hates the HC and is on the gvt side. What a fucking joke.
> 
> **sigmasosuckit:** Don't believe everything you read, the CIA has a vested interest in making the HC look like deviant psychopaths and they have Lehnsherr living with the world's strongest telepath, do you really think they couldn't construct this narrative just to play on the public sympathy and make everyone hate the HC? Lehnsherr is just a sock puppet now, he has Xavier's hand right up his asshole moving his mouth and making the CIA's script come out.
> 
> **telekineticdude:** i cant beleive shaw would do all that like wtf that is not what the HC is for lenserr should fuck them uup like just collaps the prison on them al and tak over himself
> 
> **iwillburnyou:** dudes like lehnsherr should recruit xavier and then between them they could conquer the world, like lehnsherr can just order xavier to rewrite the brains of all the world leaders and shit and xavier will have to do it, every1 knows he's a sub and then it will b easy

On one hand, Erik thinks, closing out of the thread, at least he has support.

On the other hand, if his support is from the type of people who frequent Purgatory ... well, they may be his allies, but he's not sure how much that alliance is really worth. It's all well and good that a bunch of teenagers in their parents' basements think he would be a good leader for Hellfire, but it doesn't _mean_ anything.

Erik swallows an exasperated noise, abruptly too-conscious of Charles' presence on the armchair a few feet away, and makes himself think very carefully about nothing-at-all as he shuts down Tor. No time to ruminate on any of this now -- if his emotions get out of hand, too many of his plans will mean nothing.

He checks his phone again, reflexively. He's been texting Madelyne sporadically since the plane landed, but she has yet to respond. Unusual, for her; typically she can't seem to stop talking, even when he'd like her to. He pulls up Skype, just to check, but she's offline. Glancing at the time, he sees it's only the early evening -- he has plenty of time to walk over to her apartment and visit, and still be back even before Charles goes to bed.

"I'm going out for a few hours," Erik says, shutting the top of his computer and looking over at Charles, who seems to be half-invested in his television show and half-distracted by the patient paperwork he has in his lap. 

"All right," Charles says, looking up from his paperwork and giving Erik a small smile. "Don't be too late, it's school again tomorrow."

Erik acquiesces, and then leaves, grabbing his coat and scarf from the gallery closet on his way out. Madelyne lives just a few short blocks from him, but it feels longer; it's started snowing since they got back from the airport, fat white flakes falling down thick and fast, chilling the tip of his nose. He's grateful when he's finally inside the heated building once more, knocking at Madelyne's door.

Madelyne's mother answers after several prolonged moments, dressed as if she just came back from dinner, hair still swept into an elegant updo and a diamond necklace glittering around her throat. "Oh, Erik," she says when she sees him standing there, and steps aside to let him in, smiling widely -- Erik's never been sure if she likes him, or likes the fact he's connected to Charles. "Maddy's upstairs in her room, go right on ahead."

"Thank you, Mrs Pryor," Erik says, and returns her smile; it's a little surprising, in a way, that her behavior is relatively unchanged from normal -- it's as if she hasn't seen the news at all. Or maybe she just doesn't care.

He lets the maid take his coat and heads up to the second floor of the penthouse, checking his phone one last time just in case Madelyne's texted him since he left home. Still blank, not that it matters now. He knocks on her door and takes a half-step back; there's a sound inside of someone moving, and then Madelyne calls out, "Come in, it's open."

Erik pushes the door open and steps inside, closing it behind him. Madelyne is sat at her desk on the far side of the room, bent over something, but she turns when she hears the door close, mouth already open to speak -- but then she sees Erik, and she pauses mid-breath, eyes widening in surprise.

"Hey," Erik says. It's awkward, then, when she doesn't immediately reply, so Erik forces a half-grin and says, "Did you drop your phone in the toilet or something?"

"No," Madelyne says, and she gets up from her chair, moving over to the far side of her bed, but she doesn't sit there like she normally would -- it's more like she's putting it between them before she can fold her arms across her chest and say, "I don't have to text you back if I don't feel like it."

"Of course not," Erik says, taken aback. Almost reflexively, his own arms go up, wrapping around his waist, his fingers digging into his sides. After a second he makes himself ask, "Is everything okay?" 

Surely Madelyne, of all people, didn't read about the testimony and decide that _now_ is the time to start hating him for being Hellfire ...?

Her mouth twists, tight, and then she bursts out, "You never tell me stuff! You never tell me anything!" Madelyne's face is turning a delicate shade of pink, which only makes her freckles stand out more. "I thought you were a sub and you let me get _undressed_ in front of you! You slept over _in my bed_ , Erik! Like, oh my God, how could you not say anything?" 

"I _am_ a sub," Erik protests, but it feels weak; he's sick to his stomach, suddenly, his pulse throbbing in his gut, and he twists both hands into fists, out of sight. But there's anger there, too, and he knows himself well enough to know that's what will win out, in the end, hot and inexorable. "What does it matter what my test results say? I grew up a sub, I feel like a sub -- that's all that should matter."

"I tell you everything and you never tell me anything," Madelyne says, starting to build up steam, "and now I keep finding out more stuff, totally crazy shit like you're apparently some kind of ex-terrorist and now you're not even a sub and you never told me anything about it, you never told me about it yourself you just let me think you were Mr Xavier's lovechild and you had some issues instead of being my friend and telling me stuff instead of letting me find out on TV! So I don't see why I should believe you didn't just let me take off my bra in front of you so you could see my boobs and laugh at me when I wasn't looking."

Right, Erik thinks, and he feels something start to go hard inside his chest, that anxiety giving way to something harsher, but easier. "To be quite honest, Madelyne, I have no interest in your breasts," he says flatly. "It's neither your business nor anyone else's what I did before I came to live here -- only, I suppose, now it's _everyone's_ business. But I don't see why I have to tell you every minutia about my life. Especially when it's something like this, that doesn't even matter."

Her expression has changed to one of hurt, her eyes welling up even as her mouth tightens. "Friends tell each other things," she insists, glaring at him. "You know, because they trust each other and share things? It's part of being a friend, and I thought you were my best friend, but instead you keep big things like this from me because you apparently don't trust me enough to tell me! Which says a lot about how much you value my friendship, Erik. Being a 7D is not 'minutia!' Being a member of the Hellfire Club is not, like, small potatoes, okay? That's like if I was born a boy and I didn't tell you and you found out by accident. It's not cool."

"It wouldn't _change_ anything!" Erik snaps, and he unfolds his arms, letting his hands drop back down to his sides, tension still drawing his whole body taut. "When was I supposed to bring any of this up? You think I want you to know any of this stuff, to treat me differently because of it?" 

He cannot -- will never -- understand this need she apparently has to know everything about him, to pick his life apart for observation like she had Charles' power, regardless of what effect it might have. 

"Tell you -- _when?_ When you're changing clothes? When I'm sleeping over? When you're telling me what assholes all Doms are?" He couldn't say that kind of thing and then watch the expression on her face change, shock-disgust-anger. "Even now, you keep calling me a 7D like that means something, like it defines me somehow -- you think I wear one silver bead because I want you going around thinking of me, talking about me, like I'm a 7D?" Heat has risen quick in his face, and his skin feels like it's burning from the inside out, his heart pounding against his sternum.

"I don't know, sometime," she says, hands coming loose to fly up in the air, jittery and upset. "I'm not even -- you can be whatever you want to be, dumbass, I don't care, what I care about is that I feel like you don't even care right now, I'm a convenient friend, not a real one." She rubs the back of her hand over one eye, smearing away wetness. "And I feel like an asshole because all of this awful shit has happened to you and I didn't even know, and you don't trust me even though I told you all about that time with Brady Hearst in sixth grade and you swore to secrecy, so you know my biggest secret and you could totally ruin me at school if you wanted to. And probably that doesn't mean anything to you because your problems are newsworthy and I'm just some bitch who keeps hanging around you all the time."

Erik lifts a hand, presses his fingers to the center of his forehead, between his eyebrows where the muscle has tensed up. "Look," he says at last, once he's certain he can speak at all without saying something he'll regret. "It's done now. I can't do anything about it; I can't _change_ it. So I don't know what you want me to do." He grits his teeth and makes himself lower his hand again, even if it's already clenching back into a fist. "You know everything about me now. All right? There's nothing more to know." Admitting as much feels like ripping razors out of his throat.

"Are we really friends?" is all she asks, though, without moving or looking away.

He doesn't know how to answer that. They spend time together because she approached him on the first day of school and then never left. And since then, it's like they've fallen into a lazy orbit around one another, kept close by convenience -- but isn't that what friendship is? If you do that for long enough, does it become something more than the sum of its parts? Madelyne is the first, the only, person his age he's spent much time around at all.

At last he says, honestly, "I don't know. I've never had a friend before."

Madelyne pauses for a few seconds, then, before finally her shoulders shift, and she walks out from behind her bed to come take hold of his arm and tug him over to sit on the end of her bed, sitting down next to him and frowning, red-faced, at him from close range. Erik goes willingly enough, wondering what the point of it all is -- is she forgiving him?

"I'm going to teach you how to be a friend then," Madelyne says, still frowning up at him as if she's not quite sure what she wants to do with him. "Since clearly somebody has to. Rule number one, if you're good friends with someone you tell them things about yourself. Rule number two, if your friend tells you things about themselves then you don't tell _anyone_. It's a sacred secret, all right? That's the rule."

"All right," he says, a bit dubiously -- although he's grateful, of course, that she doesn't seem to be angry with him anymore. "I haven't told anyone about Brady Hearst, for what it's worth. Who would I even tell?" Charles, maybe, but Erik doubts Charles is very interested in Erik's social life.

"I don't know, but if you tell then I'll shave your eyebrows off," she says, sniffling, and punches him in the arm. "Got it?"

He nods, deciding that it's Madelyne -- she's probably not bluffing. 

They sit in silence for a little while, side-by-side, her feet swinging where they don't reach the floor, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. It's comfortable now, even if Erik doesn't understand why.

"So what are you going to do about school?" she asks eventually, feet still kicking back and forth, alternating pink and blue -- her socks don't match. "People are all going to know now. It's going to be a big deal. Having a 7D in school is like going to school with a film star. It's crazy."

"I don't know," he says. He doesn't want to be seen as a Dom, or treated like one ... but it's too late for that, isn't it? The entire school knows every nasty little detail about his personal life, now; it's not as if he can just shut that knowledge off inside their heads. "Deny it, maybe." He's mostly joking.

She rolls her eyes. "Yeah, right. Like that'll work."

"Here," Erik says suddenly, and he doesn't have to ask her to find the little plastic box for him; his power latches onto the hundreds of tiny metal beads and tugs it out of her satchel, floating it over to sit between them on the bed. When Madelyne raises a brow at him he just says, "I might as well," and picks out a slim gold pin. He threads seven gold beads onto it and then, in a gesture of defiance, adds an eighth -- this one silver.

"Well, it certainly makes a statement," she says, and reaches out to pluck it from the air, before leaning closer and pinning it to Erik's shirt. "There. Now everyone knows you send mixed messages."

Erik smirks and lifts a hand to touch it once she's drawn away, rolling the beads beneath his fingertips. "I can't decide if this feels like arrogance or not," he says after a second, hand dropping back into his lap.

"Gah," and Madelyne flops back onto the bed, arms falling around her head, looking up at him. She looks a mess, her face still all blotchy, but at least her expression is okay. "Calling a spade a spade isn't arrogance. Don't be an asshole about it and you'll be fine. You're less likely to get shit for _being_ a 7D than you are for not _acting_ like one. But people will be super wary of mocking you right now. A, you're a 7D and could fuck their heads up. B, you're, like ... um. Well. A lot of really bad shit has happened to you and mocking you would be really shitty."

He lies down next to her after a moment's hesitation, resting his hands on his stomach and turning his head toward her. "You forget," he says dryly. "I'm a terrorist. Anything goes."

"Don't be stupid," she says, kicking him in the leg. "Now everyone knows about ... all of that, they all know it wasn't your fault. They made you do it. So it's fine."

Madelyne is staring up at the canopy over her bed, so she doesn't see Erik's expression; whatever Madelyne might say about wanting him to tell her the truth, he very much doubts this particular truth would go down well. What is he supposed to say -- _No, Maddie, that part I did of my own free will, and I plan to resume a life of crime as soon as possible?_

"So ... " She turns her head to look at him, then, and her voice lowers. "Like ... are you gay, then? You only ever sleep with Doms, is all, plus the boobs thing. Not that that's a problem."

Erik snorts, and closes his eyes, lacing his fingers together. "I think you have to actually be sexually attracted to them for that to make you gay," he says.

"Well, maybe that's the problem, then. You probably shouldn't be having sex with people you're not attracted to," Madelyne says, the mattress shifting as she rolls onto her side. "Why do you keep doing it, if you don't even like it?"

"I don't know," he says. "It's not that I _don't_ like it. It's just -- " he wants to shrug, but lying on his back makes that difficult; he opens his eyes again instead and glances over at her. "It's not that big of a deal. It's what they want, and it doesn't bother me to do it, so why not?"

Her mouth twists, and she says, "I guess," rather dubiously. "But you know you don't have to do what other people want just because. You get to choose who you do or don't do things with. That's what the whole subs' rights movement was about. And maybe if you don't feel attraction to Doms it's because you're attracted to subs. Did you ever sleep with a sub?"

"No," Erik says, and then, "why would I?" He's a submissive himself, as far as he's concerned; subs don't desire him the way Doms do. If they did, maybe he would feel compelled to oblige, but as it is the question seems irrelevant. And he's not so sure he's attracted to subs either, for that matter.

"To try it and see," she says. "If you like subs better than Doms. It might be better for you and you might like it then. You're supposed to like sex. It's kind of the point."

"Maybe," he says, attempting a small smile in her direction. "If I ever have the opportunity, I'll consider it." It's the most he can promise, but he suspects Madelyne will take it to represent more than it really does -- so at least she'll be satisfied.

"Not me, though," she says, and kicks him again. "Got it?"

He flicks her in the arm. "All right," he says, and twists further away, out of reach. "Now stop hitting me and we'll call it even."

"It's even when I say it's even," Madelyne says, but she subsides anyway, fixing him with a stern look. "If you tell anyone you've seen my boobs I'll cut you."

"Understood." 

"Good," she says, rolling over onto her stomach and crossing her arms under her chin, settling. "Okay. Now you have to tell me everything embarrassing that's ever happened to you so I have dirt on you to ensure your silence."

*

Madelyne's not wrong, about the reaction Erik's schoolmates have; when he returns to school for the start of the spring semester it seems like everyone wants to know if it's true, even people Erik's never spoken to before. People grab at the pin on his satchel in the halls, as if double-checking the number of gold beads, but they always dart away as soon as he looks back over his shoulder at them, their eyes wide, caught-out. Everyone seems surprised to find that he's still acting as he always does -- as if they expected him, now that his DS score is common knowledge, to come back to school swaggering and ordering people around for no reason, as if he would so easily decide to be a Dom, after all.

Now that they're second-semester sophomores, they start Dynamics classes, which are apparently aimed at helping them learn proper behaviors they apparently might not be learning in their own ungodly homes. They're split by orientation, Doms vs subs; Erik is placed with the other submissives, who eye him warily, like they think he no longer belongs there, even if none dare say anything about it out loud. 

The first several classes are lectures: standard boring material, reading a textbook and filling out quizzes -- all the same bullshit about safewords and consent that Erik mostly tunes out after a while in favor of working on coding something for his internship, quickly hiding the tab every time the instructor walks past. He almost gets used to this routine, and so it comes as a surprise when, two weeks in, the instructors have them meet all together in the gymnasium and the Dominant class is there as well, already helping set out yoga mats and simple bondage materials.

"All right, class," Ms Gregg calls, stepping into the middle of the room and putting her hands on her hips. When she speaks everyone quiets down; she certainly has Dominant voice projection down pat. "Today we're going to start practicing basic dynamic interaction. That means the subs will be placed into posture by the Doms, and the Doms will then maintain comfortable form with the subs and keep them there. No horseplay, no messing about with other students, got that? You're being put in a position to trust and be trusted, and anyone who can't be trusted gets thrown out of my class."

There are a few titters, mostly from the Doms, but they shut up quick when Ms Gregg turns her eye in their direction. They're split into partners, then; Erik ends up with Michael Kern. They've scened before, so at least Erik will know what to expect, and Michael's plenty familiar with real BDSM play, as opposed to the standard vanilla experimentation everyone else in their year has been tittering over up until this point. Probably the best partner Erik could have gotten. Better than Madelyne's anyway -- her 1D partner doesn't look like she could Domme her way out of a paper bag.

"Hey," is all Michael says, picking up the silk-lined cuffs they've been given. "How's it going."

"Doms, I want you to put your partner into Child Posture," Ms Gregg says, and demonstrates on Mr Harmon, showing them how to guide the sub into position. "Once they're settled, then check in and make sure everything's okay."

Michael looks at Erik, and shrugs, then steps in closer and puts his hand on the back of Erik's neck before pressing downwards, towards the floor. Erik goes easily, even bringing his arms up behind his back and crossing his wrists above his hips so Michael doesn't have to manhandle him, can simply clasp the cuffs in place and hold him there, one hand settled at his nape. Erik closes his eyes and rests his brow against the yoga mat, just breathing.

They run through basic poses, and Erik tries to do each one perfectly, as if his reputation as a submissive rests on this alone, even when he can't quite partition what Michael's doing from what Shaw has done, or Essex, or Wyngarde -- he finds himself slipping in between realities, but it doesn't interfere with his ability to be compliant. If anything he feels even more compelled to be flawless, postures perfectly in-line, all the angles correct, as if Shaw himself were standing over him to kick his elbows and knees into place.

"Very good, guys," Mr Harmon says when he comes round, crouching down beside Erik. "Lovely form; I can't find anything to correct, which is almost unheard of! Do you need any help? Are you comfortable there, Erik?"

Erik opens his eyes. "I'm fine." His legs are starting to cramp a little, and he has the strange and overpowering urge to get up and go for a ten-mile run, like he has far too much energy to burn off, but he keeps his expression neutral, doesn't let any of that show.

"Great," and Mr Harmon gets to his feet, smiling down at them. "Okay then. I think you've had enough for today; let him up, Michael, and wait for everyone else to finish."

Erik lets Michael remove the handcuffs himself, even though Erik could have snapped them off with a thought. He rises up again as smoothly as he went down -- all in one movement, not clumsy and clambering like some of the other submissives around them, their own limbs seemingly in their way. 

"I take it you've been practicing," Erik says to Michael once Mr Harmon has wandered off, one corner of his mouth tilting up, and it wouldn't seem suggestive if it weren't for the way Erik still has his forefinger hooked through the cuffs in Michael's hand, the toy keeping them linked.

Michael glances down at them, then lets go of his end; the cuffs swing down and smack against Erik's hand. "With my subfriend, yeah," he says, with a shrug. "But you're pretty good at all that. Made it easy."

"Thank you," Erik says, folding the cuffs together and floating them down to the floor, stacked next to their mat. 

"Just a shame you're not a real sub, or I'd tap that again," Michael says, looking Erik up and down. "Seriously."

The satisfaction at having done well starts to fade, at that, replaced by an edge of irritation. He manages to keep his voice even, at least, when he says, "I don't have anything after school, if you'd like to go back to your place." He shouldn't be meeting Michael's eyes, he knows that, but finds he can't look away; he wants to see Michael back down, and give in.

"Thanks dude, but I'm not gay," Michael says, shrugging again and going to roll up their yoga mat. "I can't unknow it, you know? So thanks, but no."

"Right," Erik says, and after that it feels like his throat is closing up, so they stand in silence for the rest of class, Erik fighting down the surging heat threatening to crawl up his sternum. _As if,_ he wants to say, _I couldn't make you come so hard you forget your own damn name. As if you would last longer than thirty seconds if I put my back into it._ But apparently his score on some test erases all that. He can submit better than any of the 'real' subs in this room, but that's irrelevant now.

He doesn't bother hanging around when class comes to an end, not even to wait for Madelyne. Dynamics is the last scheduled class of the day, so there's nothing left to do but go home -- only that feels like surrender, now, and Erik ... Erik can't let this just be the end of it. 

The owner of the liquor shop a few blocks away used to pretend Erik was eighteen when Erik came to buy cigarettes, just so long as Erik repaid the favor. That's where he ends up now, the bell tinkling as he lets himself in through the warning-plastered door: _We Card!_

The guy looks up from where he's counting out cash behind the counter, and gives Erik a nod. Erik's never felt the need to learn his name. "Hey, kid. Haven't seen you around in a while. Other than on TV. Here for smokes?"

Of course, Erik thinks acerbically -- even here, people watch the news. "No," he says. He leans against the counter, resting his elbows on its surface with his arms crossed, close enough to the man that he can smell the tobacco clinging to his clothes. He feels hardened and hollowed-out at the same time, angry and determined to feel even angrier by the time the day is through. He tilts his head down so he can look up at the guy from an angle; it's been a while, like he said. Maybe the man wants Erik to seem young. "I just thought you might have missed me, that's all."

"Missed something," he says, with a snort, his eyes shifting behind Erik to rest firmly on his ass. "How about we go upstairs and I show you which part of you I missed?"

Erik nods; the man flips the sign on the door to read 'Closed' and leads him upstairs, to the cramped apartment he keeps above his shop and the ratty mattress on his narrow bed. He doesn't have an elaborate set-up, but he has he has a cane, and he places Erik face-down, slapping the cane against his palm with a loud snap.

He doesn't ask Erik for a safeword, or warn him when he's going to start. He just hits him across the buttocks, the cane burning a line across Erik's cheeks that starts to sting immediately.

"Do you like that?" the man asks, as disinterested as if he were asking if Erik wants milk in his coffee.

It hurts, but Erik keeps his mouth shut and doesn't say a word. He never does, not unless they push him so far that he breaks and just says whatever they want to hear. He turns his face to the side, cheek pressed against the rough blanket, glancing back at the man, who is focused entirely on Erik's backside, eyes raw and intense. He raises his arm and hits Erik again, then again, the muscles in his arm shifting under the skin as he beats him.

Erik remembers what Charles said, once, about how some subs enjoy pain, and thinks -- _I'll never be like that_. He could try to like it, maybe, but he's not sure he wants to. There doesn't need to be any purpose for this aside from the throb beneath his skin and the way his mind goes hazy, dizzy as the sharp edge of shock begins to set in. He'll pass out, if this keeps up much longer, but he just clenches his fists into the blanket like that will keep him grounded and conscious.

When his ass feels like it's on fire all over, from the flesh at the top to the thin skin where it meets his thighs, the lashes stop, and Erik hears the purr of a zipper, then shoes on hardwood as the man steps in closer, and finally the fleshy, slap-slap sound of him beating off. Erik just lies there, waiting, and after a minute he hears a grunt, and feels the wet spatter of come splashing over the weals on his buttocks, hot and sticky.

He stays still, for a few moments, just to make sure the man doesn't want anything else from him, and then pushes himself up onto his knees, ignoring the sharp pain in his ass and the surge of vertigo that crashes over him and threatens to blacken out his vision. The first time he was here, he tried to clean himself up after and the man hit him so hard it split Erik's lip. He knows better, now; he pulls his jeans up over his throbbing and come-splattered ass, standing again on weak legs.

"Help yourself downstairs," the man says, already wiping down the cane, his softening cock hanging unattended from his open fly.

Erik obeys. Downstairs, he steals two pocketfuls of the little airplane bottles of whiskey and stuffs them into his coat. He swallows one before he leaves, even though it doesn't quite offset the pain. If anything it just makes him feel more feverish inside, and when he goes out onto the street he barely notices the winter air.

*

_Charles_

"Honestly, I don't see what the fuss is about," Charles says, putting his hands on his hips and lifting his chin, starting to get really cross now. "You act like he's some kind of martian rather than a normal young Dom."

"He's a 7D, chér," Rémy says, with a frown on his face. "And you must admit you two are strange together. You've seen how possessive Erik is around you when I'm here, and it's difficult to compete with him for your attention when he demands it. And it _is_ a competition, even when I exert myself, but that makes more sense now. Erik is a 7D, he is taking your attention for himself. Is it such a stretch to think -- ?"

Charles loses his temper finally, hands flinging upward as he snaps, "I am not having sex with Erik! I don't want to have sex with Erik. He still thinks of himself as a sub for one, and for another he is my _fifteen-year-old ward_! Of course I care about him, and you know all the shit that he's been through, so don't try and play as if you don't. If Erik needs me more than you think is normal, well then, big surprise. But that doesn't meant I want to fuck him, or vice versa!"

"What's this about fucking?" 

Charles jerks, startled, and turns to find Erik standing behind him, looking rather disheveled; he hadn't even heard him coming, too distracted by the ridiculous imprecations Rémy has been making. Erik's expression might be blank, but it doesn't take a telepath to tell he's been drinking -- if the red cheeks and glassy eyes didn't give it away, the smell certainly would have.

"It's none of your business," Charles says, his own cheeks heating up with embarrassment -- God, Erik overheard that whole last speech. Shit. "We're just having a bit of an argument down here, so it would probably be best for you to go upstairs for a while."

Rémy is shifting restlessly, frustration pouring off him in thick waves, and Charles glances back at him before he can speak, silently willing him -- without force -- to stay silent for now.

"I think it is my business," Erik counters, and there's no slur to his words -- the alcohol just seems to have made his accent stronger, consonants harsher. "You're talking about me, aren't you? So I think I should stay where I am."

"You see?" Rémy says, with a snort. "You say he thinks of himself as a sub, then he should listen to me and not you. Erik, go upstairs while I talk to Charles. This does not concern you even if we are talking about you."

Erik's eyes narrow. "I think you should leave."

"Both of you -- " Charles starts, but then Rémy steps past him and says, "Erik, you know I'm 4D. If you're going to obey anyone it'll be me. Now _go upstairs like Charles asked you to._ "

"Oh, 4D," Erik drawls, and his mind is all flash-impulse and loose inhibition, the alcohol weighing down his restraint and letting natural tendency float to the top. "I'm shaking in my boots."

Charles moves into the space between them and holds his hands up, scowling at each of them in turn. "We're not doing this," he says fiercely, trying to beat down the voice inside of him that's telling him to kneel, to wait it out and accept the rule of whoever wins. It's difficult; the voice is getting louder, like it's speaking to him from the pit of his stomach. "Rémy, go home. I'm not fighting with you about this because it's ludicrous and frankly hurtful for you to insinuate I would take advantage of Erik like that -- thank you very much for all but calling me a pedophile."

"You're taking his side?" Rémy demands, and Erik's mouth draws into a tight smirk, his arms folding over his chest, victorious.

"Don't get complacent," Charles says sharply to Erik, too angry to modulate his tone. He's not sure he's ever spoken to Erik like this, with any kind of fury. "I'm mad at you too, but I'll deal with you after."

"Fine," Erik says, and he takes a step back, holding up both hands as if in surrender, although he never takes his eyes off Rémy. "So, 4D, are you going or not?"

Rémy looks at Charles, then glowers at Erik, his hackles raised; Charles can feel him ramping up inside ready for a fight, instinctive and primal, held back only by a thin tether of civilization. "I'm leaving because Charles asked me to, and I respect his wishes," he says, teeth bared in what is not a smile. "Charles, I will call you and we will sort this out when we are less angry."

"Perhaps," Charles says, not at all sure he wants to.

Rémy goes, spine held stiff the whole way out, stalking toward the front door -- at least he manages not to slam it behind him. 

"I hate him," Erik says the second Rémy is gone, practically spitting the words out, still glaring at the door. "He has no right to speak to you like that. I don't want him coming here anymore."

"Well, that's not up to you," Charles says, folding his arms across his chest and giving Erik a stern look. "I don't disagree that he was out of line, but you were very rude, Erik, especially after I asked you to let us hash it out ourselves. I expect a certain level of respect from you, and I'm not getting that right now. How much have you had to drink?"

"I respect _you._ I don't respect him. He is the one not showing you respect." Erik doesn't answer Charles' question, though, and Charles is trying to calm down, he really is, but Rémy had already got him worked up by the time Erik arrived, and it seems impossible now. Rémy had tried to pressure him into giving in -- intentionally or no -- and Charles had just ... _reacted_ , from the same gut voice, like a fire was lit inside him to resist the pressure.

"This wasn't your argument to butt in on, and I asked you not to," Charles says, the words coming out hard. "That's not respect, Erik. Please go upstairs and at least wash off the alcohol smell."

Erik doesn't move. "No? You were arguing _about me._ Specifically, about whether or not you are having _sex_ with me. I think I am more than entitled to weigh in on that conversation."

Charles is jittering all over; he runs a hand through his hair, his other hand clenching into a fist. "Do you think me incapable of managing my own arguments?" he asks after a moment, looking at Erik and making himself firm if not calm. "You just made a bad situation worse by setting fire to a can of gasoline. I fully expect Rémy and I are over in any case, given the garbage he was spouting but you really aggravated the situation, Erik. So I suppose you have what you wanted. I hope you're pleased."

Erik moves closer to him, and Charles stands his ground, though he wants nothing more now than to walk away. "You think I will walk in here, hear you talking about something like that, and just quietly go upstairs and pretend not to notice?" Erik says. "You have no right to be angry with me. If you think you'll make me regret this simply because Rémy will leave you and you'll insinuate it's all my fault, you're wrong."

"Do you really want to discuss this?" Charles asks, finally, managing to turn his anger into a sharp feeling of exasperation, hardly any better. "Rémy was over the line, that's nothing to do with you -- stupid people are going to make assumptions because you're a 7D, and because I'm a sub. But that's not why I'm cross with you; I'm cross because you came in here, drunk and belligerent, and didn't do me the courtesy of letting me have my own fight with my own domfriend about whether or not I'm a pedophile."

He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose hard. "You know what, I can't be calm right now, and neither can you. Let's put a pin in this until we can both be rational and preferably sober."

"I don't see what else there is to discuss," Erik says flatly, and he finally turns away, although Charles can see that the heat has risen further in his cheeks. "I suppose you'll do whatever you want. You usually do."

"Given that I'm your de facto parent and you're not my Dom, what else would I do?"

"No," Erik snaps all of the sudden, halting halfway to the door and spinning around again, anger spiking in his mind. "No, I'm _not_ your Dom. I never will _be_ your, or anyone's, Dom! Don't even suggest it."

"It wasn't a suggestion," Charles says, flicking his fingers to dismiss it. "We'll talk about this tomorrow."

"I certainly hope not," Erik mutters, but he goes regardless, trailing fury and intoxication behind him all the way up the stairs.

Charles spends a good half hour sat on the edge of the couch with his head in his hands trying not to curse aloud, though it's all he wants to do right now -- to curse Rémy for being such an asshole, and Erik for being a stubborn, difficult little shit so much of the time. Charles is patient, but there is a limit, and tonight, already riled up from his argument with Rémy, he had no patience left to spare for Erik's special brand of aggravation.

The next morning, though, Charles comes downstairs to find a hungover Erik lurking at the breakfast table with seemingly no real recollection of their argument, just a banging headache and bleary eyes. It's not what Charles had expected, but he'll take it; he spends the rest of Saturday waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it doesn't. And so he's caught in a sort of limbo, knowing that he should speak to Erik about it but not wanting to disturb the peace.

Erik goes out for a run around 4:30, and while he's out Charles texts Rémy to say not to bother calling him again. Afterwards ... well, it's hard to say he regrets it when he doesn't, not after last night. So instead Charles just makes himself a cup of tea and sits down on the couch to read his book, focusing on the words instead of on thinking about it all, and the way Rémy's accusations still sit heavy inside of him, like swallowed stones.

He's still sat there, tea gone cold, by the time Erik gets home an hour and a half later, sweaty and bright-eyed when he comes into the den and drops onto the floor near Charles, leaning over one leg to stretch his hamstring. "How long until spring, again?" he jokes, looking up toward Charles with his cheek pressed against his knee, beads of perspiration trailed across the back of his neck.

And Charles _wants_ him, with a sudden, visceral viciousness that hits him like a lightning bolt and steals his breath.

It's like somehow Charles is seeing him for the first time, all other associations swept away, and he can see with sudden clarity that Erik is handsome, young and lithe with muscle, smiling up at Charles while bending himself up like a pretzel -- it's awful the way Charles' throat closes up, the way he wants to reach out and wipe away the sweat beading at Erik's nape and wetting his hair into soft little curls. 

What is _wrong_ with him? Charles can't quite -- he swallows, hoping this is some sort of stroke. "Too long," he manages to say after a few seconds of silence, and if it comes out sounding halfway normal then he counts it as a victory.

"They'll find my frozen body in the park one of these days," Erik says, unwinding himself and grabbing his water bottle, popping the cap off with his thumb and tilting his head back to drink -- Charles tries very hard not to stare, aghast, at the way his throat moves when he swallows, over and over, tries not to notice the slick sheen to his skin. Charles' heart is beating rapidly in his chest, and he swallows in synchrony with Erik, takes a shallow breath.

He's sick. There's something wrong with him. Has to be. He feels light-headed, like he's been hit with something -- can't seem to focus properly, too busy being horrified.

"I'll get you a treadmill if you want," he says. "Then you can run indoors."

Erik makes a face. "That sounds depressing. Running as fast as you can, and getting nowhere? No, thank you."

"Then why don't you go take a shower," Charles says, making himself look back down at his book. "You're spattered in mud from the waist down."

Erik waves a hand in his general direction. "Stop making reasonable demands," he says in a mock-offended voice, and then he gets up, thankfully, and heads off upstairs, taking his water bottle with him.

Charles sits and stares blankly at the page in front of him for a long time, trying to clear his mind, but it's impossible. He's too caught up in wondering -- is this real, or is it an idea planted by Rémy and Raven's insinuations, or something he caught, like a virus, from Shaw? How can he possibly be thinking this, about Erik, who he's supposed to be responsible for?

It's not ... it's not that Erik isn't attractive, Charles thinks, wiping a hand over his face. It's just that Charles shouldn't be _noticing_. Not like this. What brought this on? So suddenly, and so violently? It's not that ... it's not that he's never noticed before, that Erik was growing up well, but ... it's like Rémy has torn something open in Charles' head, a door that shouldn't be opened, and now he's unable to _stop_ seeing. Like one of those illusion posters, where once you see the trick to it you can't see it the way it was before, innocuous and uninspiring.

He hears Erik's footsteps coming back down the stairs too soon, before he's really had time to work out what's going on. 

"Eleven miles," Erik says, right before he drops onto the sofa next to Charles, damp and clean-smelling. "Eleven miles, and I think I've fucked up my ITB again."

"Oh dear," Charles says, composing himself into an expression of concern and looking up at Erik. He's pink-cheeked and smiling, and Charles' heart pangs. "Maybe you'd better go see the doctor again, then, get it checked out."

"I don't know," Erik says, and his smile twists into a grimace as he leans forward to wrap his hands around his thigh, squeezing the lean flesh there. "It's hard to say. It could just be from the distance. My foam roller's shit, though, so there's nothing to be done about it for now. Unless," Erik's brows lift, "you're willing to massage it for me."

Charles closes his eyes for a long moment. It's as if everything has converged at once to make it impossible for him to be a good person.

"Can't you do it yourself?" he asks.

"I don't have the proper leverage," Erik says -- quite rationally, unfortunately, and Charles swallows, smiles, wishes he could die. "Do you mind?"

"All right," Charles says reluctantly. "I guess you'll need to lie down. Here should be fine." He gets up from the couch, making space for Erik, who shifts further down, settling on his back with his legs stretched out along the sofa -- his musculature is well-defined even at rest, shifting slightly beneath golden skin. "Thanks. How's that?"

"I guess that's fine," Charles says. "Which leg is it?"

"This one." Erik clasps his right leg, and Charles tries not to pay attention to the way Erik's fingertips dig into his own flesh. "Please fix this. I don't want to have to go back to physical therapy."

"I'm not a masseuse," Charles says, but he settles down onto the edge of the couch by Erik's hip, turning his back to Erik so that he can at least hide his expression. It feels like leaving himself open to attack from behind, and he can't quite help hunching slightly, even as he reaches for Erik's leg. He takes hold of it just above the knee, trying to ignore the warmth of Erik's skin against his palms. "I'll do my best, but I can't promise it'll do any good."

"I'm sure you'll be great," Erik says; his voice sounds warm, like he's smiling. "Like I said, you can't possibly be any worse than my foam roller."

Better not to say anything else if he can help it; Charles doesn't entirely trust his voice. He looks down at the leg in his hands and thinks, _This is Erik's leg. Erik my fifteen-year-old ward. Erik may think he is sixteen, but he's fifteen. And I am twenty-eight and not a pervert._ He's not sure where to start, so he just ... rubs his palms up Erik's thigh until he meets the hem of Erik's shorts, then down again, the friction of skin on smooth skin heating his hands. God, it's so 1950s, shaving legs that aren't put on display in a skirt! It should be off-putting -- submissive -- but somehow ... Charles keeps going, warming the muscle, feeling himself start to blush.

"The ITB connects at the hip," Erik says after a few seconds of that. "You can go higher, I won't run and tell everyone you molested me. Promise."

Oh, God.

He carefully does not think of anything at all when he rubs higher up the outside of Erik's thigh -- skirting the inside entirely. "Better?" he asks, without turning.

"Hnng. _Yes_ ," Erik moans, and he lets out an audible breath. "Press harder."

Ignore the sounds Erik is making, Charles thinks. Just get it over with.

It's easier to shift his hand to use his knuckles to press into the muscle, so Charles does that, dragging them back up and along, dimpling the flesh and digging in. "Like that?"

Erik squirms a little bit behind him, the sofa cushion shifting under Charles' weight. "Yes. Just like that. ...Thank you."

Charles tries to think of it as just a leg, rubbing up and away from the knee, but he can't help but notice the strength in it now compared to when Erik moved in, the warmth and solidity of that thigh; no matter how hard Charles focuses on what he's doing he feels like a pervert, like a disgusting parasite leching on Erik when he needs help, when he's finally found enough trust to ask Charles to help him. Maybe this is a five-minute wonder -- maybe tomorrow he'll wake up and wonder what it was all about, but right now ... he drags his knuckles up Erik's thigh again, the muscle stretching under his touch.

"A little to the left," Erik says suddenly. Charles complies, and then: "No. Further. ...Yes, perfect. Right there -- good." He sighs again, muscles briefly tensing against Charles' hand. 

"What is it?" Charles asks, surprised by how normal his own voice is when he speaks. How calm.

"Nothing," Erik says. "It hurts. In a good way, though -- it feels nice. You're not too bad at this." A pause. "Keep going."

Charles blinks slowly, and repeats the motion, the monotony of it soothing, in a strange way -- he feels almost hypnotized, the initial zing gone until now everything is just continuing the massage, following the occasional direction. It's a relief, really, to focus on the physical and let everything else fall by the wayside.

Set knuckles to knee. Drag slowly upward, thigh muscle rolling underneath, until he reaches the hip, the leg of Erik's shorts rucked up now by the repetition. Lift hand and set it to the knee again. And again.

He doesn't know how long it is before Erik's voice finally says, "That's good, thanks," and his knee bends, drawing his leg away from Charles' hand; it's a moment before Charles registers it, pawing at nothing, and he shakes his head, trying to clear it, almost confused.

"Glad I could help," he says to Erik's other leg, which is much the same as the first -- thankfully incapable of interpreting Charles' lost expression.

"It feels a lot better," Erik says, and after a moment the left leg disappears too, and Erik is shifting to sit next to Charles on the sofa and Charles is forced to look at him, to twist back around and smile, look normal when he meets Erik's eyes.

"Glad I could help," he says again, wiping his palms on his own thighs. "I'll go make some dinner, shall I?"

Erik cracks a small grin. "You're going to put us through that tonight, are you?"

It stings, and usually Charles brushes it off when Erik makes fun of his cooking, but tonight ... "You don't have to eat it if it's that bad," he says tartly, getting to his feet and forcing himself not to grind his teeth at the feelings of hurt, and, irrationally, rejection, that sing through him like bad notes. "I'll order you something more palatable."

Erik's eyebrows go up. "I was just joking, Charles," he says, his arms crossing over his chest, defensive; there's confusion radiating from his mind, too, and surprise. "You know I'll eat it either way."

"Well, you don't have to if it's not nice," Charles says, turning away and picking up his discarded tea cup. "That's worse -- you managing your way through it but wishing you had something else. I can afford to order in."

"That isn't the point," Erik says, and his tone's gone flat. "I was just teasing you. If you don't like it, I'll refrain in the future."

Charles takes a breath to snap back, but then ... he stops, making his clenched fingers loosen around the cup in his hand, looking down at his knuckles as the pink fades back into them with the renewed blood flow. "I'm just touchy today, don't mind me," he says instead, and walks away, taking the cup into the kitchen to put it in the dishwasher. The amount of care with which he places it in the rack far outweighs what is necessary, but he feels better somehow after, like the immediate crisis has passed.

He hears Erik's footsteps after a while, the pad of his socks on the hard wood floor. They pause in the doorway, and then from behind him Erik's voice says, "I really didn't mean anything by it." And, a beat later: "Did something happen?"

"Mmm, well," Charles says, sliding the top drawer of the dishwasher closed, then shutting the door, too, with a soft click. "After last night I decided things weren't going to work out with Rémy. I've broken things off with him. I wasn't subby enough for him, anyway; it would have failed sooner or later. Better to know sooner, I suppose, instead of wasting time."

"Oh." When Charles turns around Erik is looking at his hands, examining his fingernails like he thinks he'll find flaws. "I can't pretend I'm not glad about it. He was an ass -- and he never _could_ shut up about the fact that he was 4D, could he?"

Charles shrugs, a tired feeling creeping over him. He rubs his hand over his face, thumb and forefinger brushing over the inner corners of his eyes. "Perhaps I'll give up dating for a while. The telepathy always gets in the way, anyway." 

"That's a good idea," Erik says. He pushes off the door frame and crosses to where Charles is standing, his arms sliding around Charles' waist and pulling him into a loose hug, pressing Charles against the solid plane of his chest. "Besides," Erik says after a moment, his voice speaking just next to Charles' ear; he sounds like he's smiling. "You've got me. Don't you think that's more than enough for one person to be dealing with?"

Erik is warm, and tall now, if still a little gangly and unfinished; Charles should pull away, would do any of a hundred things if he were a good person, but what he does is stay there, not hugging back but not removing himself either, breathing in and out the scent of Erik's shampoo. "It's not quite the same thing," he says with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, thinks, _it's not the same thing at all._

*


	13. Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to **baehj2915** for her betaing work this chapter, especially in light of her headache at the time!  <3 Much appreciated, darling.
> 
> Also, check out this awesome fanart by **cheezybananaz**! :D It's [right here](http://cheezybananaz.tumblr.com/post/98645582155/3-from-all-the-rest-is-rust-and-stardust) and is awesome.
> 
> No content warnings are relevant for this chapter.

_Charles_

It doesn't go away. Instead of easing, the way he had hoped it would, the attraction only seems to sink its thorns deeper into Charles' flesh, brambles tangling around him until even attempting to fight it just digs them in further, until extracting himself is impossible.

The worst part of it is that Charles has never been interested in anyone Erik's age before. He can't understand where this is coming from, this simmering, wretched _thing_ that notices the strong bone structure of Erik's maturing features, the turn of his wrist, the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. The magnetic pull of his mind, his voice, the way that when Erik moves Charles has to pay attention. It's as if it's been implanted -- like someone put it there, a foreign body inside his own, twisting his gaze where it oughtn't to be.

It’s awful. It’s unignorable. It follows him everywhere he goes, like a phantom scent. It’s been two weeks, and he’s no closer to shaking it than he was at the start.

Charles folds the laundry slowly, taking care with each item to make sure it doesn't crease. It's nice in the utility room, quiet, with only the rumble of the washing machine for company, the quiet sloshing sound of the water rolling in the drum; it smells like soap, fresh and familiar. It's been easier lately to focus on the small domestic tasks and take his mind off of ... everything else. Like the way he hates himself, and can't forget it any time he looks at Erik.

He carries the laundry basket out with him when he's finished, heading for upstairs. He has to pass through the den where Erik is studying, and Charles carefully doesn't turn his head, doesn't make much sound, trying to go unnoticed. Erik is distracted enough that it's easy; he's murmuring to himself in German over whatever it is he's doing, and in the foreign tongue his voice is deep and strong, punctuated only by the turning of pages and the clacking of keys.

Upstairs is quiet again, and Charles leaves Erik's washing outside his bedroom door, then goes to put away his own. That done, he sits down on the end of his bed and holds his head in his hands for a good long while.

"Enough of this," he says to himself eventually, when he can't stand it any longer, letting his hands fall to rest on his knees. "This is pathetic. You're a grown man." Setting his jaw hard, Charles makes himself get back to his feet, and he walks into the bathroom, already stripping down to take a shower; his clothes he leaves in a trail on the floor to pick up later. Right now he just needs to stop being so maudlin and start being an adult.

The water is hot and just what he needs; it beats down on his head and shoulders and washes away the apathy, until he's leaning against the wall just breathing, as if it's cleared something from his skin that oughtn't have been there. Okay. So.

He's attracted to Erik. He can admit that much to himself. Now he just has to decide what to do about it.

Charles is halfway through washing himself down with the loofah when Erik suddenly bursts into the room, the door flung open so violently it bounces off the opposite wall. Charles yelps and bashes into the opposite wall of the shower hard with his shoulder, hands flying up to defend himself. "Charles --" Erik starts, and then he does a double-take at Charles, naked and wet in the shower, frowns, lifts a hand to knock belatedly on the door. "Charles," he says again once that’s done, just as urgently as before, "Have you watched the news?"

"No?" Charles answers in a strangled voice, dropping his hands to cover himself, feeling his face flushing hot red with embarrassment, his heart pounding in his chest. "What can possibly be so important? I'm in the bloody shower!"

"I can see that," Erik says dismissively, and then he barrels onward, as if Charles hadn't said anything of any relevance at all. "Grant Wicker. He goes to my school -- he's a senior -- he gave a fucking interview to Fox News. On _The O'Reilly Factor._ About me." Erik's cheeks are coloring, and Charles doubts it has anything to do with the steam. "I swear to you, I will kill him. I will _kill_ him. For fuck's sake, I never even _slept_ with him, he's --" Charles watches Erik struggle for the appropriate vulgarity to describe the boy, then apparently give up, his hands curling into fists. "Half of it isn't even _true_."

Well, shit. It's not really surprising, of course, but it's still awful, and Charles just wishes Erik had seen the story half an hour from now, when Charles would have been clothed. Charles' towel is behind where Erik's standing, and he wants desperately to cover himself with it, but he doesn't want to draw any more attention to the fact that he's naked. He doesn't want Erik looking too closely, so instead he says, "That's awful, and of course we'll do something about it, Erik -- I'll finish up here and come downstairs and we can talk about it. Okay?"

But Erik's attention has already shifted. He's looking at Charles, his gaze skating down Charles' body to take in the thin white scars lacing his upper arms, the knob on his collarbone where it once was broken. And, then, lower, looking for more, and even though Charles knows there's no attraction there, there's an intensity to Erik's attention that's ... oh, _God_. Charles can feel himself getting half-hard behind the cover of his hands, the concentration of Erik's thoughts on his naked body making something run sharp and hot through his veins.

Charles says nothing, since there's nothing short of telepathic interference to be done to stop Erik from looking, seeing, now.

"You were shot," Erik says, and that's how Charles knows he's found the star-like scar on Charles' left thigh. His gaze snaps back up to Charles', and it's even now, eyes narrowed slightly, not wide and wild like they'd been only a moment before.

"A long time ago," Charles says. He wills himself to soften before his hands can't hide the way Erik's gaze is affecting him; it doesn't really work, though, and his breath drags in in a long shudder, the fear of being caught out racing alongside the terrible arousal. "Have you seen enough? It's not polite to stare."

"Yes," Erik says, because apparently the art of the rhetorical question is lost on him, but at least he goes, pulling the bathroom door shut again behind him, and Charles sags against the wall the moment it clicks, the strength gone out of him. He covers his face and breaths through the tiny gap between the heels of his hands, one breath, two, before he reaches out and turns the water full blast on cold, the arctic temperature of the spray shocking everything else out of his mind. He stays there until his teeth are chattering and his nose is clogged up and his skin is blue, until he can't think of anything but warming up.

 

*

_Erik_

It's nearly spring when Charles falls sick. He puts on a strong face, still going into work and pottering around the apartment trying to manage little tasks, but Erik can track him from room to room by the sound of his sniffling, and every time he speaks his voice is so raspy he sounds like he's aged forty years overnight.

When Charles comes downstairs one morning in last night's wrinkled shirt, red-cheeked and glassy-eyed and looking like he's spent the past hundred years sleeping in a dark damp cave, Erik finally puts his foot down.

"You need to stay home," he says, catching Charles' arm as Charles heads for the stove to make breakfast, steering him over to the table and forcibly seating him in one of the chairs. "I'm serious, Charles, this has gone on long enough."

"I'm fine," Charles croaks, trying to get back to his feet. Erik's hand presses down on his shoulder, keeping him there, and Charles scowls up at him, brows drawing together to form a deep crease on his forehead. "I'm a grown man, Erik. I can decide for myself if I'm too sick to function. I don't need cosseting."

"Obviously you _do_ ," Erik says, and he magnetizes Charles' wristwatch to the arm of the chair so he can step back, pulling the skillet off its rack with his power and flicking on the stove. "If you could see yourself right now, you'd agree with me." He taps his temple, an invitation, but Charles just scowls harder, tugging crossly at his hand before reaching with the other for the catch.

"Miserable cheat," Erik says. "Don't make me sit on you."

"I'm fine," Charles grumbles, though the sniffle that comes after gives it the lie. His hair is sweaty and stuck to his forehead, barely brushed. "Let me up, I want a cup of tea."

"I'll get it." Erik turns and heads over to where the kettle's already floating under the sink faucet, half-filled, and picks it up with his hand to take it to the stove. "I'm making breakfast," he announces as he pulls open the fridge, gathering the eggs and sausages and a plump yellow grapefruit. "You'll eat it, and then you'll go back to bed. Yes?"

A disgruntled sound, then the table shifts as Charles puts his head down on the tabletop. "You're very bossy," he says, then switches to telepathy -- probably because of the sore throat. _I'm supposed to look after you, not the other way around. I'm the head Dom in this apartment._

Erik laughs, and on impulse he crosses back over to Charles and wraps an arm around his shoulders, squeezing once as he presses a quick kiss to the part of Charles' hair. "You're burning up," he says, frowning, and he draws back enough to press the back of his hand to the curve of Charles' cheek -- what part of it is exposed, anyway. "You have a fever. You can't go into work anyway; you'll get your patients sick."

A shiver runs through Charles' whole body, and there's a strange feeling of unease that pulses between them before Charles turns his face away so that all Erik can see is the back of his head. _Go to school. You'll be late. I don't want you fussing._

Erik lifts an eyebrow, even though he knows Charles can't see it. "Well, too bad. It's a teacher work day, remember? So you're stuck with me." He pats Charles once more on the shoulder then returns to his set-up on the stove, checking his oil's hot before reaching for the largest egg, cracking it on the rim of the skillet. Its contents plop, white and swollen yolk together, into the pan with a loud sizzle.

Charles has been acting so strangely lately. This grumpiness might just be because he's ill, but Erik can't quite believe that. It's been noticeable how much more restrained he's been, both physically and conversationally, and Erik hasn't been able to shake the feeling that Charles has something preying on his mind. He can feel Charles gnawing at it now, as if he's lost control of his projection, though Erik can't see what it is -- just a sense of something wrong, an irritant Charles can't wash away. If anything it makes Erik want to push more, and further, to tug at all the loose ends until something pops loose.

 _Tea,_ Charles complains, without lifting his head from the table.

"You'll have to wait a minute," Erik says, grinding pepper over the eggs. "It's not done yet."

Whatever it is, Erik decides, it's up to him to do his best to uncover the truth of the matter, then put it to rest. Especially if it's going to affect his and Charles' relationship. He does wish Charles felt comfortable talking to him about these things. Maybe that's the hope of an unreasonable optimist; Charles is the therapist, after all, and Erik's the patient. Maybe it doesn't work any other way.

The kettle whistles, and Erik floats it off the stovetop, over to pour boiling water onto the metal ball of tea leaves in Charles' cup. He adds sugar, just how Charles likes it, and carries it back over to the table, releasing his hold on Charles' wristwatch so he can drink it. "Here. Your _Lordship._ "

 _Don't get,_ an ostentatious sniffle, _snotty with me,_ Charles says, a hint of humor coming into his tone, and he sniffles again as he sits up, reaching for the tea.

"I'm sorry. Your Grace, is it?"

 _Bossy,_ Charles says, but he's bringing the cup to his mouth and sipping slowly, supporting it with both hands, which are trembling slightly. _I can look after myself. Better if you go out, enjoy your day off, get out of the germs._

"It's no problem," Erik says. "You cleaned it up that time I had a stomach virus and puked on the gallery floor. It's the least I can do."

 _I'm the adult._ It has the smack of a mantra to it, like it's something Charles says to himself a lot.

"Yes, well," Erik says, and he leaves it at that, deciding there's no use arguing with Charles. Charles is determined to pretend he doesn't need help, and Erik's determined to ignore him, so where else can they possibly go from here? He finishes cooking up breakfast and uses the spatula to transfer an egg and bratwurst onto each plate where a grapefruit half is already waiting, then carries them over to the table, setting the platter with the largest sausage in front of Charles.

Charles sits for a moment and looks at it, a little dazed, as if he's not quite sure what he's supposed to do with it. Then, slowly, he reaches for his fork, picking it up and using the edge to cut off a piece of egg. A sense of gratitude touches Erik's mind, wordless if reluctant.

Erik sits down himself, at last, and reaches for his half-drunk glass of orange juice, watching Charles over the rim as he sips at it. "Do you want your phone so you can call in?" he says after he's set his drink down again.

 _I can think it,_ Charles says, lifting the egg to his mouth; he almost misses. _Easier._

"In your state, you'd end up projecting it to half the city," Erik points out, meeting Charles' eyes over their plates. "You've been leaking emotion at me all morning. I'll call."

 _Fine,_ and Charles frowns, stabbing carefully at his sausage. _I'm not hungry. I think I'll go lie down._ He pushes his chair back from the table, leaving his fork still stuck in the bratwurst, and gets to his feet carefully, shivering harder now. _See you later._

Erik lets him go, a bit reluctantly. Some part of him pangs with the desire to call Charles back and sit him down again, make him finish his breakfast, but he knows, logically, that bed is the best place for Charles to be right now. At least Charles is conceding Erik's point about work, anyway. Erik had expected him to put up much more of a front on that point.

He finishes his own breakfast slowly, and then pulls Charles' over to himself to eat the parts Charles hasn't touched, skirting the bite marks. He's been so hungry lately; must be another growth spurt, or maybe a product of all the running. Either way, he'll hardly pass up free food.

When both the plates are cleaned Erik finds Charles' work number in his study and calls in, making the appropriate excuses. The secretary knows Erik, luckily, so he doesn't have to pretend to be Charles' Dom to be listened to -- she just takes down his number in case anything comes up and wishes him a good day. That done, Erik settles in to read his book, keeping his metal-sense idly trained on Charles' wrist watch, tracking it until he feels Charles climbing into bed.

 

 

*

_Charles_

He feels like death, not that he'll admit that to Erik. The only thing worse than being sick is the prospect of Erik looking after him, fussing and cosseting him like it's Erik's job to take care of him, like Erik is Charles' Dom. Because he's not, and never will be, and never should be, and Charles doesn't want this _thing_ to get any worse.

God. If only the hot and cold flushes would stop.

Charles shivers and sweats under the blankets, the lights turned way down in his bedroom to help with the banging headache. He feels slow and ancient, like every motion makes his body creak. He can't tell every time whether the thoughts in his head are his own or someone else's. When the heat gets to be too much he kicks the covers down, but the cold touch of the air without them is just as bad, the dampness on his skin turning to icewater, and he pulls them back up over himself just to start the cycle again.

After some indeterminate while there's a knock at the door penetrating Charles' fuzzy mindhaze. He's somewhere between sleep and wakefulness, and just manages an incoherent grunting sound. The door creaks open and someone pads across the floor toward him, and then a weight dips the mattress down at Charles' side.

"How are you feeling?" Erik's voice murmurs, and a hand -- presumably Erik's -- settles on Charles' shoulder, rubbing up and down his bicep.

Grumpy. Resentful. Anxious. Shivering and unpleasantly moist and stuffed up, burning from the inside and freezing from the outside.

"I see," Erik says, sounding amused. "I brought you something. You'll have to sit up if you want it, though."

Charles wonders what it is, then knows -- Erik's brought tea, hot and steaming in its cup. He thinks about it, whether he wants to sit up or not. It sounds like a lot of effort. _No, thank you._ he says after a moment, staying prone where he is, sprawled and tangled in the sheet.

"Not 'no, thank you,'" Erik says. "You're sick; you need fluids. Come on." Charles can feel the closeness of him when Erik leans over Charles' body to pull him up, grunting a little with the effort of it -- Charles is dead weight, making no attempt to help him -- and then Erik's got Charles held against his chest, Charles' eyes crusty and his nose leaking snot on Erik's sweater as Erik stuffs two pillows behind him.

 _Don't want to,_ Charles says, resting limply against Erik, his physical voice letting out a pathetic groan of displeasure. It's too hot everywhere Erik is touching him, like a localized sauna. _You're not my Dom. You're not even a grown-up. You're a fetus._

"I'm a fetus who can wipe his own nose right now, so that's something," Erik says. He pushes Charles back against the pillows and Charles blinks blearily at him, eyes unadjusted to the dark inside his bedroom. "Now please, drink this?" Erik reaches for the cup that's sitting on Charles' bedside table and presses it into his hands. The porcelain is hot.

"Fine," Charles croaks, and lifts it carefully to his mouth, sipping at the tea. It's soothing once it's going down his throat, relaxing the tense, sore muscles.He sighs, keeps going, concentrating on drinking instead of the way Erik is watching him do it. He can't taste much, but it feels all right.

 _I'm a bad patient,_ Charles says when he's drank perhaps half of it, letting the cup sink down until he's holding it in his lap, hands curled around it. _Easier just to bring me food and liquids and let me get on with it. At home we used the West Wing. I couldn't project as far then._ Mother hated it when he was sick, said it was like being slathered in his illness if he stayed in the main part of the house. _Maybe you should go to Westchester. Far enough away._

Erik laughs. "I really don't mind," he says. His hand is on Charles' knee. It's incredibly distracting there, a heavy weight Charles can't push out of his mind. "That reminds me, though -- I found something the other day. Hold on."

He pushes off the bed, and thankfully takes the weight of his hand with him, disappearing out the bedroom door. Charles closes his eyes again, and he's half-asleep by the time Erik comes back in, slumped against the headboard, the cup held only loosely in the cage of his fingers. Erik lifts the cup carefully out of his grasp and transfers it back over to the coaster on the nightstand.

"Take a look at this," Erik says, and he sets something heavy in Charles' lap.

"Mmm?" Charles rouses himself enough to open his eyes, and finds the weight on his thighs is the photo album, its deep blue leather looking almost black in the dim light. The brass corners shine, but dully -- he hasn't looked at this in a long time. _Oh,_ he says, laying his hands down on the cover, stroking the fine grain of it. _What about it? This is old._

"I was hoping we could look at it together," Erik says. He crosses round the bed to the other side, and a moment later he's crawling up on it himself, settling down next to Charles close enough their arms are pressed flush together, Erik's long legs stretched out across the sheets and crossed at the ankles. "I recognized you, of course. God, you were a fat little thing, weren't you?"

 _No,_ Charles says, giving Erik an offended look, fingers curling over the edges of the album. There isn't a nice way to say that most children aren't starved, ghostly little waifs, the way Charles suspects Erik was. _I was normal._

Erik snorts, and he reaches to turn the cover of the album back, flipping to one of the first pages and tapping at a photo of Charles, three years old and beaming at the camera in a little blue-and-white sailor outfit. "Look at those cheeks," Erik says, grinning.

Charles looks; between the haircut and the parquet flooring he can see behind himself, this must have been taken at his grandmother's house in Cape Cod, which means the photographer was most likely Father. _Grandmother liked to pinch them,_ he says, leaning a little against Erik, since the energy needed to sit up is probably going to be better used for keeping his eyes open. _I wasn't a telepath then._

"I would pinch them, too," Erik agrees, and his finger strokes the 2-D image of Charles' cheek for a second before he turns the next page, to a picture of Charles and his mother and father, Charles sat high on Father's shoulders, taken -- it looks like -- on a trip to Paris. "I like this one," Erik says.

 _Me too. There aren't many of Father after this one,_ Charles says, looking at it -- the smiling faces, Mother looking so bright-eyed, gazing at Father as if he was everything to her. _He was a very kind man. He liked to take us with him when he went away for business._

"He looks nice," Erik says. "I like his smile." He pauses for a moment before turning the page, fingers lingering on the corner of the parchment. "You look like him, you know."

Charles smiles, but it's sad, now, not an echo of Father's any more. _That was always the problem,_ he says, then changes the subject, reaching out and touching the next picture, himself and baby Raven, like a fat blueberry swaddled in his three-year-old arms. _Raven was a terrible baby. Fussy and demanding, like a lot of Doms. Father was delighted that she was blue._

Next to him, Erik's smiling, too, taken with the young visible mutant. "She had so much _hair_."

 _Only sometimes,_ Charles says, tapping the next picture, in which Raven is bald and squalling, half pink and half blue. _They knew I had the gene, from the testing, but not what I could do. I wonder sometimes what Father would have thought. He died when I was four._

"I remember." Erik nods, and when he turns the page, he points to a picture from Kurt and Sharon's wedding, at Cain, looking bulky and uncomfortable in his tux. "That's when he came to live with you."

Charles stiffens, and he looks away from the page, reaching back over for the cup of tea on the side to hide the shape of his mouth behind. _Yes,_ he says simply, and takes a drink. It's lukewarm, not that he cares much right now.

It's like seeing that face brings back all the aches and pains distraction had separated him from -- Charles feels a cold flush run over him, and he sneezes, wincing with the renewed headache.

"We don't have to look at this if you don't want to," Erik says suddenly, and he tugs the photo album out of Charles' lap, shutting it and setting it aside on the bed. "I didn't think."

 _It's fine,_ Charles says, trying for a normal smile, though he suspects it's weak. _Cain isn't in many pictures. I cut him out where I could and binned as many as possible without losing everything important. There are only a few left._ Worth it, too, in case Cain ever comes back and Charles needs something for others to identify him with.

"Well, good," Erik says, his voice gone flat. "Now I know what he looks like, so if he ever shows up, I'll know I'm not killing the wrong man."

Charles shivers again, a hot flush coming over him, and says, _He's not worth the prison sentence, Erik. And he was a boy himself. Kurt used to hurt him terribly. I was just the bottom of the food chain._ He reaches for the album with weak arms, dragging it back towards himself. _Come on. You wanted to look. Didn't you want to ask me any questions about these?_

But Erik ignores him, his attention now fully on Charles again, his arms crossed over his chest. "You say it like you think I'd get caught," he says angrily. "He _raped_ you. He deserves to die."

The words are like a stab with a knife, and Charles startles, blinking blearily at Erik, tugging the blankets higher around his chest, trapping the warmth. _No he didn't,_ he says, a little bewildered -- though of course Erik would assume that, given the circumstances. _He just hurt me. It wasn't sexual, he just liked the way I cried and let him. Cain was a 3D, and I was -5S. He could put me in subspace whenever he liked, which was often, and then I'd just take it. But he didn't rape me._

"Oh." Charles can tell Erik's a little taken aback, but he recovers quickly, frown deepening. "Even so. You said yourself that Doms shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they want."

 _I was four when our parents married,_ Charles says, with a wry, small twitch of his mouth, not a happy one. _Cain was seven. My mother didn't care for me and my stepfather was happier when I wasn't around. Raven was a baby. So I didn't have the tools to object. Or the opportunity._ At four, Charles had simply known that his father was dead, he had new family now, and that his happy life was over. It had been terrifying at first to be deliberately hurt when he had barely ever grazed himself before, for Cain to come in and hit him, kick him, call him names, but Charles had soon got used to it. It had felt almost like he was Cinderella, save that he wasn't expected to work in the kitchens.

"Is that why you left early for college?" Erik is looking at him with an even gaze, and in the dark light his eyes look grey and angry.

 _More or less,_ Charles says, closing his eyes to escape that sharp focus, the way it makes something clench in his belly. It's as if now that he's noticed Erik he can't stop, even when he's sick. _Cain was starting to think long-term, about somehow taking me with him when he went and keeping me, making me his sub. I heard him pondering it at night, trying to find a way to persuade his father. So I went first, before he could. It was easier._ He feels tired, like the marrow is draining out of his bones and sinking into the earth. _In the end Mother was happy enough for me to go, after all. She barely noticed I was there as it was._

"I'm glad you left," Erik says, and Charles feels his arm wrap around his stomach, pulling Charles in toward him, Erik's fingers pressing into his side just a little too hard. "You don't need any of them." _Useless humans,_ Erik is thinking, but clearly knows better than to say aloud.

Impossible to fight, to pull away, when he's feeling so drained. Charles leans against Erik's shoulder, eyes still closed, and says, _There's a difference between needing something for survival and needing something to be happy._ Charles pushes the blanket back down as a new hot flush comes over him, along with a fresh prickle of sweat. _You'll get sick like this, you know._

"Don't care," Erik says, turning his face toward Charles' head and pressing it against Charles' hair; Charles can feel the heat of his breath against his scalp. There's a low, steady thrum of protectiveness throbbing out of Erik's mind, and Charles sighs, his fingers shifting against the photo album where it still lays in his lap. After a moment he pushes it off his lap and away across the broad expanse of the mattress. If he doesn't look at Erik then he can imagine that he's older, safe, that maybe Erik is an engineer, or a journalist, or a lawyer -- someone he met at a bar, maybe, an adult he’s free to cuddle up to, someone for whom the way Charles lies here against him without protesting isn't the indulgence of a sickness in his mind.

 _Don't you think this is strange?_ he asks, breathing raspily in and out through his mouth, though it makes his sore throat burn. _Lying together like this._

Erik leans in closer to him, his arm tightening around Charles' waist. "No?" he says.

It's difficult to explain why without falling into a trap. _It's very ... intimate,_ Charles says finally, trying to sound normal. _It's not the sort of thing people would usually do with their guardian, or their ward. And certainly not this way around._ Were it the other way around, of course, then there would be good justification to call Child Protective Services.

"Do you want me to leave?" Erik asks, blunt as always.

And Charles ... falters, the correct answer sticking in his throat, because ... he knows what he should say. What he should do. _No. It's fine,_ he says instead, making himself relax, and telling himself it's to help Erik feel secure, feel wanted. As long as Charles doesn't initiate, there's no harm done. It's not his doing, if they're cuddled up close as lovers on his bed, Erik's warmth seeping into him where Erik's arm is wrapped around him tight.

"Good," Erik says, and the sense of his satisfaction washes over Charles, Erik's hand loosening at his side to smooth up along his ribs then down, again, toward his hip.

It's hard, so hard, to be good, Charles thinks, starting to flag now, the motion of Erik's hand soothing, even though he's still sick and headachey and wretched-feeling. He's struggling to do anything but lay there against Erik, though he knows he should probably make conversation, or send Erik off to do something else with his day. But when Erik says, "Go to sleep, Charles. Stop fighting it," it's like being given permission, and Charles slips away into the comforting dark.

 *

He dreams sluggishly, dreadfully, of footsteps coming closer to where he's hiding and a sense of growing threat, the heavy sweat on his skin and the whistle of his breath all part of it, making the small cabinet he’s curled up in hot and muggy as Cain comes closer, until Charles’ hands are fisted at his mouth and he can almost see his shadow standing just outside --

He wakes up with a start, and when he opens his eyes there's a man standing in his bedroom doorway, staring back at him with eyes that show the whites all around, and a plastic gun in his hands. Charles' heart stops, and for a moment he thinks it's just part of the nightmare -- it's just the image of Cain, lingering on -- until the man shifts on his feet, and Erik mumbles and rolls over beside him, dragging the sheets against Charles' body.

The movement is like a lit match. The man with the gun startles, gun flying up to point at the bed, the trigger starts to move -- and Charles _screams_ , hoarse and piercing, his mind lashing out in a vicious blast of raw telepathy, without shape or form, like a concussion grenade going off and ripping into the scenery. He's already scrambling on the bed to get in front of Erik even as the gunman falls to the floor. Erik's awake, now, abruptly so -- Charles' scream must have woken him -- and he's already pushing past Charles to clamber out of bed, all the metal in the room buzzing and floating in midair.

 _DON'T,_ Charles says, half-wild with the adrenaline and almost falling out of the bed in his haste to get between them again, dragging Erik back by the elbow. His heart is beating so hard he's surprised it's not visible through his clothes, his whole body juddering with it. "Don't," he rasps out loud, "don't go near him, there’s a gun, he has a gun -- "

"It's all right," Erik says, and he tugs free of Charles' desperate grasp, slipping off the foot of the bed to kneel on the floor. Charles wants to scream but holds it in, fingers in tight claws in his own hair, barely hanging on to lucidity. The gunman's body is out of sight, but Charles can see Erik reaching down toward it, pausing for a long moment. Then he frowns. "He's still alive."

As if to remedy that, Erik lifts a hand and one of his formless metal projectiles that's been orbiting overhead since Erik woke shoots down toward the unconscious man, faster than the eye -- but not faster than thought.

 _NO,_ Charles thinks, and bats the metal aside with Erik's power before it can connect, the projectile burying itself in the bedroom wall in a bang and a puff of plaster dust. Charles can feel his own eyes wide, his body heaving as he holds Erik in his mental grip, keeping him from using any other metal, though he's leaning back against the bed now himself, wiping at the sweat and snot on his face with the sleeve of his pajamas, panting. "No," he says out loud, releasing Erik enough for him to move, but not to attack again. Speaking feels like dragging barbed wire down his throat, so he switches back to telepathy. _He's unconscious, and I'll keep him that way until the police arrive. He's no risk to either of us now._

If anything, Charles is freaking out that he might have hit the man too hard with his telepathy. There's not even as much brain activity as he'd expect from a coma patient going on right now, and he has a growing fear that he's done something irreversible, contending vividly with his flashback to Cain, running on a loop in the back of his mind -- another gun, a bullet, the burning, searing pain --

"Are you all right?" Erik says, pushing off the floor and climbing back onto the bed, crawling over to where Charles is sat and tugging his hand down away from his face -- when did he cover it? Shit, he’s shaking like a leaf -- and meeting Charles' eyes. "Give me back my power. I won't do anything with it -- but give it back."

 _Give me the gun first,_ Charles says, even his mental voice shaking, though his instinct is to grab a hold of Erik and clutch him close, against his chest, relief streaming through him at the same time as the horror.

"What?" Erik says, and then he glances down, at the plastic gun still in his hand, looking confused. "Oh." He flicks the safety back on with his thumb, though he hesitates for a moment before he turns it in his hand, offering the grip to Charles. "My power, Charles."

There's a weight to it, when Charles takes the gun. It's not heavy, as firearms go, but it feels like it, nonetheless, when he stares at the murderous thing. He twists around and drops it onto the bedside table like a poisonous snake.

 _Okay,_ he says, when he turns back to Erik, releasing his hold on Erik's powers. Charles feels lightheaded now, his vision swimming. He tries to lift his hand to wipe his brow again, but Erik still has hold of that wrist. Woozy, Charles says again, _Okay. If you try anything I'll stop you, though. It's one thing to fight someone, hurt someone, when they're an active threat. Killing an unconscious man is plain murder, when he is clearly no longer a threat to either of us. Do you understand?_

"I understand," Erik says, surprisingly quickly. He's still staring at Charles, frowning a little, concerned lines drawing themselves across his brow. "Lie back. You look .... You need to rest." His fingers feel hot, like they're branding Charles' flesh around his wrist. Erik presses at Charles' shoulder, nudging him back toward the pillows.

 _Call the police._ Charles doesn't have the strength to resist now, letting himself be leaned back into the bed. _I think I hit him too hard. You have to call Moira. My phone ..._ He puts the idea of his pants pocket in Erik's mind, the pair of trousers he wore this morning before going back to bed laying crumpled on the chair in his closet. Everything feels like it's floating in his head. _I'm not well._

"I know," Erik says. "You just stay where you are. I'll take care of it."

He disappears behind the door of Charles' closet, emerging a few seconds later with Charles' phone in hand, tapping out Moira's number on the screen and lifting it to his ear. "...Hello? Agent MacTaggert? It's Erik Lehnsherr. --No, Charles is fine, but you need to send a team here immediately. Someone broke in. ...Armed. Charles took care of it. No, he's alive, but I don't know how long Charles can hold him like that. He's been sick." Erik glances at Charles on the bed, the glow of the cell phone screen the only light in the dim room, reflecting onto Erik's cheek. "We're in Charles' room -- top of the stairs, to the left. Yes. ...Thank you."

He hangs up, and turns toward Charles again, slipping the phone into his pocket. "They'll be here in five minutes."

 _Good,_ Charles says, closing his eyes and concentrating on the man on the floor, not that he needs to work to keep him unconscious. Oh, God. He was scared, had just woken up -- and still, Charles can feel this is going to haunt him. Panic is racing through him even now, rough and burning. _I'll probably have to answer a lot of questions about what happened. If they need to arrest me until it's cleared up then you can stay with Raven until things are sorted out. Be good for her, okay? Be nice to Hank._

"You won't be arrested," Erik says bluntly. "It was a clear case of self-defense." He sits down on the edge of the bed again, weight dipping the mattress, and rests his hand on Charles' forearm. "Are you going to be able to keep him down?" he says after a moment. The metal in the room is no longer floating overhead, but Charles is still too tangled up in Erik's mind not to notice the way it still sparks in Erik's attention.

Charles takes a shaking breath in, then lets it out, looking at Erik. In the dark the shadows across his face are stark, cutting across his features. _I don't need to,_ he says finally, with a sickly feeling in his stomach he wishes he could attribute to being ill. _I think I broke him when I hit his mind. I'm not sure he's going to wake up ever again. I didn't mean to. But he wanted to kill us, you._ Just being awake feels exhausting. _If I weren't sick I'd have been more in control, I could have pulled the blow ..._

"It's fine," Erik says, his hand tightening around Charles' arm. "You did exactly what you should have done. And I'm glad you did it."

 _You don't understand,_ Charles says, heart fluttering in his mouth, lips twisting. _I've spent my whole life since my powers came in trying not to break everyone around me, I've been so careful -- it would be so easy to forget my own strength ... imagine everyone around you was made of metal, and if you breathed on them too hard they would crumple. And then you sneezed on someone._

"Stop it." Erik is grasping both his shoulders now, as if holding him in place; his eyes are dark, focused. "This doesn't undo all of that. You saved my life. Do you understand that? _Thank_ you. Don't tell me you could have done better -- you did it at all. And I'm grateful."

 _I don't regret that part,_ Charles says, and manages a small smile, though it's not his best. He turns his gaze over to the unconscious man on the floor, making himself look -- no pretending it didn't happen, or glossing over it. On a sudden thought Charles widens his awareness out, spreading it across the entire block, searching for danger; it would be awful to thwart one attempt only to be caught in another. _I can't feel anyone else close by,_ he says, after a moment, pulling back a little, _so I think he was working alone, not that we can question him now. We'll have to be very careful for a while, though, to be certain. And stay away from the windows for a few days._

Erik nods, and the lamp flicks on, apparently of its own accord; in the brighter light he looks pale, but his jaw is set, a tiny muscle clenching in his cheek. He shifts, moving toward the head of the bed to lean against the back of it, sharing Charles' pillows. "How long until the police get here, now?"

Charles looks for Moira and finds her at the foot of the elevator, along with an array of other agents, another five police officers coming in from the opposite direction, only a little behind. _They're downstairs_ , he says. _I think we should tell them you came in after the fact, Erik -- perhaps he chose the wrong door first and got my room instead of yours. It's perfectly reasonable._

"Why?" Erik says, frowning at him.

God almighty. _Two reasons,_ Charles says, calmly, reasonably -- he hopes. _Firstly, that way it's clearly me that harmed him, regardless that he was an intruder. Secondly, it means they're not going to ask why you were sleeping in my bed and make the wrong assumption._

He feels a shuddering cramp run through his belly at the thought of it -- of being thought to have ... when he feels the way he does, and has worked so hard _not_ to feel it, the thought of being accused, dragged away, when he's not entirely innocent is ... God. Terrifying. And if they arrest him he'll have to wear the suppressor, and if someone Dominant enough _asks_ him when he's like that, he'll _have_ to answer, and ...!

He can feel Erik thinking about it, but after a long moment Erik, thankfully, just nods again. "I'll go let them in," he says, getting up from the bed. Without the warmth of Erik's body pressed against him, the bedroom's ambient air feels cold against Charles' skin.

By the time Erik comes back with Moira and her partner Charles has climbed back under the covers and is tugging them fitfully up around his shoulders, shivering even as he blows his nose to get rid of some of the gunk clogging him up. Moira glances over at him, taking this in, but her mind is all business as she turns to the man on the floor, blocking the door from closing, his legs sprawled outside on the landing.

"So what happened?" she asks, crouching down beside him to check his throat for a pulse.

 _I woke up after a bad dream of someone coming to get me,_ Charles says, dropping the tissue into the bin by his bed, _and this gentleman was standing in the doorway with a plastic gun pointed at me -- it's over here,_ and he indicates the bedside table in his mind, showing her where without dragging his arm out of the tentative warmth. _I was startled and I'm not very well so I hit him pretty hard telepathically, harder than I would have meant to. He passed out and Erik came running in after he heard the thud of him falling._

Moira's partner, Agent Levine, comes over to take the gun, picking it up with gloved fingers and dropping it into an evidence bag. "Have you touched this?" he asks, looking between Charles and Erik.

 _Both of us have,_ Charles says. _Erik picked it up and then I made him give it to me._

For once, Erik doesn't seem to have noticed that Agent Levine is a Dom. He's watching Charles, apparently oblivious to the two CIA agents in the room. "The hole in the wall was me," Erik says. "This man tried to kill Charles. I lost control. It's just metal. A cuff link, I think."

"I know you're sick, Charles, but we're going to have to move you," Moira says, standing up and letting a paramedic move in to kneel beside the man on the floor. "Is there somewhere you can be comfortable while we mark up evidence in here? We'll need to ask more questions, too."

 _...I can go in the spare bedroom next door,_ Charles says, and slowly sits up, swinging his legs back out of bed. He feels like the cuckoo when the clock strikes twelve, in and out, in and out. His joints are stiff and it's cold out from under the covers, so he shivers, reaching for his robe where it's draped over a chair. _Moira ... I can try and wake him up, if that would help. But I'm not sure I can. I think I hit him too hard._

"I know you mean well, but you shouldn't do anything to him telepathically now, it could be considered interference," Moira says, the corner of her mouth curling, wry. "We'll get to the bottom of it, Charles. As long as it was self-defense you'll be fine, you have the right to defend yourself."

"Come on," Erik says. He's waiting by the door to the bathroom that connects to the spare room, his arms crossed over his stomach. "Let's get out of their way."

 _Erik's gotten bossier since I last saw him,_ Moira thinks, eyebrows rising a little before she turns back to Levine and they start talking in low voices.

Charles shuffles over to the bathroom door and through, past Erik, then through the door on the other side. The spare room is less generic than Erik's was when he moved in -- since Raven used to live here the walls are a rich, cobalt blue, the furniture all warm browns and golds. The bed is made up, and so Charles goes immediately over to it and climbs in, trying to build up heat again.

"Do you need anything?" Erik asks. He's followed Charles in to linger at the foot of the bed, pushing his hands into his pockets.

 _Another dose of Sudafed would be good,_ Charles says, _but really, you should go to bed. I'm sure they'll wake you up if they need you._

"If you're sure," Erik says, but he goes, at least, glancing back once at Charles over his shoulder on his way out the room, pulling the door softly shut behind him.

Charles doesn't know how long it is before Moira is shaking him gently by the shoulder to wake him up; all he knows is that it's still dark outside. She is apologetic but determined as she rouses him enough to answer more of her questions.

It's a long night after that.

 

 

*

C E R E B R O  
 _Sick days_

 

 

> Sometimes it really sucks just being a human being and it has nothing to do with being a mutant -- the reason I've not posted the past few days is that I've been at home sick and watching marathons of _House of Cards_ and _Orange is the New Black_ on Netflix while trying not to either hack my lungs clear out of my body or bring up the Hudson's worth of mucus.
> 
> It's not helped by my mutation, of course. It's less bad for me than it is for the Beanstalk, who has been looking after me, making popcorn and predicting the twists and turns of the plots on TV while throwing away my trashcan-full of used tissues and bringing me tea. He's been very patient with the fact that when I have a cold I can't always tell when I'm projecting, and that sometimes means he gets an insider view of my symptoms whether he likes it or not.
> 
> (You may recall me mentioning the Beanstalk in passing previously, and to answer a couple of questions -- yes, he is my roommate. And he is a mutant and very tall, at least compared to me, hence the nickname. Now, back on topic!)
> 
> We like to talk about mutation as if it's universally helpful, that all mutations are glorious and should be celebrated all of the time, and yet we know that's not true -- there are some mutations that harm the people who have it directly, others that prevent mutants from being able to live among regular society. It's much nicer to imagine that mutations are Gifts given to us to make us powerful, beautiful, special. When in reality they misfire just as often as the rest of the body, until poor Beanstalk might not have caught my cold but he sure as hell feels like he has. I'm just lucky to have someone acclimatized enough to my foibles and failings -- and with enough of his own -- not to swear at me every time I sneeze and he feels his own head pounding like he's been hit with a sledgehammer.
> 
> Any suggestions for other sick-bed watching? I'm open to suggestions and frankly if it's not on Netflix then the Beanstalk will be able to find it somewhere else online, possibly having just fallen off the back of a truck I'm sure.
> 
>  

*

 

**Magneto: Change of plan**

 

> We need to meet sooner, rather than later. Same location as on the card. Saturday at 1 AM.

 

**swineherd: Re: Change of plan**

 

> With or without our mutual friend? Without I can do. With may be problematic.

 

**Magneto: Re:re: Change of plan**

 

> With. Tell our friend this is his only opportunity; I won't be so accommodating for him next time.

 

**swineherd: Re:re:re: Change of plan**

 

> I will let him know, but it will depend upon his schedule, of course. You may be giving him visiting hours, but I expect he will turn up when he wants to and not before. I will let you know if plans change.

 

 

*

_Erik_

He gets the go-ahead on Saturday night, midnight, one hour before the meet and before any other assassins manage to get to him and Charles, which had been Erik’s primary concern.

 

**swineherd: Green light**

 

> We're on for the meet. Be there in an hour. If you are late then there will be no space for negotiation. Usual rules of conduct.

 

It rankles Erik in a way he hadn't anticipated, that Victor Creed thinks he's in a position to make these kinds of demands when it's Erik they need to lead them, and Erik whose testimony will tear down the very foundations of the Hellfire Club, permanently, if Erik himself is not there to undermine the more unfortunate implications of said testimony. But there's no other option. That Erik was already waiting, dressed in the most Dominant clothing he owns, sitting downstairs with his laptop in the dark and silent gallery, is perhaps a sign of his own naive optimism more than anything else, but at least he's ready.

Usual rules of conduct -- come alone, no cops, no weapons, tell no one where you're going or who you're meeting. 'No weapons,' Erik decides it's best to ignore. He feels safer with a handful of loose change in his pocket, with metal backings to the buttons on his shirt, even if he leaves his knives and his Beretta where they are, hidden in a slit inside his mattress.

He shuts down his laptop and leaves it there on the stairs. One hour -- it will take at least that long to get where he's going. Fuck the elevator. Erik opens up the living room window and leans out, looking down at the street far below. He can feel the thrum of the geomagnetic field; it catches him when he pushes himself out the window, flailing and falling uncontrolled for a few brief seconds, heart beating wildly before he settles, holding his arms out, palms down, to slow his own fall and land soft on the empty sidewalk.

He looks up at the darkened building, all its inhabitants asleep -- including Charles, miraculously, who has been taking those sleeping pills again to help him stay asleep through his coughing. Between that and his cold medicine, he's dead to the world. It’s lucky, or Erik would have been forced to crush those pills into Charles' tea otherwise. Although he would have done it ... although he would have done it, for the cause, the thought of drugging Charles, for any reason, sets his teeth on edge.

They're meeting at a diner in Hunts Point, in the South Bronx. The 6 train itself takes nearly fifty minutes to get there, leaving behind the affluent penthouses and designer boutiques of the Upper East Side and exchanging it for New York's red light district, where night has given rise to life in full force, bums kicked off the sidewalk by the pimps who watch their submissive wares parade slowly up and down the block, junkies moaning in the alleyways, a few regular people just off closing shift scurrying quickly toward their destinations.

Erik checks his watch. 12:56. Knowing Victor Creed, he won't be at the diner personally -- he'll have sent swineherd in alone. He could be watching Erik even now, as Erik shakes his head and turns away the hooker who is trying to tug him toward a broken-down car, shrugging off the sub's grasp. He'd anticipated this, when he chose how to dress tonight, but it doesn't make it feel any less like he's out-of-place, a child dressing up in his parents' clothes.

The diner's open 24-hours. The only window is half-boarded up, a band-aid over a gun-shot crack. A bell rings when Erik opens the door, brass tinkling in his metal-sense.

Swineherd is sat in one of the booths in the far corner, not far from the door that leads to the kitchen, and, presumably, a back exit. He's dressed much the same as before, grungy and practical, so normal that he almost fades into the background. When Erik comes in he doesn't even look up, just keeps typing away on his laptop, a cup of coffee sat untouched at his elbow.

Erik slides into the seat across from him, feeling an overwhelming sense of deja vu. None of the other customers so much as glance at them. Even the waitress is too busy scrubbing a table down to bother.

"Good," swineherd says, finishing whatever it is he's writing and lifting his head to meet Erik's gaze. "You're to go upstairs. Apartment 203. You don't need keys, obviously. I'm leaving; if you have any follow-up questions and are still capable of typing you can reach me in the usual way."

Erik manages to keep his expression blank, at least, as he stands, even if he doesn't entirely keep the sarcasm from touching his voice as he says, "Pleasure doing business with you."

Swineherd's back at his computer again, though, and Erik didn't really expect a response. The door to the apartments is outside, a narrow entrance between the diner and a closed-down laundromat with an ancient steel lock that opens for him with the added sense of disturbed rust, a stench like blood through his awareness of it.

He turns on the single yellow light in the stairwell. The stairs are barely wide enough to fit Erik's shoulders -- he has no idea how Creed managed it, considering he's easily three times Erik's size, probably, even now that Erik's older. His heart's pounding as he starts to ascend the stairs. It's not too late to turn back, he thinks. He could stop right now, not even off the ground floor, go back out the door and onto the subway and be home before breakfast. Before Charles even knows he's gone.

He grasps onto the black-spattered metal railing and makes himself keep going, against the better part of him that wants to give into the shallowness of his breaths and the dizziness in his head and simply turn and run away. He has his metal-sense blanketing the whole building, can feel all the pots and pans in the diner kitchen, alarm clocks on nightstands, ancient bedsprings, the pipes in the walls. All that, and it means nothing. He isn't Charles. He can't sense _Creed._.

Pull yourself together, he orders himself. You're omega-class now. You're 7D, for fuck's sake. Victor Creed is nothing and no one. A lesser mutant and a lesser Dom. You are Sebastian Shaw's heir, and the rightful leader of Hellfire. Now _go._

Feeling only a little emboldened, Erik turns on the landing and ascends the second staircase, to the second floor. It opens out to a long hallway, dimly-lit, the green carpet patchy and stained underfoot. He can hear someone crying in one of the apartments he passes by, a woman. His heart is heavy in his throat; he can barely breathe past its weight. The floorboards creak beneath every step, heralding his arrival for Creed.

201.

202.

203\. Erik stops, head spinning, and stares at the door. He can sense nothing behind it. No metal. Nothing to indicate anyone's there, that it is now -- or ever was -- inhabited. He clings to his sense of the pipes, the change in his pocket, the backs of his buttons and the zip of his trousers, and, before he can convince himself otherwise, sinks his power into the brass doorknob and turns the latch. The door swings inward, open.

At first he can't see anything inside the dark apartment. There are no lights, and the window is mostly blocked off, keeping out anything that might have filtered in from outside. But then the blockage moves, the light shifting with it, and Erik realizes with a sudden jolt in his stomach that the shadow is Victor Creed, his massive bulk enough to almost eclipse the entire window. When Creed turns to face him the light slides across him like water on oilcloth, not sticking, darting away from him as if it's too afraid to linger.

"Little baby Erik," Creed says, and there's the sound of a match lighting, then a flare as he lights a cigar, the flame lighting the sharp white points of his teeth. "You've finally come home."

 

*


	14. Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you might have predicted from last chapter, now would be a good time to check the content notes at the end of the chapter if you tend to use them. This week's notes contain spoilers for a major plot point of this chapter.

_Erik_

The door falls shut behind him and the room falls into darkness, broken only by the grey streetlight outside the window and the red smolder of Creed's cigar. Erik is frozen in place, as if his feet have grown roots and tethered him down to the floor. _This was a mistake,_ he thinks, and another wave of dizziness crashes over him, only worsening when he makes himself take in a shallow breath.

"Victor," he makes himself say, and forces himself not to sink down to his knees, fighting the trembling in his legs.

"Come here, and tell me what you want," Victor says, puffing out smoke; Erik can smell it, thick and tarry. "And why I shouldn't just kill you now. It would be simpler."

Victor’s face is hidden by the shadows, his voice its usual growl -- there’s nothing to interpret, no clue as to what he might be planning to do. 

Erik wants to stay where he is, but his feet move of their own accord, taking him step by step across the apartment, dust blooming in small clouds underfoot, and only stops when he's a yard from Victor, close enough that he can see the glinting whites of Victor's eyes. He feels nauseated, bile rising in the back of his throat; he swallows it down and reaches for the coins in his pocket with his power, gripping the metal tight.

"I want to return to Hellfire," Erik says. Somehow, miraculously, his voice doesn't shake. That simple fact makes him feel steadier already. "I tested omega-class last month. You're stronger with me than without me."

"But here you are, still fresh from mewling at that telepath's tit for the past two years," Victor says, and he blows the next load of smoke directly into Erik's face. "Did you get tired of playing kitten, is that it? I saw you on TV, after going to court against Shaw and the others -- didn’t look like you wanted back in then. Figured you were tagging along to Mama Cat now."

Something acidic is on the tip of Erik's tongue but he grits his teeth and says, instead, "Not quite. I'm here, aren't I?" And Charles is asleep, miles away, blissfully unaware. Erik feels his chest tighten, his heart skipping a beat.

"Yeah, you are." Victor leans forward, until his face is only inches from Erik's, looking him right in the eyes. "And I want to know why you're standing witness against Hellfire if you want to be Hellfire again. You ain't answered my question, kitten. And you're standing awfully tall. Don't make me put you down where you belong; you won't like the way I do it."

He should kneel. He should be low, submissive, vulnerable, only ... that isn't what he wants from Hellfire, not anymore. He's omega-class. He's 7D, he ought to _lead_. He doesn't belong tied up in someone's bed, he should be on the front lines, changing the world for the better. But he's no Dom, not really. What had he expected? That he'd declare his DS score and no one would ask him to kneel again? That they would passively obey him without him having to tear apart everything he is in exchange? 

"You know I'm 7D," Erik says, and his pulse is nothing but a flutter behind his sternum, impossibly fast. "Shaw is finished. He'll be in prison whether I testify or not, and by right of power and Dominance, I am his successor."

"Is that so." A snort, then Victor straightens, stepping into the space between them and looking down at Erik -- who isn't short himself, any more, but is nothing to Victor's physical size. "I know they say that, but I also know you sucked my cock more times than I can remember. Took it up the ass, too, plenty of times. So go on. Make me back down, and I will. If you're really a 7D."

Victor's eyes are a cold and steely grey, and Erik realizes with a sudden lurch in the pit of his stomach that he's never looked Creed in the eye before. He'd never dared. Suddenly it feels almost impossible to hold his gaze, and Erik has to actively fight to keep from looking away, a terrible heat slowly rising beneath his skin. 

_Be Dominant_ , he orders himself, and takes in a shuddering breath, makes himself say, "Back down."

A dark chuckle. "No."

The room is spinning. Erik's eyelids feel heavy; it's difficult to keep his eyes open, and the back of his neck tingles, expecting Victor to grasp at it at any second, force him down. "Do it," he says, but he can already tell it's weak, far from being a demand.

A hand comes to rest on the top of Erik's head, and it pushes, heavy and impossible to resist, while over him Victor sniggers and with the other hand reaches for his fly, dragging the zipper down with a _snick--snick--snick_ of plastic teeth releasing. Erik is on his knees then and confronted with the fat and growing length of Victor's cock, protruding from between the open vee-shape of his pants, tip lifting as it swells to point directly at Erik.

"Suck it, kitten," Victor says, and Erik feels sick, his throat closing up, gagging on his own breath.

"No," Erik says, and this time his voice is uneven, barely more than a whisper; he fights to lift his head to look up at Victor but only ends up tilting it down instead, exposing the back of his neck, his submission belying his words.

The hand on his head tightens, broad enough to grip the entire top of his head and _squeeze_ , like it's testing him for firmness. "I will pop you like a grapefruit," Victor says, voice a growl, now, as his hand shakes Erik hard. "Now do as you're told!"

Erik gives in, hating himself, tilting his head forward enough that the fat head of Victor's cock bumps against his lips. He takes a shallow breath before he opens his mouth and sucks at just the tip, hands curling into tight fists at his sides. Victor's cock tastes salty, already, or maybe it's just Erik's imagination; his stomach is in sickening knots as he steels himself to push forward, again, flattening his tongue against the underside to suck Victor in until his nose is buried in the wiry curls of Victor's pubic hair, the thick shaft heavy and swollen in his throat.

"There you go," but the fingers don't loosen their grip, instead they just pull him back then push him forward again, working his mouth on Victor's cock. "Doesn't that feel better, behaving like the proper little slut you are? Keep sucking."

Something hot is prickling at Erik's eyes and he clenches them shut and keeps going, lifting a hand to grasp the base of Victor's cock and move it in time with his mouth, hollowing out his cheeks. It feels easy, familiar, falling into this sort of rhythm -- he knows what Victor likes, what he wants, knows how to give it to him, knows how to suck cock like it's the only thing that will save his life. And maybe it is, tonight. Victor is groaning, hips moving as he works Erik on his cock, until all of a sudden he drags Erik off entirely, holding him there.

"Get on the bed, on your stomach," he says, and jerks Erik aside, showing him the single mattress that's lying on the floor, no bedframe or bedding, musty and damp-looking.

Erik's mouth feels dry now, and he can still taste Victor in the back of his throat as he swallows, tension drawing up through his spine. This wasn't how this was supposed to go -- he doesn't know what he expected, but it wasn't this, wasn't being ... Dominated, _humiliated_ , all over again. 

"You've made your point," he says, voice rasping and raw from the abuse. 

"Did I fucking stutter?" Victor's hand wrenches Erik's head back, and he smacks him across the face with the other, not as hard as he could -- Erik should know -- but hard enough to hurt. "Did I come yet? Did I say I'm happy to come in your mouth? Because I'm coming in your fucking ass, kitten, so get on the _fucking_ bed." Erik can see Victor's bared teeth, the incisors elongated and sharp, animal; his cheek is growing hot where Victor hit him, blood rushing toward the surface of his skin.

But then there's anger, too, sudden and strong, surging up from his gut. How long has it been, since he tried to fight back? Years and years and years -- Erik would have been a child, the last time he didn't simply ... _give in_. And he resents the fact that Victor thinks, by that, he's earned Erik's submission. Like Erik owes it to him, now that he's been so thoroughly broken.

"You've gone two years without my ass," Erik says, reeling a little from the sheer boldness of it, half-certain Victor will kill him for this. "You have a hand. I'm sure you've learned to use it."

There's a moment before that snarl widens into a wild grin, and then Victor is dragging Erik up by the crown of his head and throwing him across the room onto the mattress, Erik almost flying all the way off the other side; he lands with a crash, and before he even has his breath back Victor is on him, weighing him down with the full weight of his body and pinning him with a hand at his nape and another at his hip, keeping him there effortlessly. "Are you going to be a good boy, or am I going to have to remember how to use this hand to make you scream?" Victor growls into Erik's ear, his hard cock rubbing against Erik's ass through his pants.

"Fuck you," Erik hisses through gritted teeth, and Victor thrusts his hand under Erik's body to grab at his belt, working it loose with quick tugs.

"The only reason I'm not ripping these off you is to take you back with me after," he says, fingers now on Erik's button, then dragging down his fly. "I'll show you what you seem to have forgotten, wearing these Dom clothes like some kind of tranny."

Erik flushes again, hotter now, and grasps at the dirty mattress, trying to get the leverage to pull himself forward; Victor must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, the bulk of him crushing Erik from behind. He feels like an insect pinned to velvet, squirming, and even when he manages to jerk his elbow back into Victor's side he can tell it does little good -- with his muscle, Victor probably doesn't even feel it.

"For fuck's sake, kid, give it up," and Victor's hand balls into a fist then drives up under Erik's ribs, forcing the air out of him in one excruciating wheeze, sharp pain spiking through his gut and all the way up toward his shoulders.

All Erik can do, then, is gasp for breath, choking, his abdomen throbbing like his heart just dropped down into his stomach. And he obeys, at last, giving in and going still beneath Victor's weight. "I'm sorry," he whispers, and his voice cracks on the last syllable. "I'm sorry, Mr Creed -- please --"

"That's better." The hand goes back to Erik's waist, and then his pants are being pulled down along with his underwear, to pile up around his ankles, caught on his shoes. "Good boy. Now hold still." He hears Victor spit, then there are wet fingers at his hole, pressing against him there and trying to get in.

Erik presses his brow against the mattress and tries to relax. It's hard, though, when it's Victor's thick fingers trying to shove their way into him, and the spit doesn't do much to make it easier -- he bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep from whimpering, that pain from Victor's fist still roiling in his stomach. It hurts enough that he's distracted from his ass, though, from the burn in his hole as Victor finally gets his fingers in up to the knuckles and Erik is stretched wide around them.

"You've tightened up," Victor says, scissoring his fingers, then jabbing them in and out, spitting again -- this time the spit lands directly on Erik's ass, and he works it in deeper, getting him wet inside. "You ain't been fucking Mama Cat, then, or else he's got a noodle for a dick."

"He's a sub," Erik says by way of explanation, though he's too dizzy to remember why that matters. The mattress smells musty, mildewy, and his nose is starting to itch from being pressed against it. He blinks, eyes watering. He wants to ask Victor if he brought lube, but doesn't dare, not after he's been so difficult already. Only -- that's right, doesn't he ...? "In my jeans pocket," he says. "There's lube. And condoms. I always ...." Always have it on him, always prepared, every bit the slut Victor says he is.

A laugh. "All right, I'll slick your cunt," Victor says, and pulls his fingers out to reach back and fish around in Erik's jeans until he finds the lube, then comes back, unscrewing the cap and practically jamming the end of it up Erik's ass, squirting it directly into him. "Better, princess?"

"Yes," Erik says, even though he's not sure it really is; his stomach hurts worse, now -- how is that even possible? -- and he's starting to feel nauseated, too, like he's lost his sense of balance. He turns his head to one side, pressing his cheek against the bed and staring at his hand resting a few inches away, mentally tracing the curved line of his thumbnail and trying not to think about how his body feels, to become a mind without form.

It's not long after that that Victor lines himself up and starts pushing in, the thick head of his cock squeezing through the muscle of Erik's hole to get inside of him, shoving forward in hard jerks. Erik can feel that he's not wearing the condom, but it's not Erik's place to ask a second time. It takes a few tries for Victor to get it all the way in, and once he has Erik feels overfull, swollen inside, pinned down from above by Victor's weight on top of him trapping him under there on all sides.

"Now be a good boy for me," Victor says, and starts to fuck him.

It hurts, badly; with every thrust, Victor jostles Erik's body and his stomach clenches up, sending a fresh wave of pain jolting through his torso until it feels like there are live coals smoldering inside him. He closes his eyes but that doesn't keep the tears from coming, anyway, sliding down his cheeks, and he knows Victor can see it but can't bring himself to turn his face away. Maybe he'll like it. He doesn't remember if Victor enjoyed it when he cried. He tries to clench his ass around Victor's cock, make it good for him, but the tension that draws through his belly makes him cry out.

Victor doesn't seem to notice, or care. He just grunts and thrusts, over and over, working himself in and out of Erik until he comes with a louder grunt inside Erik's hole, biting at the back of Erik's neck with those sharp teeth. Even after it's over, for a moment, it doesn't feel like Victor's stopped; or maybe it's just that the room is tilting on its axis and Erik feels seasick, lost without a horizon.

He lies there, trying to breathe beneath the heavy pressure on his back, feeling Victor's cock slowly start to go soft inside him, his legs weak-feeling and tingling.

Eventually Victor pulls out, wet cock dragging a line down Erik's perineum when it flops out of him, and Victor rolls over onto his back, though he must surely be hanging half off the mattress. "We'll go to base in a few hours," he says, draping one arm over his face and stretching out. "Go to sleep."

Without Victor's body heat, Erik feels cold, hollowed out down to his bones. He turns slowly over, and when he tries to sit up the stabbing pain in his ribs is so severe he gasps. He has to brace himself against the mattress to reach his jeans, pulling them and his underwear back up, forcing himself to bear the agony long enough to tilt his hips up and drag his clothes back on.

Victor still has his eyes closed when Erik glances over at him, so he just lies where he is, staring up at the dark ceiling overhead. He can't smell the mildew anymore, or the dust -- just the warm earthy smell of semen. He takes a small breath and tries not to think about home, tries to resist the urge to roll over and press himself close against Victor's body where he can close his eyes and pretend it's Charles, that it's them, a week ago, when Charles was sick, the way Erik felt calm and safe and happy, the two of them wound up in their own little world before the gunman broke in.

His stomach throbs again, and pain lances all the way up to his left shoulder, cramping there at the base of his neck where Victor bit him. He lifts his hand and rubs at it, but it does little good. Victor's asleep now, his low snores rumbling in his throat. Erik thinks about staying here for another six hours, waking up and going back to the new safehouse, wherever that is, to what's left of the Hellfire Club, where he'll kneel and obey and fuck and use his power like a tool in Victor Creed's hands. 

_Fuck that,_ he thinks, suddenly and viciously, and he grips down hard at his shoulder, until that hurts almost as bad as his stomach. Not that he feels much better about creeping to his feet and sneaking out the door, leaving Victor behind asleep on the mattress with his cock still hanging out of his pants, slipping away like a coward in the middle of the night.

His whole body aches, worse when he's outside and on his feet, stumbling down the street toward the subway station. His hole is raw and used-feeling, still leaking come, and he can tell from the way the whores look at him that they know he's no different from them, another dirty beaten-up prostitute scuttling home, ashamed of himself. 

He doesn't know why he came here. It felt like he planned this whole thing because it's what he had to do, not what he -- not what he wanted. It can't have been. Would he really ever have gone back with Victor Creed? Left Charles alone in that huge apartment? Debased himself, all over again? 

It doesn't matter now, he thinks; the world tilts on its axis and he stumbles, grabbing onto a street light for support. Someone -- a Domme; a pimp, probably -- is watching him with gleaming, greedy eyes, and he makes himself keep walking, quickly, not looking back.

It's getting harder to walk, now; every step jostles his gut and hurts, worse. Whatever Victor did, it's done more than bruise; he feels drained and dizzy, like he's losing a little bit of himself with every step he takes. He pauses under the next street light to tug his shirt up and look down at his stomach. The muscles are all clenched up and taut; his stomach looks swollen somehow, and there's a large bruise blooming beneath his skin, red-black and angry-looking, covering half his torso. 

"Jesus Christ," he whispers, and another wave of vertigo tumbles over him, buzzing in his ears. He drops the fabric and grits his teeth, looking at his watch again. It's 3 AM. The 6 train will be running slow, but it's running, and if he hurries he should catch it before Victor can wake up and realize he's gone, come looking for him.

The station is mostly empty when he gets there. His mind feels tattered and strung apart; he forgets to pull out his MetroCard and just slaps the palm of his hand against the card reader; the turnstile opens anyway, for him, working off magnetism, and Erik drags himself through.

His vision's gone blurry, now, darkening around the edges. He needs to sit down. He all but falls onto the nearest bench, tipping forward almost instantly to press his brow against his shaking knees. Eight minutes until the next train. _Just breathe, Lehnsherr._ But even breathing hurts.

"Hey, kid. Kid. Are you okay?"

Erik lifts his head, and swoons, slightly, trying to blink the black specks out of his eyes to see who's speaking.

It's one of the transport guards, a short, squat man who hunkers down in front of him, resting on his heels and squinting at Erik. "You okay, kid?" he asks again, tapping his flashlight idly against his shin. "You don't look okay. Want me to call an ambulance, come pick you up?"

Erik stares at him for a second, not quite processing his words. His heart's racing so fast he can't even count the beats. He opens his mouth to say something but his throat's dried up and nothing comes out.

"Yeah, I thought so," the guard says, unclipping his radio from his belt and lifting it to his mouth. "Shelly, call the ambulance service and get one down here? Got a kid who looks real unwell, maybe drugs, maybe something else, not sure. Make it fast, yeah?" He replaces the radio and smiles reassuringly at Erik. "Okay, kid. You'll be all right. Ambulance is coming to getcha and you'll be right as rain."

Erik closes his eyes and tilts forward again, bringing his head back down into his lap. He can sense the guard still standing next to him, the metal in his uniform reflecting like bright lights in Erik's sixth sense. It's comforting, somehow, and when the train pulls into the station with all its gleaming steel and sparking electricity he thinks, if I were to die right now, it'd be all right. 

He doesn't know how long it is until there are two new voices joining the guard's, a man and a woman; then there are hands on his face, tilting him up, and the woman says, "Hmm. Best get him on the stretcher, Bill. All right, my love. You're going to be just fine, but I need you to tell me where it hurts, okay?" She's touching his wrist, fingers pressing against his pulse point.

"My stomach," Erik manages to say. 

"Is that pain or nausea?"

Erik shrugs and winces a second later, reaching up to squeeze his shoulder again. The woman shines a bright light in his eyes, one after the other, blinding him, and then her hand's on his elbow. She says, "Let's get you up on the stretcher, dear," and pulls him to his feet, letting him lean on her until he collides with the gurney and can sit again then, finally, lie back.

Her hands move over him gently, not really touching, then pull up his shirt; she hisses loudly, and says, "Bill, there's a nasty bruise here; looks like there might be internal bleeding. We'll need to transport to -- hmm, where's the nearest Level I trauma center? Lincoln? Yeah -- All right, my love, we're going to take you to the hospital to see the doctor, okay?" She looms over him, her curly hair bouncing as she moves. "I'm Rebecca, by the way. What's your name?"

"Erik," he says. Someone -- Bill? -- is wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his arm and pumping it up, holding a cold stethoscope to his inner elbow. "Lehnsherr. Erik Lehnsherr."

"Oh dear," she says, though her smile stays on her face. "Erik, is there someone I can call for you? That nice Dr Xavier, maybe? He always looks so friendly on the television."

"No," Erik says, and he closes his eyes, feeling heat rush to his cheeks. "Don't."

"I have to, honey, you're a minor," Rebecca says. 

Erik clenches his teeth and shakes his head, once, twice. "No. No, I ... where am I?" He doesn't remember -- he's confused, his mind feeling like everything's been jumbled up and put back together wrong, but he's too tired to try and fix it.

The blood pressure cuff deflates around his arm, and he hears the sound of velcro tearing. "Blood pressure is 82/40. Heart rate 136, 33 breaths per minute, pulse ox 86%. Stage 3 hemorrhagic shock, we should transport now. Get the number from him in the bus if he's still conscious in five minutes." 

Erik opens his eyes, ready to protest, but Bill is already fitting an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth and cool air floods into his lungs, making his head spin.

"Come on, hon, let's get going," Rebecca says, and then the roof is moving overhead, sliding past, and Erik has to close his eyes again. Then they're surrounded by metal, rising, then not. It's all a blur.

He hears the sound of outside, and when he opens his eyes once more they're under the night sky, streetlights shining down on him like stars.

"Up you go," she says, and Erik is tilting, lifting, rising up into the ambulance and being wheeled all the way in.

Once the doors are shut behind him there's a hand in his jeans pocket, and he tries to protest but it's out again before he can get his mouth to cooperate. "Let's see," Rebecca says. "Erik, what's the passcode for your phone?"

He thinks about telling her to fuck off, but a half-second later he already knows it's not worth it. They have him strapped into a gurney and locked in this tiny moving box -- Charles will find out, no matter what. "I don't remember," he says, and gives into the shame and self-loathing that rise up to fill him once the words have left his mouth. There's a sharp sting at his forearm -- Bill started an IV, and somehow Erik hadn't even felt the needle approaching.

"That's all right," she says, even though it's not all right, Erik can't explain why -- but it's not all right. She reaches for his hand and presses his thumb to the button on his phone, stealing his fingerprint to unlock it. "There we go. Now, what was his first name ... "

Bill is gone, now; Erik can feel him moving up to the front cabin of the truck. A second later they're moving, sirens wailing, and Erik wants to disappear, to sink through the gurney and past the asphalt street, all the way to the center of the earth.

"Please don't call him," Erik says, one last time, desperate. He tries to move, to get the phone back from her, reaching with his power, but both his arms and ability fall short. Panic starts to rise up in him, clawing at the back of his throat.

"Did he do this to you?" Rebecca asks, sudden suspicion coming into her voice. "Because if he did, then we can do something about that, honey. Just say the word."

"What? _No._ " Erik glares at her, as best he can, anyway, with an oxygen mask over half his face and the ambulance seemingly spinning around him. "Please, just ... don't. All right? He's been sick. Call ... call the other one. Sister." What's her name? He's forgotten. "Something ... something bird. _Raven._ " 

"And who is Raven?"

"Charles' sister. She's an adult, she's a Domme, it's fine." Speaking takes effort, now, and that effort is exhausting. Erik wants to go to sleep, but the pulsing pain in his gut makes that impossible.

"Okay, all right. You rest now, my love. I'll call Raven."

The conversation that follows is muffled, like it's coming from far away; Erik is floating in a sea of pain and discomfort, eyes unfocused, trying not to think too hard. But then there are hands on him again, and metal at his throat, sharp metal, and then the scissors start cutting through his shirt, from the collar and moving down towards his navel.

"Stop," Erik croaks. She doesn't, and he bats at the scissors with his power, making them skip away from his shirt, bouncing off his shoulder. "Stop. Don't."

"Come on now, I need to see everywhere you're hurt so I can make sure you're not going to get worse before we can get you better," Rebecca says, though she sounds a little rattled, now, less certain of herself. "You can cry about your modesty all you like but if your wiener's hanging off then you'll be crying to me later if it's too late to sew it back on. So behave." She sets the scissors back to his shirt and starts cutting again.

" _No_ ," Erik says, his pulse spiking, and he pulls at the scissors again, more forcefully this time, yanking them out of her grasp and sending them clattering to the floor of the truck. "I'm fine -- it's just my stomach, leave it be."

"Now stop being a baby," she says, going back for the scissors. "I've seen more naked people than you've had hot dinners, and I'm not going to judge whatever I find. One guy we had in here had a live frog up his butthole. Ain't nothing going to surprise me after that. So either you let me examine you and do my job, or I'll tell you all about how that frog got there, which is a horrifying story that nobody wants to hear."

Erik grimaces and reaches for the scissors a third time, but this time his power skips off them, his grasp failing as if he were nothing more than theta-level. Rebecca clips his shirt off easily, exposing his bare chest and stomach. 

"I know you're cold," she says; he hadn't even realized he was shivering. "You're in shock, honey. But we'll take good care of you. I'll get you one of those nice blankets in a second, just got to check you out first." And her hands move to his pants, undoing his belt before the scissors start cutting into the waistband, slicing downwards. 

Erik closes his eyes and tries to pretend he's anywhere else. It's surprisingly easy -- or maybe that's just a function of how tenuous his grasp on reality is, how simple it would be to just let himself lose consciousness. He imagines he's at home, in his own bed, curled up beneath the warm covers, early in the morning with the distant sounds of the six o'clock commute outside lulling him into a doze. 

"Oh, my love. Someone's had a nasty go at you, haven't they?" Rebecca asks once his pants are off; clearly she can see what Victor did, then. "Looks like your stomach is the worst of it, but someone will take a look at the rest for you at the hospital. I'm sure you know the drill, from before, right? Now, I'll cover you up now so you can keep warm." A moment later the promised blanket comes to rest over Erik, hiding his injuries from view.

Erik curls his fingers loosely in the fabric, holding it close to him, and hopes she can't see the humiliation written all over his face, even if she's already seen the evidence of it elsewhere. Maybe he can keep this from Raven, at least, even if he knows now there'll be no hiding it from Charles -- he's pathetic, an idiot, to have thought this would end any other way. And now it's branded on him for anyone to see.

They arrive at the hospital not long after, and Erik is whisked away into the trauma center -- he doesn't have a chance to say goodbye to Rebecca, and there are all new doctors and nurses peering at him now, their expressions professional and detached. He feels like he's prodded and poked and, worse, _probed_ , for hours, unable to focus, in and out of consciousness but well aware of hands in unwelcome places, of the pain of being touched on his bruised side, of people talking over his head and someone else's blood flowing from a bag and into his veins. At one point he thinks he hears Raven's raised voice, but he doesn't see her; instead, he's taken away somewhere else, and the gas he's breathing makes him tired, and he falls asleep under the bright light and people leaning over him wearing face masks.

*

_Charles_

Charles is too angry to be upset. No, he's too upset to be angry. Or ... he curses under his breath again, bending forward to rest his face in his hands, his elbows braced on his knees in the armchair set up at Erik's bedside, and tries to calm down. He feels exhausted already and it's only ten o'clock in the morning -- four hours since he woke up to Hank's face leaning over him, hands on his shoulders shaking him vigorously to try and wake him from the pill-induced funk. He still feels miserable from his illness, too, foggy-headed and stuffed up, his throat raw and sandpaper-rasping every time he swallows; mixed with the hospital stench and the minds of all the sick and suffering people it’s like a poisonous miasma that clings to him, begging for attention and creeping in under his skin to soak down to his bones.

Erik is sleeping on the bed, pallid and limp on his back, all the vitality gone. If it weren’t for the fact that Charles is keeping a mental finger on his mind, tracking every blip, every stirring, waiting for him to wake up, he could be a ghost. The urge to find out what happened, of course, is already satisfied, since as soon as he arrived Charles had gone into Erik's mind, code of honor or no, and got the gist of the whole damn thing.

God. Charles doesn't know which is worse, that Erik was raped or that Erik chose to go back to the Hellfire Club. He put himself in that place again and _chose_ to leave Charles, _chose_ that life over the one he has now, deliberately -- deliberately _decided_ to --

Charles coughs, and coughs, and he tries to muffle it but there’s only so much he can do.

He feels Erik stirring not much after that, his mind shifting like it's yawning before his body moves, letting out a small sound of pain. When his eyes open, dark lashes shifting against Erik's cheek before fluttering open, for a moment it's clear Erik doesn't really see him -- his gaze is unfocused, eyelids heavy and barely lifting. It's several long seconds before they settle on Charles, and even longer before Erik finally murmurs, hoarse from the endotracheal tube they'd had down his throat in surgery, "Charles."

"That's me," Charles says -- he can feel himself jerking between a smile and a frown, awkward and twitching, his face suddenly uncooperative. He turns to the bedside table and picks up the jug of water left there, pouring two glasses. "Do you want a drink?"

"All right," Erik says; he tries to push himself up, only to wince, his body tensing up. His power takes over, then, activating the hospital bed and tilting it up to a sitting position before relaxing back against the pillows once more. 

Charles picks up one glass and offers it to Erik, who takes it. "How are you feeling?" he asks carefully, eyes flitting awkwardly away to look at the television; he can still see Erik out of the corner of his eye, knows he should look at him, but can’t, quite. "The doctors said the surgery was a success."

"Oh." Erik's holding his glass in both hands, not drinking. He's staring down at it; apparently neither one of them can look the other in the eye. After a while, after the television show has switched to commercial, Erik says, "I'm sorry. I mean it."

Charles' chest seizes up, like some cog has jammed inside of him. "No, I'm sorry," he says, looking back at Erik. "Clearly I haven't done enough to make you happy here, Erik -- I've failed you. I'm sorry.” It's impossible to keep all of his anger and hurt from his voice, though he does try. “This never would have happened if I had been playing my part, instead of lying around like an invalid."

"It's not your fault," Erik says, more forcefully, although there’s still too much anesthesia running through his body for him to put all that much weight behind it. He looks white as a sheet, despite the bag of dark red blood that's slowly dripping into his IV line. "It was a stupid thing to do, and I regret it. The only way you could have known is if you were digging around in my mind looking for it."

"That's not what I mean," Charles says, and he can't stand it any more -- he jumps up from his chair, walking over to the window and looking out, his hands resting on the windowsill, shoulders hunching up around his ears, swiping at his nose with his handkerchief. He feels sick just shaping the words, but they have to be said. "If I was doing my job properly -- if I was being a good guardian to you, making you happy, helping you to feel at home -- you never would have wanted to go in the first place. Mea culpa.” 

He swallows, hard, and makes himself continue. “I … I've been thinking about it, and ... it's clear that living with me hasn't, hasn’t helped the way I'd hoped it would. Perhaps it would be ... I think we could find you somewhere else, somewhere better. I'm going to talk to CPS about it, see what we can do."

" _No,_ " Erik says, so quickly he almost cuts Charles off. There's a shift of weight on the bed, Erik trying to get out, and then a sharp hiss of pained breath. "I don't want to leave. I don't want to live with anyone else -- I _am_ happy with you! You can't just ..." a tight, frustrated sound "... you can't just send me away."

"Well, you clearly don't want to live with me," Charles says bitterly, and this time there's no hiding the pain in his voice, nor the way he immediately starts coughing, to the point that he has to go back again to get his glass of water and take a drink, trying to stop his lungs convulsing.

When he lifts his head Erik looks stricken, pale and wide-eyed, and Charles is so angry right now, hurt stinging through him like acid. "You want to go back to the Hellfire Club, Erik, no matter what they did,” he says, hands fisting at his sides, nails cutting into his palms. “No matter what they _do_ to you, you went back to them anyway! And now -- I am so mad at you right now, and I'm mad at myself for it because you're injured badly enough without me being so -- but I can't -- " He starts coughing again, has to take another drink.

"But I don't want to go back to the Hellfire Club!" Erik insists. He shifts in the bed again like he wants to try to get out again, never mind the wires and tubes trapping him where he is. "Well, I do, but -- I _don't_. I want to fight for mutants, but I -- I don't know why I went. It was like ... it was like I did it on autopilot, I don't know what I expected, I should have known what would happen, but I don't -- I don't want to _leave!_ I could have gone with Creed, after, but I didn't. I tried to go _home._ "

"He hurt you." Charles drops his water glass to the table, and he starts pacing across the floor, can't stay still, shaking his hands out at his sides, knowing he needs to be calmer, to be _Dr Xavier_ right now, but he can't, he can't. 

The linoleum squeaks under Charles’ shoes as he turns by the door, three paces across to the window before he turns again. He can’t stop it now, the words just keep coming out. "You -- what if he had tried to kill you, Erik? Where was I? Stoned out of my gourd, with no idea where you were or what you were doing -- what if I had woken up this morning and you were gone, and I saw you on the news next week, bringing down another building on hundreds of innocent people? How do you think that would make me feel?" His heart is thundering.

"I wouldn't have gone with him!" Erik’s pitch is rising, his cheeks starting to color slightly -- and Charles can't miss the unnatural brightness in Erik's eyes, even if Erik refuses to outright cry. "If that was really what I wanted, then I wouldn't have left, like a coward, while he was sleeping. All I could think about was how badly I wished I was at home with _you!_ "

Charles' feet keep moving, even though he feels like there's a hole in his chest, like his rapid heartbeat is burning him open from the inside out, and he rubs at it with the heel of his hand, lips pressing tight. 

"Then why?" he asks, fighting between the impulses to hug Erik and to smack him. "What did I do, or not do? I just -- I don't understand." Charles' own eyes are welling up, though he blinks it back. "I thought we were okay."

Silence, then, for a long few breaths.

"We _are_ ," Erik says, and when Charles switches directions again Erik has tilted forward, hunched over with his hands held up on either side of his face, fingertips disappearing into his hair. "I told you, I'm sorry. I ... I felt like I was obligated to go. Like I had to at least _try_ , like it was my ... my duty to Hellfire, in exchange for all the damage I'm doing by testifying. Like this is the only way I can make a difference for other mutants. I don't know. I don't -- look in my mind, if you have to. But please just believe me. I just want to stay with _you_."

Charles’ heart thuds in his chest, and he goes to him, sitting down on the edge of the bed and wrapping his arms tightly around Erik's shoulders, burying his face in Erik's hair, just holding him, his cold, shivering boy. The thought that Erik was hurt, could have been killed, burns away at him, but right now ... Erik needs him more than Charles needs to pace. 

"Don't ever scare me like that again," he says, his voice an imperative, as close to an Order as he can give without actually compelling Erik telepathically. "I'm really angry right now, but ... a big part of that is because you really frightened me. I'm so sorry that I let this happen. I'm sorry."

Erik's arms curl slowly around Charles in return, his fingers clenched into fists against Charles' back. "Please don't send me away," Erik says, his words muffled against Charles' shirt, Erik's brow pressing against Charles' shoulder. "I can't live with anyone else. I need you."

It makes something fragile in Charles' chest swell, a feeling he can't describe, but he knows what it is. It’s dangerous. His attraction to Erik is clinging desperately to those simple words, and he wants at once to run, to get away before it's too late, but … he can’t. He can’t.

"I won't," Charles says, tucking Erik more comfortably in his arms, ignoring the wet patch growing against his skin where Erik's face is hidden. "But, Erik -- you can't do that to me again, I mean it. I think I'd die if something happened to you. I love you, stupid."

"I promise," Erik says, and there's a surge of determination in Erik's mind that tails those words, utterly sincere. Erik's arms tighten around him and his hands uncurl from their fists to spread his fingers wide against Charles' shoulder blades, keeping them locked close together. "I'll never leave you. Never. I swear."

"Well, you're allowed to go to the store," Charles says. "Maybe college. If you build up enough credit."

Erik laughs, then immediately tenses in Charles' arms, pain spiking across the telepathic tie between them. "Jesus, lie down," Charles says, immediately pressing Erik back down onto the bed, separating them as he tugs the pillows up around Erik's shoulders to support him. "God, what was I thinking? You shouldn't be sitting up!" Charles could kill himself, he really could. "How's that? Better?" He reaches for the pillows again, trying to fluff them further, then the blanket, tugging it higher around Erik's shoulders.

"I'm fine," Erik says, even though they both know he doesn't really mean it. "What was wrong with me, anyway?"

"That bastard ruptured your spleen," Charles says, knowing he's fussing even as he arranges the edge of the sheet where it folds over the edge of the blanket. "You had to have surgery to remove it and stop the internal bleeding. You were into shock; it took them hours to stabilize you. You could have died."

"Oh." Erik's looking at him with a strange look on his face, but at this point Charles isn't sure he wants to look to find out what's behind it. "Does Raven ... that is, did they -- tell her?"

"They had to," Charles says, finally making his hands still, bringing them to rest in his lap. "She was standing in for me, and they had to agree your treatment with her before they could do anything, including the rape kit." Try and say that with a calm demeanor, he thinks to himself, swallowing down the nausea of knowing it happened and knowing there's nothing he can do to help, now.

"I tried not to let them find out," Erik says, like an apology, and Charles feels even more sick, like he can feel the blood draining from his face.

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, more kindly than he feels it, reaching out to squeeze Erik's hand in his own. "You have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to hide. Though if that Victor is still in the city ... I'll find him. _He_ ought to hide."

Erik gives him a thin half-smile and moves his other hand to rest it atop Charles'. "You shouldn't tell them what happened," Erik says. "If they think I'm working for Hellfire, it could throw off the trial. We have to keep it a secret."

"Hmm," Charles says, displeased, but Erik has a point, damn him; he sighs, and shakes his head, but he finally says, "I don't like it, but all right." He looks at Erik, so tired and wan-looking in the bed, and thinks -- I love him too much.

He's about to open his mouth, to say something, he doesn't know what yet, when he feels the nurse coming their way, clipboard in hand. "The nurse is here," Charles says right before the man opens the door, popping his head in to look at them both before cracking a smile.

"Good to see you're up," he says, his long, furry ears twitching and disturbing his hair. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Erik says, turning his head toward the nurse; he doesn't let go of Charles' hand. "When can I leave?"

The nurse steps further inside, consulting his clipboard. "Later this week, as long as you don't develop an infection and are able to make a bowel movement," he says, looking back up. "We'll run through discharge procedure and instructions with you then and give you your new vaccines, and make any referrals the consultant wants to make. For now, can I get you anything? Breakfast? Are you in any pain?"

"No to breakfast. Yes to pain."

"I'll get you something for that, then, after I take a look at the wound," the nurse says, coming over to the bed and waiting until Charles unclasps their hands to tug back the blankets, baring Erik in his hospital gown. "Dr Xavier, if you'd wait outside for me? It'll just be a minute."

"No, I want him to stay," Erik says immediately, reaching for Charles and catching his elbow, holding him back. "It's fine. I don't mind."

"Okay," the nurse says, turning to Charles. "He's not wearing underwear, so you might want to look elsewhere."

Charles takes up his seat in the armchair again and closes his eyes; he can feel himself blushing, and he tries to concentrate on his relief that Erik is okay and his anger at Victor Creed, the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, rather than the knowledge that Erik is naked on the bed right now and hissing as the nurse probes his wound.

The fact that Erik knows he was stupid and doesn't want to leave should make Charles feel better, but ... it doesn't undo everything else that's happened, doesn't change the fact he's been badly hurt by the whole affair. While less tangible than Erik's bruises Charles suspects it will be a while before he truly believes Erik's intentions are to stay, telepathy or no.

"It's safe to look now," Erik says, an undeniable lilt of something like sarcasm to his voice, and Charles says, just as tartly, "Forgive me if I have some modesty, Erik, staring at my underage ward's todger isn't high on my to-do list for not going to jail."

But Erik's smiling slightly when he opens his eyes, the covers drawn up over his hips again, the nurse scribbling something onto his clipboard in pen.

"I'll come back with something for the pain," the nurse says, his ears twitching again, and he leaves, shutting the door behind him.

"Once he comes back we'll find out what we need to do to go home," Charles says, and pours Erik another glass of water. "And then -- well, if you think I'm being a mother hen now, just you wait. You've earned my worst."

"I suppose turnabout is perfectly fair play," Erik says, lifting the glass up to his lips and taking a small swallow. He's watching Charles over the rim of the glass, eyes looking green in the early morning light.

"If you think you're getting out of bed for the next four weeks after you get home, you're sorely mistaken," Charles says. He bends down to start going through the bag of Erik's possessions he's brought with him, starting to organize them on the bedside table, ready for the next few days.

*

_Erik_

Charles lives up to his word when they finally send Erik home, and even though the doctors say getting up and walking around would be good for him, Charles keeps Erik in bed -- telepathically when necessary, even going so far as to bring him his meals on little wooden trays to eat sitting up against the pillows. Erik's ass starts to hurt from sitting on it so much, but when he tells Charles this, Charles just waves it off and tells him to try lying on his side instead. 

As much as Erik hates not being able to go out and run, or go to school, or even just walk down the stairs, there's a part of him that likes curling up under the covers and just shutting the rest of the world out for a little while. He drifts in and out of sleep, and the Percocet doesn't entirely cover the pain; he ends up having to make a choice between sleeping to escape it, or staying awake so he doesn't see Victor Creed every time he closes his eyes, standing in front of that window, blocking out the street lights.

If he'd gone with him, Erik thinks, he'd be halfway across the world right now, recovering from surgery in some nameless Thai clinic under the care of a suitably-terrorized doctor, and being instructed in what their next move would be. Probably, considering how the meeting went with Creed, that move would be to break Shaw and the others out of jail. They'd succeed, too, with Erik's mutation on their side, and then it would be as if nothing ever changed at all. Living with Charles would soon be a vague and ill-remembered memory, like a dream he had once. If, that is, Shaw let him keep the memories at all; as punishment for everything else, he might choose to have Emma Frost or Nathaniel Essex remove them from his mind.

He didn't even fight Victor. That's the worst part. Yes, he fought with elbows and fists and words, but he gave in in the end. He never used his power -- not that it would have done much good, with Creed's mutation, but he never even _tried._ It didn't occur to him, not once. Instead he lay there and spread his legs like the good slut he is, tried to make it so Victor Creed could enjoy himself. Not surprising, really. Erik's always been that way. He makes them want him, and when he fights, he never fights for very long, they always win in the end ....

Charles keeps him in bed for almost two weeks, until Erik starts to wonder if Charles is just letting him stew in it, making him face his memory of what happened in that empty apartment over and over like he needs reminding just how little he actually wants this. When at last Charles relents and agrees to send Erik back to school, Erik gets out of bed feeling like a different person, like he'd cut one of the last cords holding him to Hellfire and there's just a bloody stump in its place, poorly-healing and infected.

He tells Charles he doesn't feel real anymore, and Charles tries to reassure him by saying it's normal, that it's a reaction to trauma, something called 'dissociation' or 'depersonalization' or -- Erik can't really remember the term for it, but apparently Charles thinks it's a good thing, since the other option is Erik not giving a fuck. Personally, Erik disagrees; not giving a fuck seems like it'd be pretty great right now, actually.

The closer he gets to his first day back at school, the less he wants to go. It's easy enough to stay on top of his grades by working from his laptop, but apparently Trinity frowns upon him just teaching himself Philosophy at home, even though they have no problem sending him to Columbia to take Physics, Calc II, and more advanced Comp Sci classes after he maxed out all the school's math and science courses.

So he goes back on a frigid day in March, bundled up with two sweaters and a scarf Charles forced on him. He's surprised, and relieved, to find that no one knows the real reason he was gone. Even Madelyne just crinkles her nose at him when he sits by her at lunch and demands to know if he's still all germy or if he really is safe to be around. By the end of the day he's gathered Charles told people he had an infection following an appendectomy, which explains all the demands to see his surgical scar.

Last class is Dynamics. They've progressed to more complicated ropework now, practicing a few Japanese styles, and when the instructor splits them into partners Erik takes advantage of the hubbub to go to the front and say, "I need a new partner."

"What's wrong with Michael?" Mr Harmon asks, frowning at Erik over the edge of his clipboard. "I hadn't noticed the two of you having any problems. Is there something I should know about?"

"It's not that," Erik says. His fingers find the gold-beaded pin hooked onto his satchel, rubbing the metal with the pad of his thumb behind his back until it's gone warm against his skin. "But I need someone else. A submissive partner." He takes a shallow breath, a steadying one and explains. "Because Michael's a Dom. And so am I."

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains explicit rape and transgender slurs. If you would like to avoid reading this section stop at the part that begins "A hand comes to rest on the top of Erik's head, and it pushes, heavy and impossible to resist" and pick back up from where it reads "Victor still has his eyes closed when Erik glances over at him".


	15. Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, we have content notes at the end of the chapter if you want to be warned of any potentially upsetting material.

_Charles_

"I don't understand," Charles says to the table in front of him, where his hands are clasped tightly around one another, his knuckles white. "I essentially killed this man. David Schultz. Or all but. I just -- " He pauses to take a deep and shaking breath in, feeling a little lightheaded. "I don't understand how there can be no -- no consequences."

Across from him Moira is feeling a sort of sympathetic exasperation, her mind already working on the next steps, half wishing Charles would just take the news and go, like a normal person. "It was self-defense," she says, and she reaches forward to place her own hand over Charles'. "He brought a gun into your home, one specially made to kill Erik, and you defended yourself and your kid. There's not some conspiracy going here, Charles -- it's not complicated. You acted within your rights and within the law."

"But ... " Charles trails off, and he looks up to meet Moira's gaze. "Moira, I just -- it kills me, knowing I did this. Even for good reasons."

"And you feel like you should be punished for that?"

Charles sighs and sits back in his chair, wiping a hand over his face. "I guess so. Yes."

There's a long moment where Moira considers what to say next -- Charles can hear her trying and discarding different things in her mind, some harsher than others, all of them essentially telling him to suck it up. In the small gray meeting room Moira looks washed out and pale, and Charles feels a sudden sympathy for her, trying to sort this mess out.

"Humans First is considered a homegrown terrorist organization," she says finally, brushing her hair back from her face with both hands. "They kill people all the time, Charles -- anyone who's a mutant they deem to be getting above their station or away with what they say are acts of aggression against humans. We knew they might come after you and Erik some day -- they probably will again, too, though I'll do my best to keep that from happening. _You_ knew it might happen. So don't feel bad about getting them before they get you. David Schultz chose to come into the apartment of two omega-class mutants and try to hurt them. You did what you had to do."

"Still," Charles says. "Still. I can't shake this feeling of dread, like I've brought something down on myself." Maybe this is his punishment for feeling the way he does about Erik, he thinks for a moment, ridiculously; it's a stupid thought, but still ... it makes him antsy, being in a law enforcement agency office when he's been ... when he's been.

"Go home, Charles," Moira says tiredly, and gestures for him to get up, getting to her own feet. "Go back to that obnoxious teenager of yours and just be glad you're both alive, okay?"

Charles goes, but it doesn't help him sleep any better at night. Instead he just wakes up wondering if there's somebody in the apartment, too afraid to move in case he hurts someone else and scared that if he doesn't that someone might pick the right end of the hall this time and hurt Erik before Charles can stop them.

*

_Erik_

Erik has a lot of catching up to do at school, particularly work from his Columbia classes, which seems to have piled up exponentially with each day he missed. In the week since he's been back at school he's had to skip track almost every day to come home and get back to work; today, Saturday, he's not left the sofa in five hours, tethered to his computer by his own willpower until he can get this program to run without bugs. After all this time, though, it's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain his focus, and he's started tabbing over to Chrome every time his code's in the middle of compiling to fuck around on reddit and Facebook. And each time it takes longer and longer for him to remember to tab back. 

Since he changed his DS score on Facebook to read "7D" he's gotten 538 likes on it, which Erik is pretty sure is more friends than he has, and Facebook must advertise people's scores somehow because the number of friend requests he gets from people he's never met before has jumped up from 2000 a day to 3500. Either that, or something's happened with the trial that Erik missed, and these are just more nobodies keen to rubberneck at him like he's the victim of a particularly bloody traffic accident. 

He can't help feeling, in part, like he's just sacrificed a part of himself, for reasons even he doesn't totally understand. He's been a submissive all his life -- no, Erik corrects. No, he's been a _Dominant_ all his life, he just didn't know it. He only thought he was submissive. 

But no matter how or why he thought he was submissive, it took firm root in him, grew up within and around him like a great tree, his identity, his anchor. That he's looked back, now, has seen the rot and decay, that the wood is sick ... he has to chop it down to rebuild, even if it feels like cutting into the very center of his being. What's next, now? Dominance? Chasing after the goal of becoming someone Victor Creed could never have overcome?

He doesn't know if he's capable of it. He tries not to think about it, just to _do_. The problem is, he's always pretty sure he's doing it wrong.

Charles is sitting in his favorite armchair across the room, nose buried in a book, and Erik has taken this opportunity to start linking to increasingly damning webpages on his Facebook wall, which Erik is pleased to notice are accruing quite the range of comments from Charles' very-concerned Facebook friends.

When Charles seems engaged enough not to notice, Erik lifts his iPhone over the edge of his laptop and snaps a photo of Charles in his armchair, uploading it to his page and tagging him in it, making good on his ongoing project of improving Charles' erstwhile-pathetic internet social presence.

"What are you up to?" Charles asks without looking up, turning the page in his book. "You're thinking sneakiness very loudly, you know."

"Nothing," Erik says, dragging the jpeg over into Photoshop so he can start adding various old-man accoutrements to Charles' photo, including a pipe and cane. "Just sullying your online reputation, that's all." 

His laptop pings, letting him know his code is compiled, but he puts that on backburner for a moment, adding a curl of smoke rising out from Charles' fake-pipe.

"I don't dress that old," Charles says, with a snort; he's paying attention now, then, his mental presence seeming both amused and exasperated. "I'm not even thirty yet, Erik, stop siding with Raven." Which is all very well, but Charles is wearing a frumpy cardigan and thick woolly socks, neither of which make him look his age. He looks comfortable, warm and cuddly, but not the way someone in their twenties should look.

"Aren't you? Well, give it a few months," Erik says, changing the contrast levels to enhance the grey in Charles' hair and make it particularly obvious on-screen. "You're the oldest person I've ever known, and I've known people in their nineties."

"Maybe I'm an old soul," Charles says, taking a sip of his tea. "And surely if I'm so ancient then you should be making that photo look better, not worse. Have pity on an old man."

Erik just makes a derisive sound and finally goes back to his real work, having finished the photo and emailed it off to Raven. After a while Charles' attention returns to his book, and it's not until Erik's actually finished the last of his code that he starts wanting that attention back, left feeling bereft now that Charles is the center of his world again and the sentiment clearly is not reciprocated. 

Actually, he thinks, scrolling down the front page of reddit, this might be a good chance to try something he's been thinking about for a while, ever since he decided two weeks ago to actually start behaving like a Dom instead of a -- well, whatever it is he'd been before, which was neither submissive nor Dominant, but somewhere in-between. It's all well and good to start dressing more like a Dom, and to take the silver bead off his satchel charm, but aside from that not much has changed. And he very much doubts Victor Creed would have backed down just because Erik was wearing a sharp-looking jacket.

No, he needs to figure out how to actually _use_ this, whatever that means. Creed acted like he expected Erik ought to be able to order him to 'jump' and Creed would ask, 'how high?' Never mind that he's a Dom, himself. None of that would have happened at all if Erik hadn't been suppressing his Dominance this whole time, pretending like it wasn't creeping up on him naturally without him noticing.

He closes out of a news story on the situation in the Middle East and makes himself open his English homework instead. While the file is loading he looks up at Charles again, across the room, and says, "Charles, bring me a bottle of water."

"Hmm?" Charles asks, distracted; he doesn't look up, just turns the page in his book, eyes still flicking over the words.

Fuck, Erik thinks, and his heart is already beating a little faster. "I said, bring me a bottle of water."

Charles' head lifts, his eyebrows rising, and for a moment Erik worries that -- but then Charles smiles, and says, "All right," setting his book down on the arm of his chair and swinging his feet down to the carpet, then standing, stretching his arms up over his head before walking over to the kitchen door and disappearing around the corner. Erik can feel him opening and shutting the refrigerator door.

Charles re-emerges a few seconds later with a bottle of water in hand and crosses to the couch where Erik is sitting, that mysterious smile still on his face. "Here you are," he says, offering it to Erik.

Erik takes it, but a second later, when he meets Charles' eyes, he frowns, his pulse slowing again. "You only did that to be nice, didn't you?"

Charles' smile turns rueful. "You'd have to try a lot harder to make _me_ do anything. Sorry."

"What, because of your telepathy?" Erik says, and he grimaces a little despite himself. Of course his first attempt being a Dom would fail miserably -- he's probably fooling himself, thinking he can do this at all, that he hasn't permanently fucked it up by ignoring it for so many years.

"Don't be silly," Charles says, putting his hands on his hips. "How do you think little Doms learn it in the first place? They don't start out demanding the missile codes and getting them, they have to practice on the people around them. You're just starting a little late, is all." He shifts his weight, giving Erik a small smile. "I'm a tough sub to crack. But if anyone can make me feel it it'll be you, so stop stressing about it not being perfect first time around."

It's Erik's turn to lift a brow, now, and he wonders if Charles even realizes the way he's put it makes it sound like a challenge. "All right, I won't stress, then. Sit down."

"Where?"

"Asshole. On the floor, if you're going to be like that."

Charles snorts but does as he's told, and Erik folds his arms over his chest as Charles sinks gracefully to his knees on the rug, then sits down and brings his legs in front to sit cross-legged, hands resting loosely in his lap. It's not a kneel. It's nothing proper at all.

"Nice try, but I prefer the Mendelberg approach. You should be on your knees, hands should be behind your back until I say you can rest at ease." He's being intentionally nit-picky, and he knows it, but if he's going to do this at all then he's damn well going to do it _his_ way.

There's a pause before Charles obeys, this time; his hands move as instructed and he switches around his posture again, until he's resting back on his heels, but there's a tiny wrinkle between his brows as he says, "I'm happy to oblige, but do bear in mind I'm not _your_ submissive, Erik. This kind of pose instruction would be more typical of a romantic rather than familial relationship."

Second time this month Charles has said something like that, and last time Erik asked if he ought to stop, Charles told him to stay as he was. "That's very educational," Erik says dryly; he's starting to wonder why Charles points that kind of thing out at all, since it obviously doesn't really bother him, "but stay as you are."

Charles' frown doesn't ease, but he keeps posture anyway, and now that he's in it he looks very nice -- he holds it well, shoulders back and broadened by it, thighs at good angles, his head lifted to look at Erik, though his hair is as tousled as usual and his face is a little pink. "Is this what you were looking for?" he asks.

Erik closes his laptop and sets it aside for now, since he can't imagine finding his English assignment more entertaining than this anytime soon. He almost tells Charles it'd be better if his head was down, the back of the neck appropriately exposed, but he doesn't want to spend all day fixing Charles' little bad habits -- he wants to fix his _own_. 

Phrasing things like orders, dropping the 'please' and the humility, is getting easier, even if Erik's pretty sure he's not yet been able to put real force behind anything. He still feels fraudulent, like a child play-acting, like when Erik was four and he'd clop around the house in Shaw's shiny shoes. He feels ridiculous, especially knowing Charles is only going along with it to preserve Erik's feelings. "Better," Erik says all the same. "Stand up now."

"All right," Charles says, rocking up onto his knees and getting to his feet without unfolding his arms from behind his back; this, at least, is one smooth motion, just the way it ought to be. Charles is smiling a little again now, just the corner of his mouth lifting.

Fuck this, Erik thinks -- Charles can be submissive when he wants to be, but as for Erik? He's no Dom; that much is clear. This isn't working. He snorts, and says, "Run around in a circle and bark like a dog."

It earns him a roll of the eyes, but Charles doesn't otherwise move. "Not even if you weren't joking."

Erik laughs, even if his chest still feels too-tight, wound up and embarrassed with himself and his own failure. "Too bad," he says, trying to be light-hearted. "I was hoping for dinner _and_ a show."

Charles smiles down at Erik, the corners of his eyes crinkling the way they do when he's really happy, not just pretending. "So am I going to stand here all night, or did you have something else in mind?" he asks, tipping his head to one side, "Because I would get bored and wander off eventually, no matter how much I want to help you practice."

"Honestly," Erik says, leaning back against the sofa at last, "I'm not really sure how to make this work. I have no idea what I'm doing. Do I just order you and hope for the best, or is there something else ... _to_ it?" His cheeks feel hot with frustration and he tilts his head toward the ceiling for a moment, hoping Charles won't see. The Hellfire Doms could make Erik do anything they wanted, sometimes with a single look, no words at all, like it was just that easy -- and Erik knows that wasn't because he was submissive or because they were particularly Dominant, even though many of them were, but he still feels like it ought to be that easy for _him._ Or at least, that people expect it to be.

Charles thinks for a moment, the sensation of his mind turning over palpable in the room before he breaks posture and lets his hands drop, stepping forward to sit down on the couch beside Erik. "From what I understand of it it's more of a mindset than anything else," he says, crossing one ankle over the opposite knee. "You have to expect to be obeyed absolutely, and without doubt, then express that will through your order. If you don't think I'll do it then you can't exert that willpower outside of yourself. Does that make sense?"

"Right," Erik says, a bit sarcastically, although it's entirely directed at himself. "So I'm just not thinking of myself as 7D enough." Which, now that he's said it, makes a pessimistic sort of sense -- it's something he's been doubting his whole life, whether he's submissive enough, so it would only follow that he'd have the same problem as a Dom. At least biology is on his side. Problem is, that isn't nearly enough. 

Maybe it's just a logic game, then, as simple as writing a computer program: he knows now that Charles will obey him, because Charles _has_ been obeying him, even if just of Charles' own volition. Is it enough, just to expect that Charles will obey again, by process of induction? "Stand up," he says.

"Okay," Charles says, getting easily back up to his feet. "That was better. It tingled a little that time."

Erik grins, satisfaction rushing in to take the place of the doubt from a moment before. "Good," he says, unscrewing the cap of his water bottle and finally taking a sip. "Then go into the kitchen and bring me some of the take-out menus on the counter."

Charles goes, disappearing and reappearing a moment later with the menus. Erik takes them from him, flipping through until he finds the one for the Indian food place, and hands it back to Charles. "Call them up. Order me a chicken madras. You'll have tikka masala, and we'll split an order of basmati rice. If the delivery man has any questions, you ask me, don't answer yourself."

"Please, sir, may I have a naan," Charles asks, his mouth twitching with amusement, and Erik rolls his eyes a little. 

"If you want," Erik says, not sure if he's pushed too hard. "Personally, I think we'll have more than enough starch on our plates already."

"All right then," Charles says again, and he walks over to where the phone sits on the sidetable, taking the menu with him and dialing the number. It's only a few moments before the restaurant picks up and Charles is placing the order, precisely as Erik told him to. It's gratifying, that Charles simply ... _does_ it, lighting a warm sensation in the pit of Erik's stomach that only grows the longer he watches Charles, making himself take another sip of his water to cover up the fact that he's staring.

Charles hangs up and turns around, leaning back against the table and folding his arms across his chest. "They said it'll be half an hour," he says, lifting a hand to scratch at his jaw. "How are you feeling? Can you tell the difference yet?"

"I think so," Erik says, and he leans forward to put his water bottle down on the coffee table, then pats the seat cushion next to him, still an order, even if he doesn't put words to it. "Can you -- what does it feel like, for you? If you're actually a sub, that is." Erik's obeyed more orders than he can count, but no matter how he thought of himself, he was never truly a submissive. He always obeyed out of fear of punishment, not because he was truly obedient. It always felt ... anxiety-producing, for him, like he expected a punishment, even if he was doing everything right.

Charles takes the seat indicated and kicks his feet up onto the coffee table, settling back comfortably into the cushions; he has a thoughtful expression on his face, and it's a long moment before he answers, slowly. "Well ... it's been a long time since I really felt it. Since my telepathy got to be too strong for me to really submit any more. But ... " Another, longer pause. "I guess it feels ... warm, tingly, like being embraced. You know you're being good and the approval thrills you. It makes you want more. If you fight it it feels bad, like being doused in ice water or berated. It's both a physical and mental sensation."

"Do you miss it?" Erik asks, and almost immediately he wonders if the question is going too far, if it's too personal -- he doesn't know if it's the kind of thing one _would_ miss. The thought of being so held to other people's demands that he wanted to obey them, even despite himself, makes his skin crawl. Whether it felt good or not, he's certain he'd hate it.

"Yes," Charles says, and shrugs, shoulders hunching a little. "And no. The one who ordered me the most was Cain, you see. So I miss the times when it felt good, but those were few and far between. I think I miss the idea of submission, if that makes sense. My reality was far different." He looks defensive now, the cardigan gathering up around him only serving to make Charles look smaller, though Erik knows he's stocky underneath it, like some kind of illusion. "More yes than no," Charles says finally, and looks away.

Erik doesn't know what to say to make it better, or if there is anything to say; he just lifts his hand and rests it on Charles' back, between his shoulder blades, and he's grateful when the buzzer rings and he can tell Charles to take his wallet and go answer the door.

When Charles comes back he's all smiles again, bustling into the kitchen to start plating things up; his eyes aren't crinkling, though, and so Erik decides to drop the business of ordering Charles for the day, getting up to go help him in the kitchen, stealing a bite of Charles' roti from the aluminum foil packet when Charles isn't looking and letting them fall back into their usual, comfortable patterns.

*

_Charles_

Things seem good for the next month and a half, enough that Charles starts to really relax into the life they have now. He's still watching out for danger, of course, after that attack there's always a part of his mind that's on alert, and a part of him still worries, a little, that Erik might try to leave again, but in general ... Erik seems happier, now that he's really getting to grips with his Dominant side, even if he still tends to trail off in the middle of his sentences sometimes, lost in the past; the flashbacks have gotten worse since Victor Creed, not surprisingly. But he's always content when he's experimenting with ordering Charles around, at least, and Charles is happy to oblige him by obeying. Even though the orders don't really affect him in any meaningful way yet, they're getting there, starting to sway him -- enough of a push to influence him, if not enough to make him do anything. And there's a buzz from the excitement Erik feels when Charles does what he's told that is almost as good as the real thing.

Of course, it's harder to feel sanguine about his birthday.

"You both look very handsome," Raven says, smiling up at the two of them from her seat at her dressing table, her face already set for the performance. "And Charles, so distinguished."

"Put a sock in it," he says, over the sound of Erik sniggering. "I'm not even thirty, okay? I'm not old enough to be distinguished."

"Will you still be saying that when you're sixty?" Erik says, still grinning as he lifts an eyebrow at him. "Because I'm fairly certain that's only something old people say."

"I'll be smacking you with my cane when I'm sixty," and Charles pulls a face that sets the both of them to laughing, then rolls his eyes, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Ha ha. Just you wait, Raven -- in four years' time it'll be you who's thirty and I'll be the one laughing."

"You're still going to be thirty next year," Raven says. "Now take your hands out of there, you're rumpling your jacket," and she bats at Charles' wrists until he obeys; for tonight she's a young man, tall and slender, and when she stands up she's as tall as Erik, her rough, worn-out clothes a stark contrast to their smart suits. "Now, no cat-calling or telepathic commentary during the performance, please, and mind that you wait for me after so we can all go back to mine for the party. Got it?"

"Yes, dear," Charles says, leaning forward to peck a kiss on her cheek. "Break a leg. You'll be great."

"Good luck," Erik says to her when Charles has withdrawn, smiling, and then he's touching Charles' shoulder, nudging him slightly. "Come on. It's six forty-five, we should get to our seats."

"All right," Charles says, smiling once more at Raven before turning and heading out into the corridor, where the sign crudely painted on the wall points them back towards the auditorium. "Just so you know," he says to Erik as they walk, "it's actually bad luck to wish an actor good luck before a performance. That's why I told her to break a leg. It's an old superstition."

"Well, that's bizarre," Erik says, taking two programs from the usher as they enter back into the auditorium and passing one over to Charles. "I'm not sure breaking a leg is much better."

They have to go single-file in the narrow aisle, and Charles lets Erik draw ahead; he's looking at his program as he says, "It's reverse psychology. The miscellaneous spirits that cause harm to actors won't get you if you ask them to, I guess." He glances up at Erik's back.

 _Oh._ Charles takes in a sharp, near-silent breath as he's struck all of a sudden by how broad Erik's shoulders are now, and how neat his waist. In the sharply-cut Dom's suit Erik's wearing he looks ... adult, now, tall and lanky and all but fully shaped into the man he will become, his legs long and muscular even under the fabric, and -- Charles' mouth has run dry.

Fuck's sake, Charles, he thinks to himself, and curls his fingers into a fist at his side until he can dig his fingernails into his palm hard enough to hurt. Erik is all but a _child_ , still, and you, apparently, are a pervert. In real terms Erik's actual birthday was _last week_ , and not even a week into sixteen you're staring at him like this?

Charles bites the inside of his cheek, wishing that pain was enough to drive out the bitterness of self-loathing flushing through him.

Oblivious to Charles' internal turmoil, Erik turns into their row, apologizing to the little old ladies who are clutching their purses in their laps in the aisle seats, giving them a charming smile before edging down to their purchased seats, right at the center. "Do you think I'll block someone's view?" Erik asks once they've sat down, peering over his shoulder and frowning, but there's no one behind them, just a bunch of popcorn bags propped up in the seats.

"Don't worry about it," Charles says. He shoots Erik a quick smile, trying hard for normal. "If someone comes into those seats then you can always scooch down a bit and pretend you're a foot shorter."

"I don't think they make these seats for people my size," Erik says wryly, and he nods down at his legs. He's had to spread them a bit wider than he normally would just to keep his knees from hitting the back of the chairs in front of them, and it's forced him half-into Charles' space, overlapping the invisible boundaries between them.

"You'd better hope nobody sits back there, then," Charles says distantly, trying to muzzle his mind, and looks ahead at the stage as he ignores the warmth of Erik's thigh alongside his own.

The amphitheater lights go down, the stage lights go up, and Charles can't make himself pay attention to the play at all, too distracted by his own thoughts to notice anything external. There's just one thought he keeps coming back to, over and over again: how long will it be, before Erik catches him out and knows him for what he is? There's no way to hide it from him; Erik has seen too many perverts come and go not to recognize one when they're in front of him, and Charles is always in front of Erik, always trying this same tired performance, pretending to be fatherly and hating himself for it. He can't help but ask -- why? Why has this happened now?

Charles swallows hard, and tries to move his leg away from Erik's, but there's nowhere to go.

That's what he can't fathom -- why, of all the teenage boys in all the world, Erik has to be the one that makes something unholy blossom in Charles' chest, somewhere between his heart and his lungs. Why he has to feel this way, threatening everything, when Erik is one of the only two people he could never bear to lose. If only ... if only, Charles thinks, Erik weren't a 7D. It's the only logical explanation for why he feels the way he does -- he's never been attracted to teenagers before, not since he was one, and Erik is ... magnetic, in a way that only started growing when Erik became more confident.

Not, of course, that knowing that solves the problem.

Raven comes on stage and speaks her first lines, strutting across it like a stiff-necked scarecrow; her character is a now-homeless teacher, too caught up in his Ancient Greek to make more of his life. Charles feels over-warm and stifled in the busy room, trying to pay attention to the play and not the thoughts of everyone around him, the woman to his left -- waiting for her to notice that he and Erik are sitting with their legs pressed alongside each other, wanting to know how she'll react -- dismiss it as normal? Or will it make her uneasy, disgusted, concerned for Erik's wellbeing?

At one point, someone on the stage makes a joke and everyone laughs, including Erik, whose whole body shifts in the process, pressing his arm closer to Charles' -- worse, still, when Erik chooses to lean his weight toward that arm, propping his cheekbone against his fingertips. Charles' inhale shudders through him, and he shifts a little himself, though there's no room to move to the other side either -- not without drawing attention.

Erik is warm, and solid, and he smells familiar, like the aftershave Charles bought him for his second birthday now that he -- oh, _God_ \-- finally needs to shave regularly. And Charles realizes, with a sudden shame and humiliation, horror flaring up inside of him, that he's getting to be a little _aroused_. 

Charles is barely paying attention to the play anymore, which is why he has no idea what Erik is referencing when he tilts his head toward Charles and whispers, "Not if she's wearing _that_ dress!" in his ear, his breath hot against Charles' skin, and Charles bites himself, hard, on the inside of his cheek, before making himself chuckle, giving Erik a smile he's sure is lost in the dim light.

He has to stop this. It has to stop, Charles thinks, determined and desperate as he keeps staring blankly at the stage, willing his body to obey. There can be no chance of Erik's finding out -- if he's not aroused, then there's no chance of Erik ... what, reaching down to brush away fallen popcorn, and finding ...? No. Charles is not going to ... he can't help but think, for a moment, about Erik reaching between his legs in the dark in this crowded room, slowly groping him through his pants, ordering him to be quiet.

The lighting brightens for a new scene, one taking place in daytime, and next to him Erik looks his way, his features sharp-looking the way the shadows fall on them. Then, Erik frowns, and leans in to murmur, "Are you okay?"

Charles hadn't realized he'd clenched his hands into fists. "I'm fine," he whispers, making himself smile. "Just ... a lot of emotions in here. It affects me. Shows it's a good play."

Erik nods, but Charles can still feel his concern rolling off his mind in low waves, and after a moment Erik reaches over to lace their fingers together, squeezing Charles' hand once with their palms pressed together in Charles' lap, far too close to Charles' half-hard dick. Charles winces and moves them further down his leg, until their hands are resting just above his knee, and he spends the rest of the play like that, making himself remember, over and over again, the time Cain broke his collarbone, until his body responds and goes quiet again.

Afterwards when the lights come up Charles smiles at Erik and disentangles himself, getting to his feet and quickly skimming the memory of the play from the woman next to him, who apparently noticed nothing; when Erik asks if he enjoyed it Charles says yes, and lets out a long breath as he smiles, wishing they were just going home.

Raven comes to meet them once she's finished backstage and they all take the subway to her place, where the party she's throwing Charles is just getting started.

"You've really outdone yourself," Charles says, looking around at the bar to one side, the table of food beside it and the people already gathering in clusters of conversation, most of them people he's never met in his life. "Thank you, Raven. This is lovely."

"Don't thank me, go enjoy yourself!" she says, giving him a playful push. "You look like someone slapped a kitten, go have some fun, old man."

"He's been like this for days," Erik tells Raven, like he's confiding something secret, never mind that Charles is standing right there. "I think he's depressed that he's getting ancient. Rightfully so, don't get me wrong --"

"I'm fine," Charles says, perhaps a little too sharply; they both give him an odd look, Raven searching, Erik faintly worried, and Charles shakes his head, smiles, says, "I'm just tired of the age-related needling. Go on, enjoy yourselves, too. Mingle."

Erik looks at Charles a moment longer, his expression unreadable, but then he turns and goes, all the same, and Charles watches him head toward the food table to start filling up a plate, quickly falling into conversation with another Dom who touches his shoulder and says something, apparently a compliment on his suit.

"You're being really weird lately," Raven says, taking hold of Charles' wrist before he can move. "Don't blow me off. What's going on? You're never that short with anyone, let alone Erik."

"It's nothing," Charles says, trying to tug his hand free, but she doesn't let him; resigned, he lets her hold him, sighing and lifting his free hand to rub at his face. "Raven, really, I'm fine. I'm just tired, is all. There's a lot going on, between the trial and work, and Erik's practicing his Dom skills on me, which is fine, but I don't get a lot of time to relax and it's made me crabby. I'm sorry."

"Hmm," she says, still searching his face, but finally she lets go, reaching up to adjust his lapels instead and brushing her hands over his shoulders. "Go on. Have some fun, okay?"

"Okay," Charles says, and smiles, before heading off in the direction of the kitchen.

As he suspected the kitchen is where he finds Hank, standing alone at the counter setting out hors d'oeuvres on a glass plate; Charles comes up at his side and turns so he can lean back against the counter, looking out through the open kitchen door at the rest of the guests.

"I hope Raven hasn't put you out too much with things to keep running," Charles says, but Hank just smiles absently, tucking his glasses further up his nose with the tip of one claw-like nail.

"To be honest, I'm happier back here than I would be out there," he says, setting another lemon cookie onto the plate. "Too many people."

"I know what you mean," Charles says, pinching a cookie and taking a bite. It's good, still warm, and he chews it slowly before continuing, "I mean, I love Raven and I'm grateful that she's gone to all this effort, but I don't know most of these people, and those I do are only loose acquaintances. It's a bit intimidating in this setting."

Hank smiles shyly. "The two of us will just have to stick together, then," he says, finishing off the tray. "We can urgently need something back in the kitchen every time a stranger approaches."

"Sounds good." Charles takes two big bites to finish the cookie before reaching for the tray. "Let me get that, I'll take it out for you."

It's refreshing to be around Hank for a while, darting in and out of the kitchen only to get drinks or deliver food to the masses. Since nobody there knows him nobody is looking for the birthday boy, and Charles can luxuriate in the presence of another submissive without agenda, no pressure or untoward feelings, just genial conversation and friendly companionship. It's relaxing, easy; of course, though, Erik comes looking for him eventually, finding him alone in the kitchen while Hank is being led around by Raven and introduced to all her acquaintances. 

"Are you hiding back here because you want to go home?" Erik says, clearly not beating around the bush.

"I was enjoying Hank's company," Charles says, sipping at his wine and crossing his legs, resting his heel on the opposite knee where he's sat at the kitchen table, a paper plate at his elbow. "Until the present moment, of course."

"Ah. Well. _I'm_ hiding, then," Erik says, and he walks over to where Charles is sitting, stealing the wine glass when Charles sets it down and taking a sip of his own. "Raven keeps trying to corner me to ask about how I'm doing." A pause, and then he elaborates. "After my 'appendectomy.' I'm pretending not to know what she's talking about."

Charles tsks at Erik under his breath and takes the wine back, setting the glass firmly on the table. "Do me the courtesy of at least letting me pretend I've kept you from underage drinking," he says, though he's more resignedly amused than truly outraged. "We can go home if you want; I didn't want to tear you away if you were having a good time, but though Raven loves throwing parties they're not really my thing any more. At least, not ones where I have to be both respectable and introduced to a lot of strangers who only know me from TV."

"I'd need more than two hands to count the number of times I've heard 'wait, but aren't you a submissive?' tonight." Erik leans against the table, arching a brow. "I think I'm starting to understand what you mean." 

He steals one of the cookies on Charles' plate, as well, nibbling at it and then dusting the fallen crumbs from the legs of his trousers, Charles, damn him, staring at Erik's hand as it smooths across Erik's thigh. "It's easier if we do it as a pair. Come on. There are a dozen more starving artists we need to meet." 

Erik smiles and holds his hand out for Charles to let him pull him up to his feet, and Charles goes, finding after a moment that he can smile back. He manages to keep that smile on his face for the rest of the evening, talking to person after person whose names he only recalls by checking their minds for their nametags, and if it becomes a little wooden by the end of the night then nobody notices.

Still -- it's fun, in its own way, and Erik is a good conversationalist for a sixteen-year-old in an adult setting. You'd hardly know his age to listen to him, Charles thinks, and mentally assigns himself another thirty years in hell.

*

_Erik_

He gets his first real, written-out death threat that summer. It pops up in his inbox like any other piece of mail, but when he opens it, it isn't. He stares at it for several long moments, sat there on the sofa with his laptop open on his thighs, but even reading it three times over, the text hasn't changed.

>   
> **From: mutant389@hotmail.com** **Subject:** Have you seen this?  
>  Because we've seen you, Erik, cosying up to the humans and Xavier, playing house while other mutants suffer under the oppressive pig regime, ignoring them in favor of playing pattycake and pretending to be a Dom instead of the little slut bitch you are. You might think that Hellfire has forgotten you, but Hellfire does not forget. Hellfire burns little piggies like you alive.
> 
> Oink oink, Erik. If you're not one of us you're one of them, and you know what we do to them. 

His face flushing, he deletes the email, only to regret it a moment later and dig it out of his trash bin, sending it back to the top of his inbox. The fourth time he reads it, he thinks, _they're right_ , and simultaneously hates himself for believing it's true, and hates himself because, well, it _is._

What has he been doing with himself, these past two years, if not languishing in an integrationist's household, and befriending humans, _fucking_ humans, all while innocent mutants are imprisoned, tortured, and slaughtered across the globe. Just for being what they are. And here sits Erik, in the bloody _lap_ of luxury, more concerned with whether he'll get to work on the cool new Stark tech project (Stark -- a human company) and whether or not people properly perceive him as a Dom than _the world-wide, systematic persecution and **murder** of his mutant kin._

The only reason Erik isn't one of the martyred dead is because Hellfire, for better or for worse, took him in. What else would happen to an orphaned Jewish mutant in a European orphanage? He's seen enough of the world to know. Even killing Victor Creed, chopping off the head of the Hellfire hydra, would have been a good start, never mind if two more would have grown in its place. He could have eliminated one threat to the mutant cause then and there, that night, but instead he crept out in the dark like a child -- but not before he thoroughly and enthusiastically sucked Victor's cock.

Erik slaps the cover of his laptop down and tosses it aside on the sofa, getting to his feet. Charles is out at work, so it's just Erik, left to stew with his thoughts for the next six hours. He goes back to his computer every half an hour to refresh his inbox, like he expects them to have written again, but the only things coming in are spam, a Buzzfeed link from Madelyne, and some correspondence from Stark and his summer courses at Columbia.

By the time Charles gets home he's buried it in his mind, and manages to smile and act normal all through dinner. In the evening he searches for ways to get involved in mutant activism, but most of what he finds are groups through the Mutant Center, which he's already damn sure he'll hate -- integrationists -- but it's worth a try, just in case he finds a few like minds in attendance.

"You could always come to my Thursday afternoon group," Charles says when he's serving out dessert, clearly having picked up on the train if not the source of Erik's thoughts; he hands Erik a spoon for his fruit salad and sits back down in his own chair, with a tentative smile. "We go out and do activities as well as talk. You'd be more than welcome."

"All right," Erik says, even though he doesn't expect to agree with very many of Charles' teachings. 

He pushes thoughts of Hellfire and Victor Creed down, and down again, and nearly forgets about them.

Until that night.

*

He's thirteen years old, and he's in the Berlin safehouse. He's finished his set of algebra problems, and he needs to give them to Mr Shaw for review, only, he can't find him. All the hallways lead to nowhere, and loop around on each other, until he's sure he's walking in circles. He can feel the clock ticking, knows it's getting late, and for every minute he waits past deadline that's one lash, but he can't --

"Mr Shaw?" he calls out, and his voice echoes tremulously off the walls. He's on the upstairs hall, now, peering into bedrooms as he passes them, but all the shades are drawn and the lights turned off. 

At the end of the hall there's a mirror, and in it he thinks he sees someone standing behind him, someone tall and dark-clothed, grinning with sharp teeth -- "Mr Essex?" He turns around, but there's no one there. The house is empty. He's alone.

Down the stairs again, and the stairs go on forever, spiraling -- did the stairs spiral, in Berlin? he can't remember -- there's a giant clock on the wall, ticking, and he starts to run, but his legs feel like they're made of concrete, every step slow and heavy and he wants to cry, he can hear someone laughing at him, and suddenly the steps are gone and he's falling through nothingness -- no, no, he's walking downstairs, into the kitchen, no, the bedroom, and the math homework is gone and instead he's carrying a rope and a rattan cane, he's naked -- only he's not, he's wearing ... Dominant clothes, and someone's voice says, "Someone's been dressing up like a little tranny slut," and big hands grab at Erik from behind, one over his mouth and nose and the other wrapping around his torso, dragging him backwards into the empty apartment in Hunt's Point.

Erik can hear Victor breathing in his ear, hot and moist, the sharp tip of a tooth snagging against the lobe. "Tell me how much you want it, slut," he growls, rubbing himself against Erik's ass.

"I want it," Erik whispers, and he reaches up behind him to curl his hand around the back of Victor's head, fingers sliding through short-cropped hair, and he twists in Victor's arms to face him, kiss him, tasting cigar ash on Victor's tongue when he slides his between Victor's lips, grinding against him slow and sure. 

Victor's hand is grasping his ass and Erik moans into his mouth, shivering in his arms, does anything -- is willing to do anything -- to make Victor want it, need it, _him_.

"Good boy," Victor says, fingers digging in hard into the muscle, working it, before sliding over and slipping one inside Erik's hole, hooking it inside him and using it to tug him closer, up onto his tiptoes. "Where do you want it?"

Erik's hand is already between their bodies, undoing Victor's fly, aided by his power. "I want you to fuck my ass," he says, and reaches into Victor's jeans to pull a firm and demanding stroke up his hardened cock. It earns him a loud grunt and another finger, jabbing hard and rough inside of him; then Victor starts crowding him backwards towards the dank mattress, the bulk of his body easily overshadowing Erik, until when he pushes Erik down on his back Victor is all Erik can see, like he's burying Erik alive.

"Fuck me," Erik says, and he spreads his legs, tipping his head back to expose the line of his throat to let Victor lick a long stripe up his skin. One hand, then two, move to press his thighs up and back, splaying him open, and then there's a pressure at his hole, pushing forward until it suddenly fucks hard _in_ \--

"Erik, come on -- " Hands are shaking him, and Erik's heart is racing -- he feels hot, feverish, is lying on his back on the mattress and someone is holding him _down_ \-- his eyes fly open and for a brief second the ceiling is reeling overhead and Erik's certain the world is crashing in, he can't breathe ...

"Stop it," he gasps, twisting in the blankets and tangling himself in them, his head throbbing hard. "Stop it -- _don't touch me!_ "

The hands fly away, and there's a soft _thud_ of something falling to the carpet; then silence. 

Erik lies there in the dark as his heartbeat begins to slow, still struggling to catch his breath as the room spins above him. He's clammy-skinned, the sheets sticking to him in uncomfortable ways, and he has to swallow several times before his throat doesn't feel quite so raw. Had he -- had he been screaming?

It's several seconds before he thinks, _someone's here_ , and several more before his racing mind decides that was real and not part of the dream and he pushes himself up on weak arms to peer over the edge of the bed.

Charles is kneeling there with head bowed, his hands open and laying on his thighs, palms up; he'd be the picture of resting pose if it weren't for the way he's shivering all over, like a horse trying to shake off a fly, his breath a little too fast to be truly calm. He's in his pajamas, robe draped around him on the carpet and bare toes protruding, pale, from under its hem.

"...Charles?" Erik says, and when Charles looks up his eyes are a little unfocused, his pupils large and still dilating.

"Why am I down here?" he asks, blinking slowly, his voice confused. "I was ... you were upset."

Erik's heart is pounding all over again, and he kicks the sheets down, manages to get himself out of bed so he can crouch on the floor on Charles' level, something -- anxiety -- spiking in his blood.

"Are you all right?" he asks, and he lifts a hand to touch Charles then thinks better of it, clenching his fingers into a fist and drawing it back to rest on his knee. His whole body feels abruptly hollow, tired, like he's barely keeping himself upright.

Charles shakes his head before looking at Erik again, frowning. "I heard screaming. I came in but I think you were dreaming." He sounds as if he's speaking from far away, and he doesn't even seem conscious of the way he's lowering himself, carefully ducking his head to stay below Erik.

He's in subspace, Erik thinks, and the realization hits him hard and sudden, enough to nearly knock the wind out of him; he sits back, stunned, and stares at Charles. He must have -- when he woke up, he didn't mean to, he didn't even realize it was _possible_ , not this soon, and certainly not with Charles. He doesn't know what he's supposed to do. Charles didn't tell him what to _do_ if this happened, whether or not it's dangerous, whether Erik ought to leave a sub be to come out of it on their own, like a sleepwalker, or if he was meant to ... do something.

Fuck. Erik closes his eyes and thinks -- all right, so, it's evolutionary, isn't it? All universal evolved traits are adaptive, somehow, or they were at one point. So it's probably not dangerous. It's natural. His Dominant evolutionary ancestors clearly figured out what to do about this kind of thing, so Erik can as well. It's got to be instinct, buried deep in there somewhere, and someone was able to sort this without use of a Dynamics textbook. Then again, Azazel always said Erik lacked the common sense God gave a dog.

But Charles is responding to questions. He seems _lucid_ , even if he's not ... well, lucid. "Charles," Erik says again, opening his eyes. Charles is still right where he left him, his gaze trained on the floor. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Mmm," Charles says, blinking slowly, and shivering again, though he can't be cold -- it's plenty warm enough in the room. "I'm ... not supposed to do this, am I? I'm not supposed to give in." His fingers are curling and uncurling now on his knees, making fists and relaxing again, over and over. "It's okay. I'll wake up soon. I just feel floaty. I'm not supposed to."

"It's all right," Erik says, and he actually believes it himself, now. He smiles at Charles, even though he doesn't know if Charles can see it from that angle, and lets out a slow breath, trying to ignore the way he can still feel his heart in his entire body. "You're allowed to give in." He can do that much for Charles, can't he? Maybe if he says it while Charles is in this state, it'll actually take. Still, though ... strange thing to say, and Erik files it away to examine later. 

"Come on." He reaches for one of Charles' up-turned hands and tugs lightly as he rises up to standing. "Stand up."

"Okay," Charles says, and rolls up onto his feet without using his hands, rumpled robe falling back down around his legs. Then he waits, fingers still clasped with Erik's, that fine tremor spreading now that he's standing -- Erik can feel it against his palm. 

"It's all right," Erik says once more, and tries to sound reassuring. 

He moves forward, and lets go of Charles' hand to wrap both his arms around him, pulling Charles' body in close against his -- he doesn't know if he's nervous, or cold, but between the physical contact and the heat from his bare chest, something should help. Erik cups the back of Charles' head and tilts it forward until Charles' brow is resting on his shoulder, heat throbbing where their skin touches. When Erik closes his eyes he can still see Victor Creed, so he keeps them open instead, slowly stroking his fingertips down the warm back of Charles' neck, to comfort himself just as much as Charles.

The sound Charles makes is ... more like a purr than anything normal, his whole body relaxing at once until he's soft all over, his head all but collapsing onto Erik's shoulder, baring his neck further. "Mmm," he says, and Erik can feel his eyelashes brushing against the side of Erik's throat as Charles' eyes open and close, slowly, in time with Erik's fingers. He isn't trembling anymore, at least, which Erik counts as a success, and he smiles to himself, keeping his hand at that same steady movement a while longer.

"Let's sit down," he says after a few minutes, directing Charles over to the bed and nudging him back against it, dropping his hands to Charles' elbows. He feels better, now, than he did even just a few moments ago, like taking care of Charles has eased some of the tension left over from the nightmare. "Here you go." He pats the mattress.

"Okay," Charles says, sitting where Erik indicated and laying his hands palms-up in his lap again, open and vulnerable; it makes it clear just how well Charles _can_ do his postures, when he wants to. He looks around the room, the puzzled frown coming back. "I was ... I'm not normal, am I? Right now. This isn't ... it's more. Than I'm supposed to. I feel fuzzy."

"You mean, deeper in subspace than is normal?" Erik frowns at him. "I really have no idea. I'm not exactly an expert in this kind of thing." He crosses around to the other side of the bed to climb up himself, sitting cross-legged next to Charles. He sets one hand on Charles' leg -- like an anchor, he hopes -- and squeezes once. "As long as it isn't hurting you, I think you're all right. Don't worry. Like you said, it'll lift soon."

Charles sighs, and then he's shifting, sliding further down the bed so he can lie down, curling up on his side with his forehead resting against Erik's hip. He looks smaller like this, C-shaped and rumpled. "You were upset," he says. His hands have come up together in front of his chest, almost like he's praying. "I came in ... "

That's the last thing Erik wants to talk about right now. "I'm fine," he says firmly, and he pats Charles' shoulder. "You're pretty distracting, you know." 

It's hard to think about much of anything else when Charles is in the room, acting like this -- Victor Creed is, admittedly, the exception to that, but Erik is trying very hard to put him out of mind. He's desperately tempted to think of things to order Charles to do, just to see how far he can push it, drag this out a little longer, but since Charles clearly has concerns about being in subspace at the moment, he expects Charles will be less likely to yell at him after if he just lets him surface on his own.

"I'll wake up," Charles says. "I'm waking up. I'll ... I should make tea." But he doesn't move.

"All right," Erik says, deciding then and there that he isn't going to baby Charles by trying to keep him in sight when he's like this, not when Charles is a grown man who can take care of himself. That goes doubly for Erik, too -- Erik can't expect Charles to just sit here with him all night until he isn't afraid of falling back asleep. Ridiculous; he's sixteen, he's _fine._ He pats Charles' shoulder again, ignoring the uneasy feeling in his chest, and says, "Go make tea. I'll have the Kenyan silver needle you bought last week, that was good."

"Okay," Charles says absently, and he sits up, then gets to his feet, padding away down the corridor and disappearing downstairs. 

Only when he's gone does Erik allow himself to sink down so he's curled up in the warm spot Charles' body left behind, squeezing his eyes shut and holding on tight to the pillow, digging his nails in so hard he can feel the fabric of the case straining against the pressure. It's almost a minute before he can convince himself to get back up despite the feeling like a rock in the pit of his stomach and leave the comfort of that warmth behind, taking deep gulps of air and telling himself to stop, to remember -- it doesn't matter. It doesn't, and didn't, matter. None of it.

He gets out of bed and straightens out the tangled sheets, folding them at the foot, all neat lines and crisp angles, smoothing out the wrinkles until his heart's a steady beat and he almost feels normal, again.

*

_Charles_

He starts feeling more lucid around the time the tea is finished steeping, steam rising from the cups. Charles is just adding milk to his cup when he thinks, _what was that?_

Oh, _God._ It hits him all in a rush, and he has to grip the counter to keep from falling as he realizes -- Erik put him into subspace. Erik actually _ordered him down_.

Charles went into subspace.

He's breathing rather too quickly now, sharp little gasps of panic -- Erik _ordered him down_ , and Charles just -- there wasn't even a hesitation or any moment to resist, Charles just went to his knees, freefall, and submitted so ... it felt so ... airy, light, like being a paper boat skating across a pond, blown only by the breeze. Nobody -- nobody has _ever_ , since Charles was thirteen, the last time Cain managed to get him to bend, and that mostly habit --

Charles puts his head down on the cool granite beside the tea cups and just tries to ride it out, the panic and shock coming over him in waves, the boat capsizing and sinking under the water. He knows that Erik had a nightmare, that Erik is waiting for him to come upstairs, but right now it's all Charles can do not to fall apart, because more than anything else he _wants_ , with a fervency bordering on obsession, for Erik to do it again, to put Charles down and _mean it._ And he's terrified, too, can't stand the thought of being so vulnerable even as he wants, and wants --

Erik is still sixteen. And Charles' ward. And no matter how much Charles ... it's wrong, to want that from him. Better to be afraid; it's something Charles can't have, won't have, and he needs to resign himself to that fact. Being scared of it can only help with that.

When Charles finally manages to make himself stand back upright he's locked everything down tight, compressing his fears and feelings into a tiny box that he can put away somewhere he doesn't have to deal with now. His face and body calm, his heart rate normalizing, he takes the tea back upstairs slowly under the pretense of working hard not to spill. When he walks into Erik's bedroom Erik is sitting upright in his made bed, tailor style with a thick book in his hands, reading -- although he looks up when Charles enters, frowning at Charles like he's trying to figure something out, and it's a second before he says:

"Are you awake?"

As if things weren't bad enough, Erik is shirtless, his scarred chest on full display in the dim light. Charles ignores it, setting the non-milky tea down on the bedside table, and says, carefully, "Yes. Thank you. I'm very sorry about that -- you shouldn't have had to deal with that."

"I already told you it's fine," Erik says, closing his book and setting it to the side; Charles can see the spine, now. It's _Anna Karenina._ Erik's frown deepens, brows drawing together, real concern spiking from his mind. "Don't you remember?"

Charles glances about for somewhere to sit. "Yes," he says, taking a seat on the edge of Erik's bed. "But that doesn't mean I don't have to apologize. Are you all right?"

"Yes." It sounds a bit sharp, but then Erik glances away, at the cover of his book where his fingers are still resting, just-grazing the embossed author's name. "It wasn't your fault," Erik says, and it takes Charles a moment to realize he's back on the topic of subspace; apparently the subject of Erik's nightmare has been covered and dismissed with a single word. "I'm the one who put you down, so if anyone should be apologizing, it should be me."

Erik had been dreaming about Victor Creed again, but not like before -- in this dream Erik welcomed the touch, invited it, even as Creed re-enacted the rape, Erik asking for it. It's troubling, but there's no pushing with something like this. The nightmare is what Charles would rather speak about, given the circumstances -- that box is rattling in his mind, trying to unlock -- but he allows the change of subject, taking a sip of his tea.

Finally he says, "We might just have to write this one off to experience. At least it proves one thing -- you're definitely connecting with your Dominance, if you managed to put me into subspace like that. It's good." And it is a good thing, it's what Charles has been working towards with him since the beginning, even knowing that if Erik chose to ... if Erik chose to, he could do almost anything to him, and Charles would just ... _let_ him.

Charles shivers.

"Are you cold?" Erik says. Of course he noticed, Charles thinks. Erik notices everything. Except, thankfully, miraculously, Charles' perverse attraction to him. "You were shivering like that before, too."

"I'm fine," Charles says, with a small, calm smile. "It's just a reaction I have sometimes, to the submission. It'll pass." Just the terror of being under someone else's control, and his mind trying valiantly to throw it off.

"All right," Erik says, and finally he reaches for the tea on the nightstand, lifting it up to his mouth and closing his eyes as he takes a small sip. "This is good. Thank you."

"No problem," Charles says. He's grateful for the excuse when he can't help another shudder from running through him, this time an automatic, residual reaction to the approval; it's like sitting in front of a fire, the heat licking against his back, warming him through from head to toe, delicious and entirely inappropriate. "You did a good job, by the way," he says, lifting his own mug to hide his mouth. "Looking after me like that, I mean."

"Good." Erik smiles over the rim of his cup, the expression reaching his eyes. "It was nice, actually. I'm still surprised that I managed it."

"Nice?"

"Yes. What, isn't it supposed to be?"

Charles shrugs. "It was a bit ... inappropriate, timing-wise. And I wasn't myself. You shouldn't have had to look after me, I should have been looking after you."

"We had this discussion already," Erik says, making a face at him. "It happened. Neither of us meant it to, but it did. I don't mind looking after you, Charles. If it makes you feel any better, if you hadn't gone into subspace I'd have just sent you away. I can take care of myself."

"Still ... " How to phrase it. "We should work on your control. If you can do that unintentionally then you will be able to do it on purpose; it's a matter of practice, now that you know what it feels like. And it would be better to get it under control, so you don't put submissives into subspace accidentally. Best if you can measure it out intentionally." And avoid any unfortunate questions being asked when Charles is in no state to moderate his own answers.

"That goes without saying," Erik says. He looks pleased, though, and feels it, too, a sense of gratification warm around the edges of his mind. "I'll practice, like you said. Now that I know I can do it, it'll be easy."

Charles just nods, and tries not to think, with a growing flush of fear and desire, of being practiced upon ... of being put into that floating, restful state over and over again.

"How are you feeling, now?" Erik asks. "You were very worried, while you were down, that you were in too deep."

"Bearing in mind it's been sixteen years since I was last in subspace," Charles says to his tea, trying to make it sound casual, not at all significant, "I'm not surprised if I reacted strongly. I'm fine, really. My brain probably doesn't know how to moderate it any more. But that's okay. It's hardly going to be an issue in my day-to-day life."

If he'd been hoping Erik would simply let that go, however, he's mistaken. "Sixteen _years?_ " Erik says, and Charles feels him shifting on the bed, moving a bit closer. "You said it was difficult to put you down. I didn't realize you meant you never go down at all."

"The telepathy gets in the way," Charles says, without looking up. "Plus a few other issues of my own, I expect; my personal history with submission complicates matters, too. Sometimes Raven can calm me, if she works at it."

Charles can tell that even Erik knows that's nowhere near the same thing. "In that case," he says, and his voice is light, albeit forcibly so, "I hope it wasn't too traumatic an experience for you."

At that Charles looks up, with an attempt at a smile, reaching out to clasp one of Erik's shoulders and squeezing. "It was fine," he says, making firm eye contact and setting his tea aside. "I wasn't upset, or overly worried, and you didn't hurt me, so all in all there was less than no harm done. It probably did me some good, from a neurochemical standpoint." Even if it has only complicated Charles' inner life more, that's nothing to do with Erik, and Charles intends it to stay that way.

"All right," Erik says after a moment passes, and then he's leaning forward, curling one arm around Charles' back and pulling him into an awkward embrace, Erik's cheek pressed warm against Charles' temple. Charles tries not to remember in visceral technicolor how it had felt to be held while he was down, Erik's hand on the back of his neck, petting him there where Charles hasn't the heart nor the spine to tell him Charles is hypersensitive to the point of arousal.

"You're okay," Charles says, disentangling one arm and putting it around Erik in return. "Do you think you can go back to sleep?"

"Yes," Erik says, loudly projecting false confidence as he sits back, leaning against the headboard of the bed. After a moment, he quirks a small grin. "If not, I think I have Lacan's _Seminar_ around here somewhere. That always does the trick."

"I can help, if you want," Charles says, waving his fingers near his temple. "Keep off the dreams, too."

"No. I'm fine. I can take care of it."

Charles doubts that, but best not to push. "Okay," he says, and gets to his feet, taking back his tea. "Then I'll go back to bed. I'll see you in the morning."

"Night," Erik says, and Charles lets himself out into the corridor, closing the door behind himself and hoping that if he tries hard enough he can make it all seem like a dream by morning.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: Contains age difference lusting (ooOOOooo), death threats, nightmare with consensual Victor Creed, references to past recent rape, references to past child rape/sexual abuse, trans* slur


	16. Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take a look at this - Yukisa made [this awesome manip](http://yukisa.livejournal.com/15841.html?mode=reply) of Charles and his imaginary pipe from last chapter! Thank you very much, we love it XD

_Erik_

"Hey, Lehnsherr. I hear you're a Dom now," Rob says as he's stretching out his hamstring, foot clasped in his hand behind his back, heel pressed to his buttock. "That true?"

"It's true," Erik says. He's sitting sprawled out on the grass in Central Park, exhausted and sweat-drenched from their long run; he's hoping to get a three-hour time in his upcoming marathon, and so far, training for that has been much more difficult than he or any of his cross-country teammates doing summer training with him had anticipated. "It's been true for months, in fact." 

Since birth, realistically, but it only felt true in spring, after everything that happened with Creed. He's been practicing with Charles as often as he can, and since putting Charles into subspace it's gotten easier; perhaps that's all he needed, the reassurance that he _could_ Dominate Charles if he wanted to, that he wasn't permanently broken by Shaw. It was hard at first, but Erik thinks it's probably like any other skill -- the more you practice, the better you get. He can get Charles to do most things, now, if he really tries, and Charles doesn't seem to mind playing Erik's guinea pig.

"Huh," Rob says, switching legs, though even his thighs are trembling with the aftermath of their training. "I gotta say, I'd never have pegged you as a Dom. I thought I had pretty good radar for orientation, but I guess not."

A snort. "How do we know he isn't still a sub just pretending to be a Dom?" Sonia says snidely from behind Erik, not bothering to lower her voice. "We've only got his word for it one way or the other."

She probably means it to be an insult -- as if being submissive is something that's insulting, as if he ought to be ashamed of it, whatever orientation he chooses to have. Erik isn't insulted. He tilts his head back and closes his eyes, letting the sun bake his skin, warming the sweat on his brow. "I'm 7D," he says calmly. "I could put you down, if I wanted."

"I doubt that," she says with another dismissive snort, a shadow falling over Erik that cools him right down. "Even if you are a 7D, which I doubt, you hardly act like a Dom at all. Stop playing like you're all that, nobody cares."

"Yeah?" he says without opening his eyes. "Kneel, Sonia."

Sonia grunts like she's been winded and then there are two thumps on the ground, one knee then the other, as she collapses; Erik can feel it vibrate through the earth to him, can almost feel her frustrated anger the way Charles would, like the taste of coins in the air, as she lets out an angry "Shit!" She isn't a sub, but he feels a rush of satisfaction all the same, shivering down his spine like a fever-chill when she obeys.

"What the actual fuck," Rob says, sounding gobsmacked.

"Fuck you, Lehnsherr," Sonia spits, and struggles back to her feet, though it looks like she's having to fight hard to do it -- he lets her, doesn't force her back down, and when she snarls at Christina for handing her her bag nobody stops her from storming off across the grass, her footsteps pounding on the hardened earth.

Erik opens his eyes and pushes himself up, bending his knees to rest his forearms on them, squinting past the bright sun to look at Rob and the others, all of whom are wearing expressions with varying degrees of shock and trepidation on their faces. He doesn't need Charles' telepathy to tell what they're thinking -- anxiety is written in the lines of their faces, drawn taut through their postures. He's seen these looks before. It's the way the CIA looked at him when he was arrested. The way everyone avoided his gaze when they learned he was Hellfire. 

"What?" he says. "It's not like I'm going to go around ordering people down right and left." He tilts his head in Sonia's direction, her figure already getting smaller with the speed of her departure. "I just don't like her."

"But you could, right?" Christina asks. She folds her arms across her chest, defensive. "If you wanted to."

"You're 3D, you could order down a -2S if you wanted to," Erik says. It's hard to keep the irritation out of his voice, frustration prickling against the underside of his skin. He's starting to get a headache, a low throbbing in his temples, exacerbated by the glare of sunlight in his eyes. "What's your point?"

"I don't know," she says, and looks away, as if there's something fascinating just past his shoulder. "I guess it's just pretty scary given, well, everything."

"Everything?"

That they all know exactly what she means doesn't mean he isn't going to make her say it out loud anyway. None of them can meet his gaze; even Rob is staring at the grass underfoot, scuffing the heel of his running shoe into the dirt.

"Well," Christina says, after a prolonged pause. "You've killed people, haven't you. Lots of them. That makes it pretty scary to think you could just, what, tell me to jump off a cliff and I would have to."

Right. Because that's why Erik decided to be a Dom -- to lord it over human teenagers.

"I'm not going to tell you to jump off a cliff," Erik says irritably. "I haven't killed anyone in two and a half years now, if that makes you feel any better."

"Not really," Sam mutters, with a short bark of a laugh; he has his arms folded over his chest, fingers digging hard into his biceps. "Personally it's only been four months since my last murder, but who's counting."

"Don't be an ass," Rob says, but there's a constant hum of conversation now between everyone, anxiety and suspicion thick and sickly in the air; Erik doesn't see his lot improving in the near future, so he gets up, dusting the grass clippings from his legs. He's taller than all of them, too, now, and he's keenly aware of the metal on them: Garmin watches, iPhones, piercings, Rob's tiny Magen David. It would be so easy to crush them, like killing insects, and Erik grits his teeth.

"I'm going home," he says. "I promised Charles I'd make dinner, so no murdering today. Guess you all caught a lucky break."

"Dangit," Sam says, "I was looking forward to that."

Erik smiles, only a little acidly, and grabs his empty water bottle, turning to head for the path that will take him back to the East Side and Charles' neighborhood, only about a ten-minute walk. He hears footsteps following after him, and he can feel Rob's necklace, so he doesn't turn, just reduces his pace slightly to let him catch up.

"I'm sorry," Rob says, slowing down to walk beside Erik and swiping the back of his hand over his forehead. "I didn't mean to set that off. Do none of them follow the news at all? Everyone knows that it was pretty fucked up shit, I don't know where they get off."

"It's fine," Erik says. "They just think my DS score means they're not real Doms, or something." It's hard to keep it from his tone, exactly what Erik thinks about _that_ , but when he glances at Rob he finds Rob is smiling a little, just the corners of his mouth tilting up.

"Well, dude, I don't know what to tell you," he says, putting his hands into his pockets. "It _is_ pretty intimidating. I mean, thinking that I used to want to fuck you so badly, and now it's like, well, shit, does that mean I'd have to play sub? Like, relatively speaking. And I'm not into that. It's confusing. I feel like my dick shrunk four sizes."

Erik frowns at him. "Why would you have to play sub with me? You can still fuck me whichever way you like. I don't mind." 

Rob blinks, a flutter of surprise. "Erik, you're a 7D now. I'm a 2D. You outrank me, dude. Not to mention it's fucking gay."

"Suit yourself," Erik says. "I'm just as good in bed now as I was then -- and my DS score hasn't changed, either."

"Well, I didn't know before," Rob says, but he's giving Erik a different look now, considering, and Erik already knows how this conversation ends. "Are you saying you're still subbing for people?"

They're halfway to Charles' apartment now; they'll need to turn left in a few minutes to go to Rob's place further uptown, but Erik suspects that's the only reason Rob came after him in the first place. Humans aren't very complicated. 

"Yes. If that's what they want." There were a couple of Doms who actually _did_ want Erik to Dom them -- or to try to, anyway. Erik hadn't realized some people were into that, but he'd done his best to oblige them, even if he had let them 'win,' in the end.

Another pause. "So do you really have to go cook for your dad now?"

Erik smiles, and shifts so he's walking closer to Rob, their shoulders brushing every other step. "We'll order in."

Rob's parents aren't home, but his sister is; Erik waves at her sitting in the living room typing something on her laptop and she rolls her eyes back at them -- obviously, if Rob thought he was being discreet the past several times Erik's been in his bed, he was mistaken. Rob doesn't seem to care though, he just leads Erik through and down the hall to his bedroom at the back of the apartment, closing the door behind them and turning to Erik, looking him up and down.

"Same rules apply?" he asks, already tugging off his shirt, and Erik nods, sinking down to his knees with practiced ease.

It irks him a little more than it used to, submitting like this, even though Erik doesn't see why it should be different than before -- why _saying_ he's a Dom changes anything when, like he said, he was as much a 7D at any other age. The prickling feeling at the back of his neck is familiar, at least; he used to feel this way when he was worried he was going to be beaten. What's unsettling is that this is hardly the same circumstance.

Rob, unlike many Doms Erik's fucked, is pretty considerate when getting his cock sucked. He doesn't pull Erik's hair too hard, or try (unsuccessfully) to gag him, just encourages him on with muffled grunts and moans, his fisted hand in his mouth to try and keep his sister from overhearing. Rob likes it the same way Shaw liked it, so Erik gives over entirely to the performance of it -- humming as he sucks, like he enjoys it, smoothing his hands over Rob's hips and taking him down deep enough he can almost get Rob's balls in his mouth, letting Rob slide his wet dick against his face to leave a trail of pre-come along Erik's cheek, Erik gazing up at him with big eyes like he needs cock more than food or water.

"God," Rob breathes, his knees quivering where he's leant up against the edge of the bed, thighs spread. "You love it, don't you? I mean, fuck ... " And he groans again, eyes closing as his hips judder, trying not to thrust. "Fuck, Erik ... "

Erik grins and tilts his head to the side, licking a long stripe down the underside of Rob's cock, then back up to swallow him down again, letting his hands drop down to clasp behind his back and let his head do the work, up and down, his throat starting to get sore but not about to lose rhythm.

"I'm gonna ... " Rob manages, tugging at Erik's head, but it's only a moment later that he's shooting down Erik's throat, thick wet come splattering Erik's tongue and spilling from the corner of his mouth. Rob cries out, thrusting a little now, helpless; Erik sucks him through to the very end, swallowing what he can. When he leans back, wiping the excess from his chin with the pad of his thumb, Rob is still panting, eyes shut and his head tipped back.

Erik sits on his heels and lowers his head again, back in perfect submissive posture, and waits.

"God," Rob breathes, straightening and tucking himself away. "Fuck, Erik. That was great. Shall I do you now? I don't mind."

Erik shakes his head. "No. I'm fine, thanks." He stays where he is, but he does glance up at Rob from beneath his lashes to say, "I do need to get home, though. I need to shower, and there might still be time to make dinner."

"Well, don't feel you have to rush off, but if you gotta go," Rob says, grinning down at him. "I'll see you next practice, yeah?"

"Of course," Erik says, and he rises up again, smiling back at Rob. "See you later." 

Rob's sister gives him a nasty look when he passes by again, but he ignores it, already pulling out his phone to check his mail as he leaves the apartment. Charles has sent him a text saying he won't be home for dinner -- out on a date, apparently -- but at least, if he just eats salad and a granola bar then goes to sleep early, there'll be no one around to mind but himself.

*

_Charles_

The bed shifts.

Charles has been struggling towards waking for the past ten minutes -- the feeling of fear and loathing spilling over into his dreams and dragging him upward -- but this is new, worrying, and he opens his eyes only to find Erik climbing into the bed next to him, sliding under the covers and lying down with a thump like all of his strings have been cut, his head almost bouncing off the pillow.

"What?" Charles asks, reaching out with one hand to touch Erik's shoulder, and he realizes with sudden worry that the shiver running through the mattress is Erik shaking, afraid. "Erik."

Erik's eyes are open, looking at him from across the pillows, the whites of his eyes bright even in the darkened room. "Ssh," Erik says, whispering even though there's no one here but them. "Stay where you are."

It's a mild order, one Charles could shake off if he really wanted, but he's noticed, too, that Erik isn't wearing a shirt. His skin is warm and smooth under Charles' palm, and Charles swallows, doesn't withdraw it but doesn't dare move closer, either, to find out how the rest of him feels. Erik's had another nightmare -- it's clear in his thoughts, like a crisp, HD movie playing in his mind, and Charles is still too groggy to deal with this the way he should. He says in a gravelled, tired version of his own voice, "Okay? Talk about it?"

"I'm fine." It's an obvious lie, when in his dream he'd remembered the first time he met Janos Quested ... only this time it wasn't Shaw who made Quested fuck him, it was Erik, ordering Quested between his legs with the kind of easy, Dominant power no ten-year-old could have possessed. Erik shifts on the bed, pushing one hand underneath the pillow his head rests on. Charles can see his heart racing in the pulse of his carotid artery, straining against the skin of his neck. "Come closer," Erik says.

It's a bad idea, a very bad idea. Charles swallows, the wash of Erik's will pressing hard against Charles' resistance, threatening to drown it. What an awful dream, he thinks, and he wants to make it a joke -- you woke me up for a cuddle -- but it's true, and it's not funny, either, Erik's body still trembling in reaction from the adrenaline. There's only so much Charles can do for it now without making Erik forget it, but he can at least distract him from it until Erik relaxes enough to let himself be soothed. "S'my bed," Charles says, tugging with the hand he has on Erik's shoulder. "You come closer."

"No," Erik says, more sharply this time. "Do as I say." He reaches out a hand beneath the covers, fingertips grazing Charles' bare forearm, light and strangely hesitant at first.

Erik's put more effort into this order, and Charles finds himself moving almost before he's thought about it, shuffling closer with a grumbling sigh until there's only a scant inch of space between their bodies, until he's as close as he can be and still maintain plausible deniability despite the way Erik's arm settles around his waist, an unignorable weight. He can feel the heat of Erik's skin beside his own, radiating under the duvet, and Charles ... he concentrates as much as he can on staying relaxed, on not ... not _reacting_ , to Erik's body so close to his. "It's okay," he says, meeting Erik's eyes. "Better?"

"Yes." Erik seems to have relaxed somewhat, the tremors lighter now, not as severe. He tilts his head toward Charles, resting their brows together, and Charles closes his eyes so he doesn't have to look at that face so close to his own, lips near enough to kiss, the entire thing -- the entire pose, tangled up together, Erik cuddling him like a favorite bear -- entirely inappropriate. It's not normal, and if Charles says as much then ... then he doesn't know what to do.

"It wasn't your fault," he says quietly, once Erik has settled a little more, and finally lifts his own arm and curls it around Erik in return, so it's not just Erik embracing him like a lover. "You weren't responsible. These are just dreams. They don't mean anything more than you let them mean."

"Go back to sleep," Erik says instead of agreeing, and closes his eyes, lying there still and tense under Charles' arm. Charles sighs again and lies there awake for a while, trying to pretend he doesn't know Erik is awake, too, trying to decide what to do -- but before he comes to any conclusions he wakes up and it's morning, and Erik is long-gone, the bed cold next to Charles and only the smell of Erik's shampoo on the pillow to show that Erik was ever there at all.

*

_Erik_

The nightmares do not relent. 

Erik starts staying up later and later into the night, unwilling to close his eyes, afraid of what he'll see if he does -- that shutting off the light will cast him into a darkness from which he cannot escape, that the lines between now and then will become so blurred he'll lose track of himself, lose himself in a life he thought he had escaped.

It's guilt, he decides; guilt for what happened with Victor Creed, for the way he snuck out in the dead of night, cowardly, for the way that he makes people want him .... For the way that, even now, he finds it easier to hide from the rest of the world than do something useful with himself for mutantkind.

The most he can do is return to the internet, where he at least can find sympathetic minds; there are even a few subreddits that are as anti-Hellfire as they are pro-separatism. Erik posts so frequently that he's eventually made a moderator. He's sitting on the downstairs sofa typing out a page-long reply to a commentater on the increase in anti-mutant crime since desegregation when Charles comes in, heading straight for the cordless phone and picking up the handset.

"I'm just going to go call Raven," he says, "then do you fancy watching a movie or something?"

Erik glances up, meeting Charles' gaze across the room. "All right," he says, and he hits 'post' on his laptop then tilts the screen down, pushing the computer off his lap to the side. "Let's watch _Kill Bill._ " 

Charles says, with a wry smile, "I'd rather pluck every hair from my legs individually with tweezers. Something less gory, perhaps?"

"You'll watch _Mutants vs Zombies_ , but when it's a mutant killing humans, it's too much?" Erik says, arching an eyebrow. "I'll cover your eyes for you. Come here and sit with me." He tilts his head toward the empty sofa cushion beside him and tries to exude Dominance; he's found, lately, that many of the house rules are somewhat malleable if Erik just acts Dommy enough.

Charles hesitates, his feet shifting restlessly, but he stays where he is, on the other side of the room. "It's not who's doing the killing, it's how violent and explicit it is. Still no to _Kill Bill_ ," he says, lifting up the phone as if it's evidence to be presented. "I'm heading upstairs to call Raven, but I'll be down after." He starts heading towards the door that leads to the gallery, and Erik frowns at his retreating back, and calls after him.

"I told you to come _here_ ," he says, and he puts Will behind it this time. "Sit next to me. You can talk to Raven downstairs."

Charles stops in his tracks, and Erik can see a shudder run through him, but after a moment Charles turns around and comes back, a neutral expression on his face as he walks around the end of the sofa and takes the seat Erik indicated.

"I'd rather make my call upstairs," he says once he's sat down, and if his face is neutral then his voice is uncomfortable, awkward.

Erik just smiles at him -- reassuringly, he hopes. "Yes, but I want your company," he says, knowing it's a bit pleading but determined not to feel embarrassed by it. "Don't worry. I won't listen in." If he lets Charles go upstairs, then god only knows how long Charles will be on the phone, and Erik just -- Erik likes having him around. It's nice. And he doesn't understand why Charles would want to be alone, just for a phone call.

"It's polite," Charles says, but he doesn't get back up, which means Erik's won. He reaches over and squeezes Charles' wrist, once, then pulls his laptop back into his lap and flips it open again, switching tabs to check his email. After a minute Charles sighs and pulls his feet up onto the sofa, turning sideways so his back is resting against the arm and his legs are between the two of them, his knees raised and feet planted on the cushion, then dials and lifts the handset to his ear. The phone only rings twice before Raven picks up at the other end.

"Hey, it's me," Charles says, leaning his shoulder into the back cushion. "I'm fine, how are you?"

Erik has a few emails from online friends, and two from his internship; he stars the ones he doesn't feel like answering right now and types out quick responses to the others. Only when that's done, he has nothing else to distract himself, and Charles is still talking on the phone next to him on the sofa, caught up in his conversation with Raven and paying little attention to anything else -- and most especially not to Erik.

Erik closes his computer again and sets it down on the coffee table this time, shifting to face Charles, who meets his eyes briefly before looking away, listening to something Raven is saying on the line. On impulse Erik leans forward and curls his fingers around Charles' ankle, tugging it toward himself and pressing his thumb just above Charles' heel, massaging out the small knot he can feel there.

"That's crazy," Charles says to Raven, squirming a little; his toes twitch before he pulls on his foot, trying to free it from Erik's grip, and he says, silently, _Don't you dare tickle me, I will kick you._ "I mean, it's great, but it's crazy. What are you going to tell them?"

Erik gives Charles a quick grin and recaptures the foot, settling it in his lap. _Promise._

"Mmm, are you sure that's the best plan, though? You have a steady job now, after all," Charles says, looking away from Erik, down at his own lap. "It might sound great, and I think it could be wonderful for you, but you need to make sure it's real, not something that'll collapse and leave you singing on a street corner with your hat on the sidewalk. Yes, I know I'm exaggerating. Of course I wouldn't let that happen. But still."

Satisfied, Erik turns his focus to Charles' foot, massaging it and leaning his side against the back of the sofa, tilting his head against the cushion. Charles is still talking to Raven, but Erik can tell his attention is split, now, caught between that conversation and Erik himself. Erik presses his thumb down the arch of Charles' foot and Charles' toes curl; Erik grins and tweaks one between his thumb and forefinger, shooting a teasing look at Charles across the sofa. But Charles has his eyes closed, his face turned into the afghan that's draped over the back of the cushion, the phone all but hiding the other side of his face. Erik _can_ see, however, the slight flush at his throat, and hear the change in his voice as he says,"I'm really pleased for you, Raven. It sounds like a real opportunity. We should grab dinner sometime this week, to celebrate."

It's more the air of distraction that gives Charles away than the words themselves, that and the way his other foot flexes then folds under his stretched-out thigh, as if he's hiding it. He's paying more attention to Erik than his phone conversation at this point, and it's childish, but Erik feels victorious all the same, like he was fighting a war and didn't even realize it, and he's won. He moves his hands further up, around Charles' ankle, trying to goad him into looking back at him again, rubbing tiny circles beneath the bones on either side of Charles' shin.

"Me? Oh, much the same as normal," Charles says, shifting a little -- at first Erik thinks he's going to try and pull away again, but then he settles, switching sides and propping the phone between the sofa and his ear. "Went on a date Tuesday night, it was okay. Nothing special. Erik's running wild around Manhattan, practically savage. I just hose him down fully dressed to get off the mud and blood when he gets in, that seems to have spared the carpets."

Erik snorts, and when Charles looks at him he smirks, then flicks the sole of Charles' foot. He's getting tired of waiting for Charles to finish up his conversation -- he knows that's unfair, that Charles has every right to speak to Raven if he wants to, but Erik can't help feeling antsy sitting here while he does. Even so, it's better than having let Charles go upstairs for possibly-hours. He sighs slightly and his hands go still on Charles' leg, watching him evenly, trying not to let too much of his frustration show in his face, even if he's sure Charles will catch it from his mind all the same.

"Uh huh," Charles says, and Erik can hear his tone firming again, becoming more focused. "Oh, I watched that! Wasn't it awful? Kieran can't pull off more than two different expressions, I don't understand why the judges love him so much. David was clearly the better choice for Top Model. Utter travesty." His foot shifts, as if about to pull away, but Erik lets go, and this time he leans forward to reach for Charles' other, hidden foot, tugging at his ankle until Charles frees it from beneath his thigh.

Charles relaxes more when Erik starts massaging again, pressing on Charles' insole to point his foot forward, pushing his arch down against Erik's thumb. He's still talking, but he's stopped resisting, his foot utterly malleable now in Erik's hands. When Erik looks up at him Charles' whole body has become languid, like he's given in, and Erik feels some of the tension in his own body let go at last. He keeps going until Charles finally wraps up his conversation and hangs up the phone, both Charles' feet settled in his lap.

Charles lets the phone slip down to rest on the sofa beside him, and looks at Erik with a drowsy sort of look on his face, one Erik recognizes from the times he's put Charles into light trances before. "Fidget," Charles says, blinking slowly. Erik smiles at him and squeezes his foot once more between both hands. 

"I take it Raven is doing well," he says, lacing his fingers together atop Charles' instep.

"She got a new job offer, on Broadway this time," Charles says. "It'd be more money and a lot more notice taken, but it's still in development, so it's not one hundred percent certain it'll come to stage. She'd have to leave her current show to work on it, so. I'm not convinced she should give up a sure thing." He smiles lazily, head tipping sideways. "Mmm. You know footrubs are usually not a guardian/ward thing, right? Or even friends."

This again. Charles keeps making a point of this, but he never seems to want to follow through. Erik's not sure what he's trying to tell him: that Erik should stop? That would make sense, if only Charles ever _told_ him to stop when Erik asked. To highlight how much closer they are than other guardians and their wards? Maybe. If so, isn't that a good thing? It means Charles loves him, that Charles won't disappear into someone else and forget about Erik entirely. 

"Do you want me not to do it again?" Erik asks, just like he asked all the other times, already knowing the answer.

"It's just ... " Charles starts, and maybe this time ... but then he's shaking his head, closing his eyes and slouching down on the sofa so his head is resting on the arm and his knees are folded up between them again, though his feet don't move, still resting in Erik's lap. "It's fine. If it doesn't bother you then don't worry about it."

"All right, then," Erik says, "I won't." He grins and tweaks Charles' toe again. "I can put you further down, if you want." He's not sure if that is what Charles was trying to hint at, already, by resisting.

"Won't you be bored?" Charles asks, toes curling. "If I'm all ... subspaced."

"I can read a book," Erik says, reasonably. "But I don't find it boring, if that matters. It's validating, just seeing that I can actually _do_ it."

Charles sighs, slumping further, boneless. "Well, that's what I'm here for. Up to you. The movie was the most elaborate plan I had for this evening, so it wouldn't be a problem."

Erik smiles further; it's relieving to realize he was right, that Charles only pushed back because he wanted this -- wanted Erik to Dominate him. It explains a lot, and next time, Erik will just know from experience. "Come sit next to me," he says. It's a light order, but there's just enough sway behind it to make it hard for Charles not to obey, in his current state.

A breath, then Charles is pushing himself up from where he's laying down and shifting over on the couch, until he's sat beside Erik, hands loose and palms-up in his lap. His feet swing down to rest on the floor, bare and pale against the carpet. "Hmm?" It's a question all in itself, though wordless.

"Good," Erik says, settling his hand on the back of Charles' neck to tug his head down to rest against Erik's shoulder, then draping his arm across Charles' back, keeping them close. Privately, he's glad Charles lets him do things like this. Sometimes it feels like the things Charles says are inappropriate are the things Erik wants to do most -- the things Shaw and the others never did. Small ways he can differentiate himself from them and say, here: I'm different than they are. I'm not that kind of Dom. "Just relax," he says, demands, scratching his fingertips against Charles' upper arm. "Stay here, until I say you can move again."

"Okay," Charles says, leaning against Erik's side and closing his eyes. He's warm, and heavy, and he's not resisting any more at all.

*

_Charles_

It's not that he hadn't been expecting the subpoena, but when it does come Charles is aggravated anyway, despite himself, a feeling he only just keeps from sharing with Erik. As it is, he takes it with him to his home office the same evening, deciding that it's best to get it over with. After all, the earlier he sends Erik's psychiatric record, along with all of Charles' notes, over to the defense, the more they'll miss out on any future sessions.

He stands over his desk, too restless to sit down, only the lamp for light, and turns on his computer. It's fast; less than a minute until he's staring at his documents folder, thousands and thousands of words. And all of them about how damaged Erik is, has been, by people who used him, both for his body and for his powers.

Charles sits down, heavily, the chair creaking under him as his hands curl into fists at his thighs.

Just looking at these is a stark reminder of just how culpable he himself is in all of this -- of how, if he's honest with himself, he is sliding down that same slippery slope. He is attracted to Erik. He wants him, sometimes, with a gut-wrenching desire that is almost nauseating, the way it rises up in his throat; when Erik smiles, teases him, comes home sweaty and muddy from exercise, dirt smeared across his bare calves and wiping his face with his shirt. When Erik takes control, and Dominates Charles as if he has a right to, as if he were Charles' Dom, and an adult, and they had the sort of relationship Charles knows they never can.

Erik is so grown-up sometimes that it's hard to remember that just letting Erik direct him this way is an abuse of Charles' position, leading him to think this is normal when Charles is too comfortable or enjoying things too much to tell him to stop, or too scared that Erik will realize the way Charles feels about him, if he objects too strongly.

Charles clicks on the first folder of session records and sends them to a zipped file, then sits and watches, blankly, as the computer processes them, the little green line slowly growing from left to right. He's no better than Shaw and his cronies, not really, he thinks, feeling everything inside of him clenching up, like he's fallen into a garbage truck, full of filth, and is being slowly compacted to be taken to the dump.

At least Erik is happy, Charles thinks, as the zipping process finishes and he starts the next one, a few clicks of the mouse before he's sat there in stasis once again, unable to move forward or back, waiting for things to resolve themselves. At least Erik is contented in the life they lead now, instead of fearful, constantly waiting for physical or sexual abuse, and telling himself it was love. At least Erik is doing what he wants to do, now, finding himself and ... at least Charles really cares about him. Even if he is ... even if he is taking advantage of Erik's trust and naïveté.

It doesn't make him feel much better. While the rest of the files compress neatly into their respective zip files Charles lays his head down on the desk, curling his arms around it to make things dark, and quiet, and tries not to think about it at all.

Once he's sent the files over to Gabrielle, who will pass them along to the defense, Charles leaves his office and goes to make himself a cup of tea, seriously considering making it Irish. Erik is there, in the kitchen, fiddling with some chicken that is slowly browning in the cast iron skillet, frowning as he prods it with a spatula. 

"I hope you like chicken salad," Erik says. "It's what's for lunch." He lifts his head and looks over his shoulder at Charles. "Come here and look at this. Tell me if you think it's cooked through."

Charles goes, stepping in alongside Erik to take a look, though he's hardly an expert. "It looks okay to me," he says, conscientiously keeping space between them, making the whole thing, as it ought to be, innocuous. "But I don't mind if you want to cut into mine and see for yourself. It's the best way to tell, really."

"Let's see, then," Erik says, and a knife floats down from the magnetic strip over the cutting board to slice cleanly through one of the chicken breasts, exposing its fleshy white interior. "Looks good," Erik says, and the knife sets itself aside. "What do you think?"

"If it's not pink, it's fine." Charles steps away again, over to the kettle, which he fills with water from the tap and sets to boiling; he busies his hands with getting a mug from the cupboard, then the tea, laying everything he needs out precisely along the edge of the counter, aligning each item with care, focusing on that. "Is that ready now, then?"

"I said chicken salad, didn't I?" He hears Erik flipping off the burner, and then Erik's body is suddenly pressing up alongside his, Erik reaching past Charles' head into the cabinet for a bowl. He's warm, body taut under his clothes, and Charles moves quickly, stepping out of the way, ducking under the cabinet door. Erik continues, oblivious, "Go set the table, while your water's boiling."

"All right," Charles says, the tingling feeling of obeying an order flushing through him, leaving his skin sensitive, prickling, waiting for more. It's a relief to take the cutlery from the drawer and just -- do as he's told, even though he knows he shouldn't, that he should be the one in charge.

It's probably the endorphins from the Dominance. His brain is getting too used to the times Erik exerts his will, and chemically attuning itself to that. That Charles loves Erik, too, in a deep, familial way, only complicates things. He lays the knives and forks out at their places with the same careful precision as his tea-making things, absorbing himself in the angles so he doesn't have to think. He needs to find someone else, someone who he can invest all of this emotion into, who he won't be arrested for wanting.

Charles goes speed-dating the very next week, and it seemed like a good idea when Raven suggested it, but the results are ... well. Charles wouldn't call it a total waste of an evening, but it's not particularly successful, either. If the intent was to spend time meeting new people and just enjoying himself then perhaps he'd feel less let down by it, but given that he's trying to find someone he likes enough to take his mind off of Erik ... it's an unqualified failure.

"So tell me about yourself," Ray says, leaning across the table. He's Charles' height, dark-haired and broad; friendly enough without being creepy, which is a good start. "What do you do?"

Charles smiles. "I'm a mutant psychologist. I work with mutants who have issues usually specifically relating to their mutation, or issues that are difficult to treat because of it."

"Huh." Ray's interest piques, and he taps his chin with one finger thoughtfully before saying, "So, you ever met anyone who thought they were an alien?"

Charles winces. Next.

"I go running in Central Park, sometimes," Charles says, taking a sip of his drink. "I've never really got along with gyms -- I'm pretty sure there's one in our building, actually, but I must admit I don't actually know where it is."

"I'm not much into gyms, either," Danielle says, giving him a wry half-smile. She's a short, voluptuous blonde, her toned arms pale against her dark dress; very pretty, and Charles could definitely be attracted to her. She continues, "I'm training for the New York Triathlon right now, and I much prefer being outside for it."

They talk for a while, and Charles is starting to feel very positive about her -- she's nice, friendly, with a pleasant mind and a strong Will -- until he mentions Erik and her face falls, her interest fizzling at the mention of a teenager in the mix. Oh well.

Next.

"Where would you want to go on a first date?" Esteban asks, with utter sincerity; he's a well-dressed older Dom who said he worked for Fidelity as a hedge fund manager, and it shows in his clothes, everything on his body expensive-looking, from his hair to his shoes. "Anywhere. Paris. Rome. You name it."

"Nothing so fancy," Charles says, thinking instead about how awkward it would be to be trapped somewhere with someone if the first date didn't go well. "Perhaps a classic film festival, I love old movies."

"Oh yeah? What's your favorite?"

"I like _All About Eve_ ," Charles says, and smiles, warming to the subject. "It won Best Picture in 1950. Bette Davis was in it, and it was one of Marilyn Monroe's earliest appearances."

"I miss those days," Esteban says wistfully, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his broad chest. There's a faraway look in his eye when he says, "Back when submissives still took pride in themselves. These days the dynamic roles are all confused. You just can't find subs like that anymore."

What -- Charles frowns, stiffening. "What do you mean?" he asks, frowning. "Because subs have their own lives, their own interests outside of their Doms?" He knows already that's exactly what Esteban means, he just wants to see if he'll say it out loud.

"Hey now," Esteban says, holding his hands up like he thinks to calm Charles down. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just appreciating the subs of yore, that's all."

Which is certainly not what he's thinking. 

Next.

By the time he's done for the evening Charles has met thirty Doms of varying ages, genders and creeds, and none of them are interesting enough -- or interested enough in him -- to be worth following up on. After everything's finished up, number cards handed in and dished out, he takes a cab home, staring out the window at the city passing by, and tries not to wonder if he'll ever find the right fit -- the right person at the right time, and possibly more importantly, at the right _age_. It's hard not to wonder if this is all there will ever be to his life -- well, this and his sordid little attraction to Erik.

"I'm home," he calls when he gets in, going to the closet to hang up his jacket and discard his shoes. Erik is sitting on the sofa, fiddling with code on his computer in the next room, although Charles felt his attention leaping to Charles' buttons and belt buckle and the coins in his wallet as soon as Charles walked through the door.

"In here," Erik says, and when Charles goes into the next room Erik tilts the top of his laptop down to glance over his shoulder at him, lips turning up in a half-smile. "How was it?"

Charles grimaces. "Pretty awful," he admits, leaning his hip against the back of the sofa and looking down at Erik, folding his arms across his chest. "Some of them were okay, but there are some really strange Doms out there. One of them started telling me what he wanted to do to me in bed before we'd said hello."

"I told you it wasn't worth it. The people who go to speed-dating are the people who can't get a date anywhere else."

Oh, well -- "Thank you for that," Charles says, amused despite himself at the implication; he reaches up to his throat and unbuttons the collar of his shirt, loosening his tie as he relaxes so that it's not so tight. "I suppose I'll just place myself up on the shelf with the spinsters and the weirdos, then, and hope someone decides to dust me off before I die of old age." 

"There's always online," Erik says, obviously not trying very hard to be helpful. His smile widens, and he says, "Come here. Lie down. You look tired." 

He pats the sofa cushion next to him, and Charles ... hesitates, for a moment, before conceding, walking around to the other side and sitting down, settling into the cushions with a sigh. If there's anywhere he's wanted to be this evening, it's here -- not, of course, that that's okay, not really. it would be better to be out of the apartment and trying to find someone he can really be with -- certainly better than being caught in an endless cycle of not wanting to want what he wants, and yet, here is where he always ends up, taking what he can get and wishing for more. He turns his attention back to the concrete, tries to ignore everything else. Just be normal.

"What have you been up to?" he asks, glancing down at Erik's laptop. "Not getting into too much trouble, I hope."

"Not setting up clandestine rendez-vous with Hellfire, if that's what you mean," Erik says dryly, tilting his screen back up so Charles can see -- it's all Greek to him, though, entirely scripted in one of the indecipherable programming languages Erik knows. "And I didn't say sit down, I said _lie_ down."

There's the hint of an order there this time, and it tingles down Charles' spine from the base of his skull to his tailbone, like a warm shiver; his next blink is slower, and he says, "But there's not enough space. I'm a grown man, you know, despite your short jokes."

"You're also a telepath," Erik says pointedly. 

Charles looks, and sees what Erik is thinking. "Oh," he says, and thinks, _this is a bad idea_. After the footrub Charles has been conscientious about not letting Erik pet him like this, even if it is intended innocently -- it's just not going to end well, but somehow he finds himself moving, anyway, like seeing himself underwater, as he lifts his feet up onto the couch cushion and brings his head, hesitantly, knowing he shouldn't, to rest on Erik's upper thigh.

Weak, he thinks, and tries to ignore himself. Erik is only thinking about how nice it was to pet Charles before, not about sex at all, and Charles is too pathetic to refuse, too beholden to that feeling of contentment to make it all stop before it goes too far.

Erik's thigh is warm under his temple, the fabric of Erik's jeans worn soft, and Charles lets his hands rest loosely in front of him, self-conscious -- it's too comfortable, and that, he's found, is always a warning sign. 

"Good," Erik says, sounding pleased, and after a moment he settles his hand on the crown of Charles' head, slowly stroking his fingers through Charles' hair. Ohhhhh.

Charles' eyes close despite himself, and he shivers, because it feels ... his scalp and nape are so sensitive, probably because of the added blood flow to his head from the telepathy. His whole head is tingling, like electricity running through it, sparking and flowing through his veins. He should stop this, should stop Erik from doing this because ... he loses his train of thought, good intentions juddering to a halt. He tries to pick them back up, but he ... can't. Won't. Can't. He doesn't even know which it is.

He's distantly conscious of Erik's free hand typing something on the laptop, but it's hard to focus on anything but the feel of Erik's fingertips against his scalp, then lower, against bare skin, a warm, light touch ... Erik's fingers were always so slender .... stroking. Rubbing in small circles over his skin.

Charles tries to make himself pull away, but all he manages is to tip his head forward, baring more of his neck to the touch. It's hypnotic, somehow catching hold of him, keeping him there, and that warm and swelling feeling is so _good_ that it takes Charles a while to notice the heavy feeling in his groin. He shifts his hips, and his half-hard cock brushes against the inside of his pants.

Charles freezes. Shit. Shit. 

The fingers go on stroking, and Charles takes a breath in, then lets it out slowly and shifts again on the couch to tip himself over, hide it from Erik's sight; he brings his top leg up to overshadow his crotch, resting his knee on the cushions, and tries not to give away the hastening beat of his heart, the way his lungs want to shiver out every exhalation, the pleasure running through him. Without changing Erik's perceptions Charles can't get up now, not without giving himself away, and he hates the thought of it, of messing with Erik's mind without his permission. The only other option is to wait it out, try to will himself back down.

But he can't seem to pull up any of the thoughts he usually uses to turn himself off. Instead he keeps coming back to this slow petting, the drag of fingertips not quite scratching, the way he wants to stay just there, subsumed by the feel of it, stay where he's been put until he comes.

"I think I've almost got it figured out," Erik says, and his hand doesn't let up, is still petting Charles with the same steady rhythm. "Stark's deadlines are ridiculous, though I guess it wouldn't be an internship if it weren't impossible slave labor. But once I realized I'd overloaded the virtual function, I just ... "

Erik's voice is so familiar, a bit gravelly from the late hour, and Charles isn't really listening to the words but his tone ... it's bad, so bad, because Charles is all the way hard now, trying to stay still and quiet, stomach fluttering, and this is wrong. He shouldn't ... it's not a surprise, the way his body reacts to having his head stroked, he's basically letting Erik jerk him off without knowing it. Charles should have known this would happen. His eyelids flutter, and he can't help a small noise, curling over as far as he can to present only the back side of his body, practically lying flat on his stomach now.

"Is everything all right?" Erik says, and his hand pauses briefly on Charles' neck, though it doesn't draw away, his fingertips still pressed to the dip at the base of Charles' skull, and Charles says, "I just need to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back," deflecting Erik's attention entirely so he can make his get-away, locking himself in his bathroom upstairs and coming as soon as he has his cock in hand, three hard pulses that spatter the toilet seat and leave him panting and gasping, forearm pressed to the wall behind the toilet and his forehead resting against it, hating himself even as he quivers and moans.

He washes his hands, after, can't meet his own eyes in the mirror. And the question he has to ask himself is ... what now? How does he continue from here? It's clear that he's in too deep; the dating was supposed to help with that, but for now Erik is still oblivious to Charles' true perversion, and Charles has to keep it that way. He has to.

So he goes downstairs, heading as calmly as he can back into the living room, and lies down again, laying himself back where he was -- nothing to hide, nothing to see here. Nothing unusual at all. And if the thought of Erik petting him again makes him feel ... better, comforted, Charles' bitter hopes are dashed when Erik says, "I'm about to head up to bed. I'm running with Suzanne at six tomorrow morning," closing his laptop and tilting over to kiss Charles chastely on the temple before he slides his leg out from under Charles' head and stands. "Good night, Charles," he says, and then he leaves Charles alone in the dim room, curled up on his side and waiting for his heart to stop stuttering.

*

_Erik_

Erik's cleaning out his desk, looking for the iron supplement pills that he had to take when he was fourteen that he's sure must still be around here somewhere -- the doctor said he's anemic, again, which makes sense, he's not eating red meat anymore, but he can't find them, can't even sense the iron, so they're probably not here. Instead of the bottle, though, his fingers brush paper and he crouches down, peering into the drawer and tugging out a battered copy of _Tess of the d'Urbervilles._ He'd borrowed it from Charles ages ago, he'd thought he'd lost it, but it must have been here the whole time, hiding practically in plain sight.

He straightens up again, and glances across the room at his phone, plugged in to the wall charger. It's only 11:13, Charles should still be awake at this hour. He flips through the book quickly, just making sure there are no serious issues that would mean he ought to buy a replacement, then heads out into the dark hallway, his bedroom door opening ahead of him with a twist of his power.

Charles' room is a gentle amber glow at the far end; his nightstand lamp must be on. Erik quickens his pace, feet quiet on the thick rug. Charles, when he finds him, is lying curled up on one side in bed, head propped up on his hand, tapping at something on his tablet. Erik raps twice on the door frame with his knuckles; when Charles glances up Erik smiles and holds up the book.

"Look what I found," he says. "It was hiding in my desk all this time, apparently."

"Oh," Charles says, sounding surprised. "Thank you," and it's only when his eyes flick up a little, meeting Erik's directly, that Erik realizes Charles wasn't looking him in the eyes before.

Erik is abruptly, intensely aware of the fact that he isn't wearing a shirt. He's been sleeping in just pajama bottoms for months now, all summer, and hadn't thought anything of it -- did Charles ...? He frowns and almost dismisses the thought out of hand. Charles wouldn't. He's a sub. He wouldn't. ...Wouldn't he?

"Not a problem," Erik says, making his voice easy, trying to forget the way his heart's beating fast. He overcomes the slight hesitation that tries to keep his feet in place, crossing over to where Charles sits on the bed and offering the book to him. "Here. It seems to be in the same condition, more or less."

Charles takes it, his eyes now firmly fixed on the book. His face looks a little pink -- Erik feels like he's overanalyzing everything now, marking the very specific type of flush that rises up in Charles' cheeks, the quickness of his hand to take the book. "That's great, thank you," he says, then looks up at Erik and smiles, propping himself up a little higher on his hip. "Do you have everything ready for going back to school tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Erik says, and he doesn't think too deeply the way he feels the need to move away, again, retreating back to the doorway, hand catching on the frame just above the metal latch. He presses the pad of his thumb against the copper. "My old iron pills aren't anywhere in the house that I can sense." Or find by mundane means, either. "You'll have to pick me up another bottle while you're at the pharmacy tomorrow getting my prescriptions."

"That's fine," Charles says, his smile quieting, weakening at the corners. He looks down again, setting the book on his nightstand. "Go get some sleep, Erik. Wouldn't want you tired on the first day back."

"Good night, then," Erik says, and he goes back to his room, kicking the door softly shut behind himself. It doesn't seem fair to Charles, he decides, to keep wondering if he'd been looking at Erik like -- that -- especially considering what Erik knows of Charles' opinions on such matters. But that doesn't stop him from pulling a t-shirt out of his dresser drawer and tugging it on over his head, to sleep covered up.

Erik's practically forgotten it by the time it happens again -- this time, Charles' gaze lingering on his body when he comes in from a long run, and again, over dinner, the way he always looks just a little too long when Erik speaks, the way Charles is so very careful not to let their hands brush when Erik passes him the salt. It's like once he's noticed it, he can't _stop_ noticing it -- and it's everywhere. It's all the _time_. It starts Erik wondering how long this has been going on ... he'd noticed it before, little things, the way Charles looked at him sometimes, how quick Charles' hands are to reach for him -- but always chaste, always paternal, almost too-careful to never be anything more -- did he just believe that because it's what he wanted to believe? He's seen these looks before. He knows the gleam in Charles' eyes. He knows what that means.

He starts to feel nauseated all the time, a queasy feeling that blooms in the pit of his stomach and won't go away. When he sleeps, he dreams about Shaw.

Erik tries not to think about it in Charles' presence. He reserves those thoughts for school, trying to figure out if he's just imagining things as he takes notes in History, trying to remember, as he sits in a Columbia lecture hall for his physics class, if Charles has looked at him like that before. He knows that look, knows what it signifies, has had so many eyes touch him, always right before hands, only with Charles it doesn't make _sense_. Charles is a submissive. He isn't a Dom, inclined to want and to take.

It's insulting to Charles, Erik decides, disgusted with himself, even to entertain the idea. Charles would be hurt if Erik were to so much as suggest it, in all likelihood. In English, Erik taps his pen against the edge of his desk, rattling it rapidfire between his fingers, doesn't notice until Madelyne pushes his elbow and hisses at him to stop. 

He'll keep an eye on it, is all, he decides. If it means something ... if it means something, that will be (will continue to be?) obvious. Eventually. 

His concentration is scattered by it, though, and he gets his first B, on a Mandarin test he forgot to study for. He attends classes in a daze, all the material blurring together -- stops speaking up in lessons, just takes his notes, adding more and more detail until he's practically writing down the lectures verbatim. Instead of using classtime to wonder about Charles, now he'd do anything to avoid having to think, to wonder.... 

One of his teachers asks him to stay after class, says, "You seem disoriented, if that's even the right word. It's very unusual for you, Erik" -- and -- "Is everything all right at home?" -- to which Erik can only stare at her, faintly dumbfounded, and say, "Everything's fine, I'm just tired," leaving before she pushes further. It mostly serves to irritate him, that anyone would question Charles at all, after everything Charles has been through on Erik's account -- no, not merely irritated, he's _angry,_ almost excessively, and on some level he knows he's overreacting. But that doesn't mean he was blind to the things he saw, either, and remembering that sends him back into the same old spiral of suspicions that make him hate himself a little bit more every day.

He tries to keep it together, for Charles' sake. Charles shouldn't have to suffer because Erik has obviously temporarily lost his mind. He still puts Charles down into subspace when Charles needs him to, and he feels guilty, because every time he does it's like he's looking for ... _signs_ ... and when he doesn't find them, he hates himself. When he does, they're -- insignificant, meaningless, because _Charles is a submissive_ , because .... There are other reasons why not, but Erik finds them harder and harder to remember, somehow. 

He loses a whole month to his own uncertainty, the days and weeks blurring together into a smudge of anxiety and second thoughts until summer's gone and it's halfway through fall, the world slowly dying outside the window. 

Erik tries to forget, but it's impossible. It doesn't help that Charles is acting differently, too -- he spends longer hours in his office, and when he comes out he's always distracted, quiet, though he pretends everything is the same as normal. Erik can always tell, because as much as Charles likes to think he has perfect control, there's always this aura around him, one that Erik has learned how to read in all its nuances, and something is wrong. It's clear Charles has read Erik's concerns from his mind, and that Charles ... hates him for being so wrong, or .... Erik can't come up with the alternative, which only makes it all the worse.

Erik redoubles his efforts toward being a good Dominant for Charles, like an apology of sorts. He starts ordering him to do stupid little tasks, just to put him down hard into subspace so Erik can sit on the sofa with his arms wrapped around Charles, and not worry that Charles will read, even now, something hurtful from Erik's thoughts. It feels like the only time they have together, now, is when Erik has forced Charles to be around him, when he's ordered him to spend time in Erik's presence -- never because Charles _wants_ to be there. He doesn't come home from work until long past dark, after the dinners Erik's made have gone cold on the table and he's had to clear them away, boxing the leftovers into little containers he labels with Charles' name but that never get eaten. He starts to feel like he lives alone in this giant apartment, rattling around inside it like a dried pea in a box until he can't stand the silence anymore.

In October he catches Charles coming in late from work, early snowflakes still melting on his scarf and glittering in his hair, Erik meeting him in the gallery still dressed in his suit from his internship with his tie loose around his collar. "From now on," he says, "you will be home by six every night, unless you text me for permission to be late."

Charles' expression immediately shifts into a dark frown, brows creased together as he folds his arms across his chest. "You're not my Dominant, Erik," he says, his voice firm and controlled. "You don't get to dictate that to me. If I have work I will work late. Do you understand?"

"No," Erik says, "I don't." His arms cross as well, a mirror of Charles', his chest tightening slightly, painfully. He pushes past that feeling forcefully, unwilling to concede the point; he won't go back to living like this. He won't let Charles erase him from this, the two-of-them. "You don't have work until _ten at night._ And if you do, well, that's why you have an office here. I'm not your Dom, but I'm your ward. You're supposed to look after me, and you can't do that from ten blocks away. So fucking -- _look after me!_ "

Heat floods his chest at that and he looks away, however briefly. When he lifts his gaze again he sees a look of guilt flit across Charles' face, but it doesn't supersede the frown."I'm sorry if you've felt neglected, Erik; that wasn't my intention, and I apologize for that. But you can _ask_ me about things like that. Not order me. Perhaps I've let things go too far at home, let you practice a little too often on me." He starts unwinding his scarf, the wetness from melted snow rubbing off on his bare neck. "Do you need something in particular?"

"I need you to fucking forgive me, all right?" Erik says, and he hates the sudden thickness in his throats, bleeding into his words, which snap out of him before he can yank them back. "Haven't I made it obvious I'm sorry?" 

Before Charles can reply, Erik turns and runs up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his face burning as he stalks down the hall to his bedroom and slams the door shut behind himself, the knob melting before he can stop the reflex. He walks past his bed, toward the window, which has opened for him already, snow blowing in and scattering across the carpet, wisping toward the toes of Erik's shoes. The winter air is cold on his face, the wetness on his cheeks somehow feeling both hot and cold at the same time. He glares out at the black side of the building opposite, gasping in choked half-breaths through his nose, ones that don't seem to make it past the base of his throat, and clenches his hands into fists so hard it hurts.

"Erik?" Charles' voice is muffled by the door, but his watch and belt buckle and the change in his pocket are all right up along it, as if he's leaning against it on the other side. "Erik, you don't have anything to be sorry about -- there's nothing you need forgiveness for. Okay? Please come out."

Erik takes two deep, shaking breaths, and turns around, opening his mouth and half-expecting to hear himself say _Fuck you_ , but instead he strides across the room, lifting his hand and twisting the brass back into something approximating a knob, pulling the door open. Charles stumbles but Erik's there already, throwing his arms around Charles' shoulders and pressing his face hard against his neck, eyes squeezed shut and leaking heat. 

"You can't just --" he starts, only that cracks, and he tightens his arms, fingertips digging hard into Charles' flesh, Erik's whole body trembling like he weighs nothing, like he's a dead leaf. "Please don't leave me. Please don't."

"Oh, my darling," Charles says, and wraps his arms around Erik's back, holding him in return, one hand coming up to cup the back of Erik's head and press him against the shoulder of his coat, which smells like damp wool and outside. "I won't. I promise. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." And he turns his head and kisses the spot just above Erik's ear, his other hand stroking up and down Erik's spine. "I'm sorry."

Erik doesn't know what Charles has to be sorry for -- he's the one, Erik's the one, who ever started to suspect ... and now .... Now, he's pushed Charles away, he's ... he might have ruined things, after all these years. And of course Charles forgives. Of course he does. Erik never would, _could_ never forgive, something like this, but Charles has always been a much better person than Erik. 

Charles is damp and solid in his arms and Erik clings harder, and breathes in the woolly smell, the two of them standing there tangled together until they're both cold from the open window, until Erik thinks he might be able to convince himself to forget everything he thought he saw.

*


	17. Seventeen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Check out the amazing art by **Dri**! It's from the scene all of you remember from end of last chapter, I'm sure: [here](http://drisrt.tumblr.com/post/101310707241/in-honor-of-spicedpiano-and-tahariels-wonderful). It's gorgeous.
> 
> CW are in end-of-chapter notes. Long chapter today, hope y'all enjoy it. :)

_Charles_

After Erik's breakdown Charles has to stay home more, even though it feels like backsliding -- if it's affecting Erik so deeply then there's no choice but for Charles to be in the apartment more of the time, keeping Erik company and trying not to look at him in any way Erik could interpret correctly and start that whole train of thought over again. It's hard, so hard, to be so hypervigilant of his own behavior every minute of every day, and Charles feels exhausted every evening, like he's been drained of something vital. Perhaps it's his spontaneity -- when every motion has to be thought through three times before he can allow himself to act, everything feels boring and tired, every drop of juice wrung out of it before he even has a chance to sip.

Charles is sitting in the den working on some patient reports when Erik comes in late from cross-country practice and stops dead in the doorway behind him, staring at Charles as if he’s surprised to see him. Charles can feel Erik’s eyes hot on the back of his neck.

“Good run?” he asks without turning around, clicking onto the next page of the report on his laptop then making a note on his notepad. Casual. Normal. Like Charles being here is to be expected, like he hasn’t been finding ever-thinner excuses to be out of the apartment lately.

“It was fine,” Erik says, and when he steps into Charles’ line of sight his hair is still wet from the showers, damp and dark, messy. He doesn’t look very pleased to see him. “You’re not working late?”

“I am, but I’m doing it here,” Charles says, giving Erik a small, tentative smile. He can’t win right now, it seems -- either he’s here and Erik isn’t happy, or he’s elsewhere and Erik still isn’t happy. Charles is a terrible guardian, and he feels a bit sick, deflated, like he’s tried harder for nothing. But he makes himself continue, “I can go into my office, if you need the room for an Xbox marathon or something?”

“No,” Erik says, “you’re fine where you are.” After a moment’s hesitation he sits on the sofa, slouching back against the cushions, but even that doesn’t entirely obscure the tension in the back of his neck. He pulls out his phone, fiddling with it for a few minutes, texting someone -- Madelyne -- then drops it onto the arm of the sofa and looks back to Charles. “Do you want to eat something?”

Charles pauses, then deliberately closes the lid of his laptop and leans forward to place both it and his paperwork on the coffee table out of the way, turning so he’s facing Erik more fully, one arm resting on the back of the couch. “What’s bothering you?” he asks, deciding to be blunt. “You’re thinking on eggshells but I can’t immediately see why.”

He could go digging, of course -- but he tries not to listen too hard nowadays, not to hear that quiet thrum of Erik’s worry that Charles is attracted to him, isn’t attracted to him, is insulted at the very idea of it. Not only because it makes Charles feel nervous, but because it makes him sick and self-loathing hearing Erik blaming himself so punishingly for correctly interpreting Charles’ behavior and Charles letting him believe that he was wrong.

Charles has known for a while that he is not a good person, when it boils down to it. When he’s cornered he’s just -- he’s a shitty, awful, self-serving cunt of a human being.

“Don’t you know?” Erik asks, with a wry twist to his mouth, then, “It doesn’t matter. We don’t have to talk about this. Let’s watch a movie.” He looks away from Charles, staring straight ahead at the dark TV screen. 

Charles bites the inside of his cheek, hard, before finally he says, “All right.”

Erik pushes himself up off the sofa and heads over to look through the DVDs, and even though his back is to Charles Charles tries not to look down at his body, that slim waist and firm ass obvious beneath his fitted clothes. “How about this?” Erik says after a few moments, turning back around and holding up _The Avengers: Age of Ultron._ “Though we really should watch horror. It’s Halloween tomorrow.”

Please let Erik not have caught him looking. “There’s always _Nightmare Before Christmas,_ ” Charles says.

Erik shakes his head. “I watched that last night with Madelyne.” He kneels down to open up the DVD player, putting in the disc. “Are we going to order dinner? I don’t have anything to cook for tonight.”

It’s unlike Erik to ask what they’re doing for dinner -- normally he’d just say, _we’re getting Thai_ , or present Charles with food after a lot of banging around in the kitchen chopping and sauteing and roasting until he’s satisfied with the results. “Sure,” Charles says, and gets slowly, testingly, to his feet. “How does Chinese sound?”

“That’s fine. Dan dan noodles for me.” Erik heads back over to the sofa, sinking back into his seat and watching Charles as he goes to fetch the phone, dialling in their order -- it’s the first time in a long while Charles has picked his own take-out, too, and he comes back to the couch feeling more disturbed than ever, the horrible feeling that he’s broken his relationship with Erik making his gorge rise, until he has to swallow it down, hard.

“Forty-five minutes,” he says, once he’s sure he has control of his own voice.

Erik makes a soft sound against closed lips, and when Charles has sat down he tips over, drawing his legs up onto the sofa and lying on his side with his head resting against Charles’ thigh, eyes shut. His fingers scratch lightly against the seam of Charles’ jeans, just above the knee.

The swell of tenderness in Charles’ chest almost outweighs the nausea. He brings one hand down very carefully to rest on the top of Erik’s head, and he starts to stroke his hair, light motions of his palm over the short strands until Erik sighs and leans a little more heavily against him.

Charles starts the movie.

By the time the food arrives Erik is half-asleep, his mind soft and nebulous-feeling; the doorbell wakes him, though, and he sits up almost instantly, the immediate alarmed reaction dissipating once he realizes what it is. He’s alert by the time Charles gets back with the bags of food, leaning forward and clearing off the surface of the coffee table, the movie on pause.

“Dan dan noodles, as ordered,” Charles says, setting the bags down on the cleared area where Erik immediately picks them back up and starts sorting through them, separating out the food. “Do you want a drink?”

“Just water,” Erik says, setting a pair of chopsticks down atop Charles’ tray and then turning his attention to the cardboard noodle box, opening it up carefully over the plastic bag. “With ice.”

“Okay.” Charles goes to fetch the drinks, getting himself some water, too, and coming back to sit down next to Erik, though with a careful half a foot of space between them. “Here you go.”

They’re silent for a little while, sitting next to each other and eating their food. Charles is nearly halfway done with his when he feels Erik’s attention shift toward him -- but even then there’s a prolonged pause, an anxious twist to Erik’s mind before he says, “Let me try your food.” 

It’s an order, albeit a tentative one without much force behind it, easy to dismiss if Charles wants. Nonetheless, he feels the pleasurable shiver of it run down his spine, like it’s bypassing his central nervous system, and he says, “Sure,” moving the hand holding his box over towards Erik, tipping the open top towards him. “Here.”

Erik reaches over with his chopsticks and steals a piece of sesame chicken, chewing and swallowing, taking a sip of his water before he says, “Thank you. It’s good.” And then -- “You don’t mind, do you?” 

Erik’s looking at him out of the corner of his eye, brows slightly lifted, and Charles knows what he’s really asking.

“I don’t mind,” he says, looking back down at his takeaway and picking up a piece of chicken for himself. “We should watch the rest of the movie.”

Erik nods, and presses ‘play’; the TV flickers back into motion, loud and brightly-colored, and Charles finishes his food with a feeling that he’s fighting both sides of this battle -- trying to keep Erik from Dominating him, making him feel so attracted, and trying to help Erik be more confident, buoying him up and helping him see it as positive, welcome.

In the dim light Erik’s profile is a pale ghost, light shifting over it as he eats, and after a while he lies back down again, resting his head on Charles’ thigh and curling into him, holding on, like he’s still afraid Charles will disappear if Erik pushes too hard, not yet brave enough to try making Charles cuddle up to him instead, the way he has before.

Charles has seen the movie three or four times, so at least he doesn’t miss much by sitting there lost and still in the dark, eyes unfocused as he tries to keep himself from obsessing over Erik’s weight against his side, about the feeling of even that one small order, so much more than Charles is capable of resisting.

Over the next week it’s easy, far too easy, to start to relax again around Erik. Erik is calmer, more settled again, with Charles around more; and it’s not as if Charles doesn’t have experience in dealing with these feelings by now, loathe as he is to admit it. Things are comfortable the way they are, and maybe that’s the problem -- Charles doesn’t have a real impetus to change them, not when Erik isn’t thinking of him as a sexual option, and when whenever the thought crosses Erik’s mind again he immediately quashes it, horrified and afraid Charles will see it, instead of truly considering it. It’s better for Erik that way. Cleaner.

That’s what Charles tells himself, anyway -- better that Erik think it impossible Charles might be attracted to him than to be made to feel unsafe by the only person he relies on, the only person he trusts absolutely. The fact that it makes Charles’ life easier is, more or less, by-the-by.

Charles’ being around more also means that Erik slowly relaxes into ordering him about again, at first testingly, then with more confidence as Charles doesn't object. Erik seems to have got it into his head that he's going to surreptitiously train Charles to be a better sub, since clearly Charles hasn't made enough effort in that direction himself. In a way, Erik seems to see this as recompense for everything Charles has done for him -- as if in exchange for Charles rescuing Erik from Hellfire, Erik can turn Charles into the perfect submissive, the way Erik used to be, all elegant posture and learning to gaze up through his lashes at just-the-right-angle. 

It's twisted, but it's sweet in its own way, as well, and as long as Erik doesn't plan to use violence to enforce his lessons the way Shaw did, Charles is willing to let him, at least for now -- it gives him an insight into any potential issues within Erik that he’s not seen before, ones that might cause him problems in future Dom/sub relationships. Better for Erik to test that out on Charles and be corrected than on some unsuspecting teenager.

"Kneel," Erik says, from where he's sitting at the kitchen table, work for one of his Columbia classes spread out and taking up nearly the entire surface. He's mostly ignoring it at the moment, though, pen tucked behind his ear, in favor of paying attention to Charles.

"Hard floor," Charles says. "Any particular reason?"

Erik looks at Charles over the rims of his reading glasses, and there’s a breath of hesitation, of self-doubt, before he smiles and says, "Is ‘because I said so’ a good enough excuse?" He just wants Charles close to him, though; that much is clear in his mind. He wants Charles where he could reach out and touch him, if he wanted, make sure Charles hasn’t disappeared when he wasn’t looking.

Charles considers whether or not he should concede to this one -- he has other things to do, he could resist it if he wanted to, there’s not much Will in it, and he has things to do elsewhere -- but his feet are slowly shifting without his consciously thinking about it, and so he gives in, saying, "May I have a cushion, then?"

Erik's lips tilt up. "Of course," he says, and turns back to his problem set as Charles goes to fetch one of the thicker cushions from the den, the one most often used by visiting subs if their Dom prefers them to sit on the floor.

He brings it back, along with the book he’s currently reading, and drops the cushion to the tiles where he was standing before then folds himself down onto it, settling with his legs out to one side, one shoulder leaning against Erik’s chair.

"I said kneel, didn’t I," Erik says, giving him a Look. "You know your postures better than this." It’s a bit teasing, but there’s something of an order to it nonetheless, curling through the words as Erik lets his hand drop down to trail along the nape of Charles’ neck, fingertips pausing at the collar of his shirt. “Try again.”

There's enough strength put behind it this time to make it more imperative to obey, and Charles gets to his feet only to bend at the knees once more, lowering himself gracefully onto the cushion and folding himself into a proper posture. The warm feeling of obedience is pleasant, rolling over him from head to toe.

The thing is, Charles has played this game before, with Doms he's dated, and it never really felt like anything more than playacting, like a role he was expected to fill, like being an atheist in church pretending to pray. It used to be exhausting, pretending that submitting like this, through form and posture and aesthetic positioning, meant much to him. Even now when it resonates with him the way it's supposed to, finally, it's something that feels more like a chore than anything else. He can do it well enough when he chooses -- Erik may be classically trained, able to take different postures perfectly on command, but if Charles is really trying then even Erik won't find much to fault.

"Better?" he asks, with less irony in his tone than he intended.

"Much," Erik says, and he makes a few more marks on his paper before he puts his pen down and takes off his glasses, twisting around in his chair so his knees are pointing toward Charles. His glasses are in his lap, Erik's long fingers toying with the metal frame as he looks down at Charles, considering. "Let's try some other postures. Just for practice." A brief pause, then: "Dresden pose."

Charles wants to roll his eyes, but instead he just shifts his hands behind his back, interlocking his fingers only for a moment before moving on to the elbow grasp, skipping the rather unnecessary forearm stroke on the way there.

"Stop," Erik says. "You forgot the forearm stroke. Do it again." He’s not terribly disappointed, though; there’s a sense of satisfaction in his mind that comes from being able to instruct Charles and show him how to do things ‘properly,’ make him as sweet and submissive as Erik used to try to be. It’s alluring, intoxicating, and it makes Charles want to obey.

So Charles does, moving his arms back into position and running each of his hands from his wrist along his opposite forearm until he can grasp his elbows, arms fully folded behind himself. Again there's that shiver, a frisson of pleasure that runs through him, and he closes his eyes for a moment, savoring it.

"Very nice.” The approval in Erik’s voice is like honey. "Let's see your transition to Presentment."

Charles flushes, ready to object; Presentment is overtly submissive, sexual, and it's inappropriate for Erik to be thinking of him in that pose even without the intent to punish behind it. Erik probably doesn’t see the difference, given the way he was raised -- for Erik a sexual pose is as casual as a public one, practically interchangeable, the way his Doms were interchangeable. But when Charles looks up at Erik he thinks, guiltily ... if I do this wrong on purpose, he'll have to order me. Two birds, one stone -- Charles hasn't offered up his ass on his own, and Erik will have to exert his Will harder, make Charles really feel it.

Charles lets go of his elbows to stretch his arms out in front, lowering his head to hover over the floor's surface -- but does not, will not, raise his ass as if to be spanked.

"Verdammt noch mal," Erik mutters to himself, and then he sighs a little, shifting slightly in his chair, and the toe of his shoe nudges Charles' knee. "Fix it, Charles." He's pushing even harder than he was before, now, layering Will upon Will in his voice, and Charles physically shivers, thoughts blurring, before he does as he's told, lifting with his thighs until they're at a perfect forty-five degree angle to the floor, his ass raised, as if he's about to kiss the tiles. He can feel arousal stirring in his belly, but he holds it in, just the way he holds the posture itself, awaiting orders.

"Hmm," Erik says, and there's the sound of his chair legs scraping against the floor, then glasses being set on the table; a moment later Charles feels him crossing round behind him, then toward his opposite side, examining. "Knees need to be spread wider apart," Erik says, and this time his toe nudges at Charles' ankle, forcing it further in. "I want to see two feet of space between them."

Charles obeys with a shuddering exhale, moving his knees wider, still keeping his face from touching the floor, vulnerable and vibrating down there, as if he were a tuning fork, and Erik the musician. 

"Better -- let's try Prayer next." And, as if he expects Charles not to recognize the pose, Erik elaborates: "Arms behind your back in strappado. Cheek pressed to the floor. The rest remains the same."

Charles turns his face away from Erik to place his cheek on the floor, the cool tile chilling against the flush in his face, but ... he deliberately places his arms in Dresden again, knowing that he's pushing it now, but at this point he's enjoying too much the possibility that Erik might get frustrated and bear down on him with his Dominance, the temptation too much for Charles to resist. Charles waits there, almost breathless, until Erik makes an exasperated noise and says, "I swear, Charles, you are doing this on purpose!" and strides around so that, when he crouches down on the floor next to him, he's looking Charles in the eye, frowning. 

"Fix it," he says. There’s nearly enough power there to put Charles down into subspace, but not quite, not quite.

Charles shudders from head to foot, a much bigger motion this time, visible, his face flushing pink and an involuntary sound escaping his throat, half a moan, and as he thinks _shit, I've gone too far_ he's already moving his arms into strappado, his elbows, forearms and wrists pressed together as if he were wearing cuffs, laid out down his back so that his hands rest over his ass. Even after obeying he’s still shivering with the pleasure of compliance, can’t help it, hates himself at the same time as his body thrills at it, and he knows that Erik’s close enough to feel that radiating from him, his control too shot to hide the way the order feels like being stroked on the inside, like everything is perfect.

He closes his eyes so he doesn't have to meet Erik's gaze, knowing already what Erik is thinking.

Erik straightens up very slowly -- Charles can hear him, the rustle of his trousers, his shirt fabric -- and for an impossibly long moment he doesn't say anything at all. 

Charles stays in posture, wishing he had better self-control than this, knowing it's his own damn fault if he's finally let things slide too far. 

At last Erik says, his voice constricted-sounding, like he’s forgotten to breathe, "You can get up."

Charles gets slowly to his feet, brushing himself off as he goes, and says, as normally as he's able through his tight throat, keeping his eyes low, "See? I do know my postures, Erik. I just don't see why I should do them for your amusement."

It's a lame attempt at deflection, but at least it's something. He looks up.

Erik’s standing there, looking at him like he doesn’t recognize him anymore, and his mind is such a tangle of confusion, anger, and resentment that it hurts to touch it, like a barely-healed wound that Charles has torn open once more. Erik’s cheeks are flushed, but Charles knows better than to think it’s from chagrin. 

"You know them when you want to know them, is what you mean," Erik says very, very plainly, raw disgust coloring each and every word, enough to make Charles flinch. “Get out of here, Charles.” He’s glaring at Charles like he -- _hates_ him, all that hurt and betrayal pulsing out from him in nauseating waves, Charles’ wristwatch going hot against his skin. “Go.”

Charles feels like he might be sick. There’s no pretending any more. He can feel his own face collapsing in on itself, the brave front crumbling away and leaving only his guilt behind.

"I’m sorry," he chokes out, strangled and self-loathing, and takes his exit while he can, slipping out of the kitchen and escaping to his own room upstairs, where he can panic in peace.

He can't -- won't -- do anything to change Erik's memory, that's a given. And so all he can do is hide, separate himself entirely and give Erik the ability to avoid Charles entirely, so that if he doesn’t wants to then Erik never has to look at Charles again. 

Charles goes out every night that week and has a couple of drinks, then finds someone to spend time with until he has to go home. He doesn't sleep with any of them. It's too depressing to try and find ways to explain that he can't come without thinking of his teenage ward any more, that the only thing that works is the memory of Erik's voice pressing down on him, making Charles bend.

None of it makes him feel any better.

*

_Erik_

As with most things in Erik's life, just when everything seems to finally be improving, to finally be _normal_ again, it all comes crashing down. Whatever promises Charles made about not leaving Erik are all but broken, now; Erik barely sees him at all, and when he does, Charles can't even look him in the eye. It would have been easier, if Charles hadn't let Erik believe he'd misunderstood -- but as it is, Charles knew how Erik felt, he _knew_ Erik doubted himself, loathed himself, just for wondering ... and he did nothing. Said nothing. That feels like the worst betrayal of all.

Erik's angry, because angry is easier than being hurt, and since Charles is rarely ever home anymore there's no one to complain about the way Erik stomps around the apartment, rattling all the metal he can reach, scrubbing every flat surface down with soap and water until his knuckles are red. He even, at last, breaks into Charles' office and cleans that, too, leaving it spotless, with all of Charles' pens lined up on his desk in descending order from largest to smallest, grouped by color. If Charles notices, he doesn't say anything. Predictably.

It’s good that Charles is gone, Erik thinks. Better that Erik doesn’t have to look at his face right now. He’s not sure he could see him without wanting to cave his nose in. If Charles had just _told_ Erik, had admitted to it up-front, they wouldn’t be where they are right now. They could have dealt with it like reasonable, responsible adults, instead of Charles cowering in his cowardice and letting Erik believe he was painting Charles the villain for no good reason at all.

Erik breaks into Charles’ liquor cabinet and gets drunk, drunker than he’s ever been, loses five hours of his own memory and wakes up vomiting rancid-tasting Johnny Walker into the toilet bowl. Charles doesn’t find out about that, either, as far as Erik knows. He’s gone all weekend, doing God-knows-what with God-knows-whom and leaving Erik, again, alone.

It’s lonely. It only makes Erik angrier.

On Monday, almost a full week after Erik found out, Charles comes home at what used to be his normal time, shutting the front door quietly as if Erik wouldn’t feel the hinges move and hanging up his coat in the closet, the movement of the hanger hook bright in Erik’s sense of the apartment. He can feel the grommets of Charles’ shoes when he takes those off, and even if Charles goes upstairs on soft, socked feet, soundless, Erik can track him by his watch, his belt-buckle, as he goes into his bedroom and shuts that door behind himself, too.

What Erik isn’t expecting is the return of the watch along the upstairs corridor and all the way to his own door, where Charles raps his knuckles on the wooden frame, and says, in a voice almost normal, “It’s time for our session in five minutes. I’ll meet you in the study.”

Erik tips the book he’d not-quite been reading forward, resting the spine on his knees, and looks at the closed door as he follows Charles’ watch back down the stairs and into the study, the shift of the mechanism in Charles’ adjustable office chair when he sits down. Well. This is fucking rich. What does Charles think they’re going to talk about? Is Charles going to tell Erik again how evil his last guardians were for wanting to fuck him? Seems a bit hypocritical, in light of recent events.

It’s cruel, thinking this way, but Erik wants to be cruel. It’s satisfying in a deep, mean way, feeding the hot angry flames in his belly. If Charles wants to torture himself with this, fine. Erik is happy to oblige him.

Charles is fiddling with his glass paperweight when Erik comes into the study a few minutes later, sitting down in his usual seat opposite Charles and crossing his legs at the knee, arms folded across his chest.

“So,” Charles says after a long silence, finally looking up at Erik with a smile on his face that Erik knows isn’t real, because the corners of his eyes aren’t crinkling. It’s one of Charles’ pretend expressions, the ones he wears in social situations where he’s hiding his true thoughts. “Last week we talked about some of the issues you’d been facing at school from your classmates after you switched your presenting orientation. How’s that been this week?”

“Fine,” Erik says. He looks at Charles, sitting there in his Dr Xavier uniform, wearing his Dr Xavier expression and speaking his Dr Xavier words and thinks -- what a farce. It’s no more than surface-deep, and now Charles isn’t the only one who realizes it. 

Charles nods, carefully, as if he’s measured the depth of that motion before he does it, all calculated, but his fingers are still toying with the paperweight, turning it around and around, the colored bubbles inside it spinning in his grasp. “Is it better, worse, the same?” he asks, still calm. “We talked about some coping strategies -- have they made a difference?”

“No one wants to fuck me anymore because they think it’ll make them gay,” Erik says. He raises an eyebrow at Charles. “Maybe I should try some of the subs. I seem to be having better luck in that domain. What do you think?”

It’s horribly satisfying to see Charles’ tiny flinch, the way his shoulders draw in, just for a split-second, before he controls himself. “I think that you’d need to be more careful with submissives,” Charles says, his voice totally calm. “The Doms are used to taking what they want, and they’ll tell you what that is, but submissives are likely to be much less experienced and less sure of themselves. You need to make sure you’re both on the same page. Of course, it’s still illegal, so I can’t advise you to follow through, but you need to be aware that it will be a different dynamic.” He glances away, picking up his pen and scribbling a note on his notepad.

Erik watches him writing, and for the first time he realizes he doesn’t care what Charles is saying about him in his notes. What is there to say? ‘Underaged ward found out I want to fuck him. Seems upset that I lied to him about it. If we up his medication maybe he’ll forget this ever happened.’ 

Erik takes his phone out of his pocket and checks the time. 6:04. Forty-one minutes to go.

“Do you … have anything you’d like to talk about?” Charles asks, putting the pen down but not looking back at Erik, as if the ink on the white paper fascinates him.

Erik stares at him, incredulous. “Do _you?_ ”

“We’re not here to talk about me,” Charles says to the paper. “This is your time, Erik. It’s up to you what we talk about.”

Erik puts his phone in his lap, tapping his thumb against the back of the case. His best view right now is of the part of Charles’ hair. “If you could hear me say anything right now, what would you want it to be? Tell me, and I’ll say it.”

“We’re not here to talk about me,” Charles says again, and when he looks up his face is still that bland, polite mask, The Therapist, not his real face at all. “We can talk about anything you -- anything you want to discuss.”

“There’s nothing I want to talk about,” Erik says, and Charles nods, starts turning that paperweight again, a quarter-turn at a time, twist, twist, twist.

“In that case,” he says quietly, “I’ll let you go, rather than making you sit here for another half an hour. If you think of anything then just let me know, we can always pick it up ad hoc.”

Erik goes, leaving Charles sitting there alone in the study and returning to his room, closing the door behind him and stretching out on top of his bed, reaching for his book only to realize he doesn’t remember what it’s about, and what has happened for the past forty pages, as if he never read them at all.

*

_Charles_

Charles ends up at _Equilibrium_ a lot more often than he’d like to admit over the next few weeks. It’s a very high-end Dynamic club, not sleazy or dirty the way some of them are -- the customers there are almost invariably single professionals, people with high-stress jobs who just need somewhere to go where they can relax into a dynamic with someone without having to try and sustain a relationship on top of everything else. There are no strings, here.

“Buy you a drink?” a woman asks from beside him, and Charles turns to meet her gaze.

The woman is around Charles’ height, of average build, red-blond hair curling just above her ears, a casually dishevelled pixie cut that only emphasizes the elegant column of her throat, her bare shoulders above a loose knit-dress. She’s attractive, her posture and voice exuding a sense of quiet Dominance, and so Charles lets his gaze drop, signalling both his acquiescence to the drink and in potentially submitting for her, if their interests align.

“Two more of whatever he’s having?” the woman calls to the man behind the bar, then says, “I’m Anna.”

“Charles.”

“I’m looking for low-impact tonight,” Anna says, leaning against the bar. “I hear you’re someone to talk to about that?”

Charles manages to smile, just a little, and he lifts his eyes again, leaning his own elbow on the bar top and shifting his weight. “It depends what you’re thinking of, but yes,” he says, and he doesn’t, he doesn’t, feel guilty at all for offering his submission to her, when he has nobody else to expect that from him. Erik doesn’t count, because for him Charles is just practice. It’s not the same.

“Honestly, I just want to sit in the corner and read my book with someone to keep me company,” Anna says, straightening up as the barman brings their drinks over, and handing over her card. “Come join me?”

And Charles says, “All right.”

They head over to one of the booths where it’s quieter, and Anna takes out an ereader, setting it on the table before taking her own seat. The floor is padded, and she says, her mind tentative, testing out how far Charles will let her go, “I want you to lie down on the floor and rest your head on my feet. You may touch my calves, but nothing above that.”

“Okay,” Charles says, and slowly, carefully, he gets down to his hands and knees and crawls under the table so that he can place his head as directed, laying down on his side curled towards her, his knees tucked in a little, his hand curled around Anna’s ankle, holding on. When he closes his eyes the thick layer of memory foam shaping itself underneath him feels like being held in the palm of a giant hand, with only Anna for an anchor.

It’s quiet down there, and quieter in his head, even if he isn’t truly under. Anna isn’t strong enough to make him feel drowsy, even, but there’s something about laying there that’s helpful in a limited sort of way, being isolated and hidden from the rest of the world. Down here there’s no Erik to think about, to think about being angry and alone and afraid of Charles now, under it all, as if Charles would -- as if Charles would _ever_ \--

Charles’ breath comes out of him in a silent sob, a sharp, almost painful convulsion of his lungs.

Everything he’s built for Erik over the past three years is turning to ashes, like a sandcastle when the inevitable tide comes in and undermines its foundations, proving that they really weren’t as strong as they’d appeared. Charles tried to give him a safe home, and he’s failed; he tried to prove to Erik that not everyone would want to use him, and he failed. Erik hates him, and Charles can’t do, can’t say, anything to change that, because it’s better all around, really, if Erik stays away, if Erik keeps _himself_ safe now that Charles can’t any more --

Anna’s hand comes to rest on Charles’ head, a soft and steady weight, and his mind halts, stutters, caught off guard.

“You’re crying,” she says quietly. “Is that normal for you when submitting, or is something wrong?”

Oh, God. “Sorry,” Charles says, his fingers tightening involuntarily around her ankle, holding on for a few seconds before he forces them to loosen. “I just … bad thoughts.”

“Don’t think, then,” Anna says, her hand perfectly still, just a steady weight against him, keeping his cheek pressed to the tops of her feet. “Just be quiet inside. Be an empty jar, that the light passes through and doesn’t change.”

Charles closes his eyes tighter, and tries. It doesn’t work, but it’s polite to let Anna believe she helped him. At least one of them should leave tonight feeling better about themselves.

He gets home around midnight, the first time he’s been home all day; it’s dark in the apartment, but Charles can feel Erik simmering upstairs, his anger like a weight, or a sinkhole, dark and dragging things down. He knows Charles is home, he picked up on Charles’ watch the moment Charles came into the building, and the aura around him darkened accordingly.

Charles sighs and heads into the kitchen for a glass of water, standing in sock feet at the sink while he sips at it slowly, trying to clear his mind. He feels Erik coming downstairs, but doesn’t turn, lets Erik decide how they interact.

Erik comes to stand behind him in the doorway, his mind a black slice amidst all the others in this city, horribly magnetic even now, with fury pulsing barely-restrained beneath its surface. 

“Where have you been?” His voice is like a knife.

“Out,” Charles says, sipping again at his water and turning to face Erik, frowning as he catches the oddly focused tenor of Erik’s thoughts. “What’s happened?”

God, if something’s happened ...

Erik’s scowl darkens. “Take out your phone.” It’s an order, snapping with force, and Charles reaches for his jacket pocket before his conscious mind has even registered the demand, tugging the phone out. It’s dead.

“Did you try to call me?” he asks, looking back up at Erik. “I’m sorry -- the battery must have gone, I didn’t notice.”

Erik strides across the room and takes the phone from his hand, turning it over between his fingers once, then passing it back, the screen now glowing grey as it turns on. “There. It’s charged now. Go ahead and listen to your messages; I’ll wait.”

Obediently Charles taps through to his voicemail and holds the phone to his ear, but he’s not really listening to the messages; he’s looking in Erik’s mind, seeing the memories of today playing out in stark technicolor, too sharp to be real. Another Dom at school, the empty shower room, pushing Erik up against the wall; Erik complying until the boy bent Erik over, hands and face on the tiles, and tried to get inside him without a condom, the bare head of his dick slipping against Erik’s ass. Erik protesting, the boy hitting him, Erik hitting back, harder -- the coach coming in and seeing the other boy on the floor with a broken nose, and calling for the principal.

The messages on Charles’ phone are all from the principal asking him to come and fetch Erik home as he’s been suspended for two days for violent conduct. The other boy has been let off with a warning but given Erik’s ‘special circumstances’ …. 

In Erik’s mind Charles can see, with a growing sense of regret and self-loathing, Erik waiting, and waiting, for Charles to come and defend him, but Charles never came.

“Oh, Erik,” Charles says, lowering the phone, clutching it at his side, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t get their calls.”

“I waited for _six hours_ ,” Erik says coldly, his arms crossed over his chest, fingers digging into muscle. “I sat there, and waited, and because they wouldn’t take my word for it now I’m suspended -- so there won’t be any college, anymore, either. All this while you cowered in your hole somewhere, too afraid of facing me to do your damn _job_.”

“Of course there’ll be college,” Charles says, because it’s easier to breeze past the accusation in Erik’s voice than to acknowledge it. “I’m coming into the school tomorrow, and so are you. And even if they won’t budge I have enough money to buy you your own college. This isn’t going to stand past today.” 

He puts his water glass down on the countertop, carefully, a quiet clink of glass on granite, and concentrates on being calm, controlled, on being what Erik needs right now. “I was at work, Erik, they could have called my office. I’m sorry my cell wasn’t charged.”

“Do you _own_ a charger? Or is there some other reason why you didn’t use yours?” Erik’s too angry, hurt, to back down. There’s color in his cheeks, a pink flush that -- it would be lovely, if it weren’t there for this reason. “It’s _midnight_. Why are you _doing_ this to me?”

Charles feels like his lungs have stopped, like someone shoved a screwdriver through his chest and _twisted_. Calm. Calm ...

“I’m not doing anything to you,” he says, his voice only just above a whisper, half-swallowed because the words won’t come out properly. “Erik, I’m sorry. It wasn’t on purpose. I’ll fix this, first thing tomorrow.” His fingers are tingling like they’ve lost circulation. “You know I would never leave you hanging on something like this if I knew about it.”

“I don’t know anything anymore,” Erik says, and he looks away at last, turning his face to the side and glaring down at some invisible spot on the kitchen floor, hands curling into fists against his arms. “I have no idea what you are and aren’t capable of. You’re never here.”

The screwdriver stabs into him again, tearing at his insides. “If it helps at all,” Charles says, curling in on himself, “I hate myself enough for the both of us. I’m sorry, Erik. I’ll take you to school tomorrow and talk to them.” He ducks his head and walks out past Erik, unable to bear any more of that accusing stare, the way Erik thinks at him like Charles is -- like Charles is an utter traitor, like he’s ruined everything, and maybe he is, and maybe he has. He doesn’t listen to Erik behind him, just keeps going until he’s shut in his own bathroom and can sit in the bottom of the shower and wait for the pain in his chest to ease.

*

_Erik_

He stays angry for weeks, until he can't sustain it anymore, the rage burning on a fuel that eventually peters out. What’s left is a hollow hurt feeling inside, like he’s been scraped raw. Charles stays gone; the longest Erik sees him is when he comes into school to talk the administrators into reversing the suspension and clearing Erik’s record. Then he vanishes again, eaten up by the night. Without Charles' constant presence, pottering around the apartment, Charles' hand squeezing Erik's shoulder, Charles himself kneeling on Erik's order, Erik is left frazzled and undone, like someone found and pulled the single string that unraveled him completely. 

Don't leave me, Erik had said, not all that long ago, and Charles had said, I won't. I promise. Only he's gone, now, in every way that matters, and even when Charles is here, sitting in the same room with him, he might as well not be. What makes Charles _Charles_ is gone, wound up tight and locked away where Erik can't go after it. 

Erik has to forgive him. He doesn't have any other choice. Charles deceived him, but Erik knows, now, and there's no unknowing it, and if Charles was cruel enough to let Erik wallow in his own misery, well, even that was better than this. _This_ feels like someone scooped out Erik's insides and replaced them with ice. This feels like being flayed apart.

He feels like he’s known about all this for a long time; in retrospect that night in Charles' bedroom, when he saw where Charles' gaze fell, lingered -- he hadn't been ... _surprised._ He’d simply wanted to not-believe.

How long has he been stubbornly not-believing? If he knew before he’s buried it, forgetting because it hurt too bad to remember.

If he's fair, he knows why Charles is distant. He can admit it to himself, even if only late at night, curled up in his bed alone with the covers tangled around his body, too-hot. He knows Charles has to hate himself for this, the same way he hates Shaw and the others. 

And Erik knows from experience that he's ... difficult to resist, that sometimes people want him so desperately they can't restrain themselves. Somehow, his entire life, Erik has exuded this -- whatever-this-is, that makes people, Doms, feel like they have to fuck him. Erik had thought being a submissive exempted Charles from whatever effect Erik tends to have on people, but obviously that's not true. So can he really blame Charles, if Charles can't look at him? If Charles looks, he'll want to touch, and eventually -- Erik knows this much, at least -- eventually, he'll give in.

So, Erik understands. But understanding isn't enough to make it stop hurting.

Friday night, after school and while Charles is still at work, Erik cooks an elaborate dinner with three courses, sets the dining room table that they never use with Charles' best china, even goes online to figure out how to plate dishes so they look gourmet and expensive. A peace offering, he thinks, arranging a small bowl of marinaded olives and placing it next to the decanter of wine. It’s the only way forward. Erik might not be able to forget this, but he can still -- he will do what he can. For Charles. 

When Charles comes home -- on time, for once, though maybe he’s planning on going back out later -- he stands in the doorway and stares, eyes wide, before turning a cautious look on Erik.

"This looks amazing, Erik. You did all this yourself?" he asks, briefcase still in hand, and gingerly steps deeper into the room.

"I did," Erik says, setting the last tureen of soup down on the table, then he straightens to meet Charles' gaze across the room. It still feels like there’s a block of ice in his chest but it’s thawing, slowly, Erik willing it to warm. "It took hours. Come sit down and eat."

Charles pauses, and Erik can see the hesitation on his face, the way his hands fidget at his sides, uncertain, but in the end he comes further inside, all the way up to the table, and takes his chair, briefcase discarded by the door. It takes the entire soup course and half of the main course for Charles to start a conversation, and after that things are almost normal, at least until everything is eaten and cleared away and Charles disappears into his office until bedtime, leaving Erik alone again in the vast space of the apartment.

He doesn't see Charles again until late Saturday afternoon, when he's heading into his bedroom to get his phone charger and finds Charles already there, putting away Erik's laundry; Charles gives him a quick, reflexive smile, but it's distant, and his hands are swift at placing t-shirts and underwear away in their proper places, enough that he brushes out past Erik only a few moments later, his head down over the basket in his arms.

Erik stands there for a moment, feeling strangely shell-shocked, until he's finally able to get his feet to move and follow Charles out into the hall and down the stairs, toward the laundry room. 

"I'm not invisible, you know," he says to Charles' back as Charles sets the empty basket down atop the dryer.

"Of course not," Charles says distractedly, opening the washing machine to start filling it with the next load. "You're too tall to be invisible."

“Does this mean you’re not pretending I don’t exist today, then?"

Charles looks up at that. “Don’t be silly,” he says, and he sounds beyond tired, like something’s been drained out of him. “Did you need something?”

Erik almost doesn’t say it, but with Charles right in front of him and the words on the tip of his tongue, there’s no way he can’t say it -- Charles knows, already. His throat feels scratchy, strange, when he says, “If I say I forgive you, will you stop all of this?”

The expression on Charles’ face -- 

“It’s not about that,” he says, in a voice that breaks, and he pushes past Erik again, heading for the stairs. This time, Erik lets him.

He goes, then, back to his book still lying open on the sofa, his heart pounding. His phone has thirty percent battery left, sitting on the end table; Erik sits down and pulls up the messaging app, typing a note to Raven before he can let himself think better of it:

>   
> **Erik:** I need to talk to you about Charles. Can you come over here tonight?

That Charles won't be around goes without saying, these days. The reply is almost immediate.

>   
> **Raven:** Sure, is everything ok? What time?
> 
> **Erik:** I'll talk to you about it when you get here. 8 PM?
> 
> **Raven:** Ok np. C u then.

He hears the front door shut ten minutes later when Charles leaves, off to do -- whatever it is he does, alone, in the city, without-Erik, and Erik throws his book across the room, where it lands with a muffled thump on the carpet. He regrets it almost immediately, and when he goes after it the cover's bent; Erik unfolds it carefully, and sighs, setting it down more gently this time on the coffee table. 

Raven shows up promptly at eight, by which point Erik's practically worn holes in the rugs from pacing. He greets her at the front door, stepping aside to let her in and saying, "Charles isn't here."

"Well, I assumed he wouldn't be, unless this was a secret intervention," Raven says, coming inside and shucking off her thick woolen coat, draping it over her arm. She's blonde today, hazel-eyed and rosy-cheeked, but her eyes are serious. "What's going on? I don't think you've ever texted me before."

Right -- Erik hadn't thought this far ahead. He'd been too caught up in his own frustration and upset to remember that he can't exactly say that, yes, Charles wants to fuck him, and isn't speaking to Erik because of it. Erik's been out in the world long enough to know by now that saying that kind of thing would be a one-way ticket to Erik being removed from Charles' care, and never seeing him again. He won’t allow that to happen.

"Charles has been acting strange," Erik says, a severe understatement, but he doesn’t know how else to put it. He leads Raven through the gallery and into the den, gesturing for her to take a seat wherever she likes. Erik sits in Charles' usual armchair, as if that might make a difference, is anything but some kind of juvenile superstition. There's something reassuring about it nonetheless, when this is the closest he'll get to actually being _near_ Charles. 

Raven sits on the sofa, setting her coat down on the cushion beside her, and Erik grips the arms of the chair, tight, before he makes himself go on. "He's staying late at work, as late as ten sometimes. I confronted him about it before and he said he'd change, only things ... have deteriorated. Since then." When Erik found out that no, he wasn't imagining things. He tries to look easy, relaxed, but it’s hard when every breath feels like it’s barely even making it to his lungs. "Sometimes I'll go entire days without seeing him. Do you know I got an award at Stark? Because Charles doesn't. He has no idea. He's not here to _tell._ "

Raven's mouth is tight. "Do you think he's depressed?" she asks bluntly, giving Erik a direct look. "It's not normal for him to be active and out so much when he is, but maybe he's having some kind of relapse. It's been a few years, I'd thought he was better now."

"No," Erik says, shaking his head. "I remember how he was before. This isn't that. We -- something happened, with me and Charles, and he's been weird ever since." He feels nervous, strangely, his heart beating too fast. He tries to push the feeling down, but it doesn't work. "He just hides in his office, if he isn't out at work or wherever-else. And he won't talk about it, either."

"What happened?" Raven asks immediately, frowning. “Did you guys have a fight?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know," Erik lies. "But I think it might have to do with me being a Dom now. He was already acting strangely." 

Is that going too far? Erik wonders. Is he being obvious? If Raven guesses.... He bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard enough to taste copper, and hopes Raven doesn't notice. 

Simultaneously, he both wants to tell her everything and doesn't -- he can't stand the thought of keeping it inside himself any longer; it feels like it's burning him up and leaving him sick inside, he has to tell _someone_ , but … who is there to tell? The only people who would want to know are the same people who would take Charles away from him. 

"Hmm." Raven's eyes narrow a little, but then she sits back in her chair, folding her hands in her lap. "Well, Charles does have Issues-with-a-capital-I about Doms and Dominance, which I'm pretty sure you know," she says, flickering back from blonde to blue. "He struggles with letting me have control, let alone anyone else -- are you still practicing your Dominance on him?"

“No," Erik says, and slowly makes himself relax his fingers on the armrests, but that feels unnatural and forced. He shakes his head. "The reason doesn’t matter. I just want to know what I'm supposed to do to get him back. I can't keep guilt-tripping him into staying for dinner with elaborate meals. I have schoolwork to do."

“Well, the reason matters to me,” Raven says. “Are you telling me the truth, Erik? There must be a reason for Charles to be behaving like this, he loves you. He wouldn’t just start acting this way for no reason at all.”

Erik’s stomach turns and he closes his eyes, trying to ground himself in the feeling of the chair beneath and behind him. For a split second he’s somewhere else, a young boy in the home of their mutant ally in Spain, a man who waited until Shaw was in the other room to kneel on the floor in front of Erik and say, _Listen to me, quickly. There are places I can take you, away from them, where you’ll be safe. You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. But you will need to tell me the truth, Erik --_

He opens his eyes and the man is gone, along with the bright light streaming in through his open windows and the smell of gazpacho cooking slowly on the stove, a million miles away. The room they’re in now is strangely dark, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s night-time, the streetlights outside oddly bright and fake-seeming. Raven’s still there, a bluish shadow on the couch.

“I can’t tell you,” he says, and it’s softer than he means it to be, half a whisper, cold fingers climbing up his spine. “Please, Raven, don’t ask me.”

The pause before she speaks is thick and tangible. “Are either of you in trouble?” she asks, very steadily, her eyes yellow glitters in the darkness. “Erik, if there’s something dangerous here then you can trust me. I know that some bad shit has happened, with that hospital visit and the thing with the car, and if more of that is going on … ”

“It’s nothing like that,” Erik says, and his heart is beating twice as fast as the tick of the second hand on the clock above the fireplace, dizzying. He pushes his lips into a smile and tries to seem casual, dredging up any Dominance he has left to help him with it. “Don’t worry. We’re both fine.”

“Hmm.” Her eyes are still measuring him, flitting across his face and posture like she's taking notes -- it's entirely possible that she's reading his emotions straight from his body, interpreting his cues -- but when Raven speaks her voice is mild, not accusatory as Erik had feared. 

"The thing with Charles is that he's stubborn," she says, meeting Erik's gaze. "If he thinks something is for the best he'll do it, no matter how much it hurts him or anyone else, because he's the sort of person who pulled out his own wobbly teeth to get it out of the way. The only way to make him stop is to either present him with an alternative argument or possibility he can't dismiss, or to demand he lets you make your own decisions instead of deciding for everyone. He won't like it, but he does hold personal autonomy extremely dear. He's so afraid of forcing people with his mutation that he'll do anything to avoid even the hint of it."

Erik's mouth has gone dry; he swallows nothingness, and nods, a sudden certainty settling into the marrow of his bones. "Thank you," he says. It sounds like his voice is coming from far away. "I think I know what I need to do." 

She's been more helpful than she knows, and if this works -- Erik can barely breathe -- if this works, he'll have Charles back, and that's the only thing Erik cares about. He’ll do anything --

"Tell me first, maybe I can help you refine it," Raven says, and then Charles says, from the doorway, "Refine what?"

He looks disheveled, wind-blown and chilled; his lips are pressed tightly together, and it's clear from his expression that he's alarmed, looking between them like he expects an attack.

Erik draws a shield over his thoughts more quickly than he ever has in his life, using whatever he can -- Emma's mind tricks, the metal box around his thoughts, a thrumming blanket of electromagnetism -- and tries to think of nothing but a blank white page. He feels abruptly hollow, like someone's drained the marrow out of his bones, and his stomach clenches up.

“Hey,” Raven says, and Erik glances at her where she’s sitting just as easy as can be, acting -- neither of them have spoken yet, so Erik makes himself open his mouth and say, as lightly as possible, "Charles. You're home."

"It's snowing," Charles says by way of answer, then looks at Raven and says, "If you need to get home tonight you'd better go sooner than later -- it's nasty out there, looks like we're set for a proper blizzard."

Raven just nods, getting fluidly to her feet and picking up her coat. She doesn’t put up a fight at all, which would seem uncharacteristic if Erik didn’t suspect that she’s leaving to give him the space to talk to Charles. "All right then," she says, walking over to where Charles is standing and leaning in to kiss his cheek. "Kicking me out into the cold, shame on you," she continues, with a small grin.

"Well, you do appear to be conspiring with Erik about me behind my back, so it's for my own good," Charles says, and though his tone is teasing his whole body is stiff as a board. "I'll call you, okay?"

"You do that," Raven says. “Don’t be an asshole to Erik.” She glances back over her shoulder as she slips her coat back on, and Erik sees her shifting again, this time growing fur all over. “Erik, don’t be an asshole to Charles. Okay?”

“Okay,” he says, through a dry throat, and though normally he’d be fascinated by the downy fur now covering Raven’s body he hardly notices her as she leaves, his attention totally focused on Charles.

Charles in turn turns his attention back to Erik, and after a long silence punctuated only by the distant shutting of the front door he finally says, "Et tu, Brute?" His face is pale, but his eyes -- he looks utterly betrayed.

Erik stays where he is, although his whole body feels like it's been strung through with live wire, electric, his insides quivering. "I didn't tell her, if that's what you're suggesting."

"You shouldn't have brought Raven into this," Charles says, folding his arms across his chest and lifting his chin, the effect undermined by the way his lip is trembling. His coat is speckled with water, melted snow dampening his hair. "I -- I know that -- I don't want to talk about this, Erik, and you should respect that I'm doing this for both of our good. You don't need more of the same from me as you've had before, and I have no intention -- a year from now you'll be looking at colleges, and the year after that, you'll move out, and then everything will be fine."

It’s infuriating.

"Don't talk like that," Erik snaps, surprising even himself with the ferocity of it. "You promised you wouldn't leave me. You _promised_. And now look at you. You can't wait for me to be gone." He grabs at the armrests of the chair again and pushes himself violently to his feet, taking two quick steps in Charles' direction and then stopping, his hands fisted at his sides. 

"I won't do it, Erik." Charles stands his ground, though that tremble is spreading, Charles' whole body juddering with tension. He lifts his chin higher, jaw tight. "I won't be -- I love you, you _stupid_ boy, and I won't subject you to more of the same -- if I have to make you hate me to do it, then I will!" and he turns on his heel, stalking back out into the gallery, shrugging off his coat with vicious motions of his arms.

Erik feels Will surging up in him of its own accord, and he strides after Charles. "Don't you dare leave this room!" It's an order, and he can hear the way the English words sound thickened, now; they feel uncomfortable and foreign on his tongue. "Come back here. We're going to -- _Gott verdammt_ \-- we are going to talk about this, Charles. I won't let you walk away from me again."

Charles throws his coat on the floor with both hands, buttons clattering on the hardwood, and turns again, stalking back up to Erik and smacking him in the chest with the flat of one palm, his face furious red. "Leave me alone," he shouts, shoving at Erik and rocking him back on his heels. "I said I don't want to talk about it! I'm in charge in this household -- "

"You're in charge? Bullshit, Charles, you barely even live here anymore," Erik says. His throat feels like it's closing up, and he hates the way he can feel heat prickling at his eyes already. He fights it back and reaches for Charles' wrist, wrapping his fingers around the narrow bones and holding tight, keeping him there physically in case the order isn't enough. "You promised. You can't do this to me."

"It's the only thing I can do for you!" Charles is tugging at his hand, trying to get free; he can't even look Erik in the eye now, his gaze focused on his wrist. "Can't you -- can't you see I'm doing my fucking best, Erik? It's the only damn thing I can do for you!"

"That's not true," Erik says. His pulse is buzzing in his ears -- or is that electromagnetism? Has he forgotten to unblock his mind? He drops any shields he has left, leaving himself open, bare, vulnerable. Raven was right, he has to make this choice _for_ Charles, if Charles isn't able to do it himself -- Charles might not realize, he might just assume Erik would hate him, but that isn't true. "You can fuck me, if you want to," he says, insists, looking at Charles as if that would be enough to make Charles look back, desperation clawing against the inside of his sternum. "It's okay, Charles, I don't mind! Please, just stop this. All right? _...Please."_

"Oh my God," Charles says, and he suddenly yanks his arm free, staring up at Erik now aghast, face pale as the snow outside. "No! I'm not going to do that, put that entirely out of your head!" He takes three swift steps back and nearly trips over his coat, the fabric tangling at his feet. Charles looks now like an animal at bay, the whites showing all the way around his eyes. "That is _not_ going to happen!"

"But it's what you want," Erik says, and he follows after Charles determinedly, trying to keep himself steady despite the way he feels like he's being shaken to pieces inside. His body feels like it doesn't belong to him, like he's walking on marionette strings. "Isn't it? And I'm telling you it's all right." It has to be all right. Anything would be better than the way things are right now. "I need you, Charles! Don't you understand? I'll do anything you want."

"I ... " Charles swallows, hard, and steps back again, shaking his head. He's practically backed up against the closet door now, only a couple of steps away. "No. There's a difference between -- can't you see that's not right, Erik? I won't take advantage of you like that, no matter what I -- what part of me thinks. I won't ... I won't let you _buy_ my affection with your body."

"But you won't give it to me for free anymore, either, will you?" Erik manages to get out as his voice breaks; he closes his eyes, then squeezes them tight and wishes he could just wake up and things would be how they were before he ever found out Charles felt this way. But that's not possible, so when he opens his eyes again he takes a step forward, then another, until he and Charles are standing face to face. 

"I can't," Charles says, his hands in fists in his own sweater, his head bowed, face screwed up like he's tasted something bad, his voice almost desperate. "Erik, I know you're not stupid. I know you understand why not. Can't you just -- stop torturing me, now, and let me take care of you the best way I know how?" He backs up, and hits the closet door, a hollow booming sound echoing around them as his heel strikes the wood.

"Well, I must be a fucking idiot, then, because no, I _don't_ understand why not-fucking-me means you have to treat me like I'm not even here," Erik snaps, and when it looks like Charles is going to move to the side, to try to escape up the stairs, he cuts him off with a sharp: " _Stop running away._ "

Charles falters, his feet trying both to walk and stop at the same time, nearly falling, and Erik catches him quickly, grasping onto Charles' elbow before he can tip over. 

"Kneel," Erik orders, because if Charles doesn't he's only going to end up hurting himself, and Erik isn't having this conversation later on with Charles lying in a fucking hospital bed. He doesn't know what he expects to happen -- Charles isn't giving in, he isn't apologizing, or admitting Erik's right, that he's only making things worse avoiding him. But Erik can't just let it go, either. What would happen, then? They go back to living in distant orbits of one another, circling but no longer touching?

Charles kneels, though, jerkily and awkwardly, without looking up, his breath coming in harsh pants. "Every time I even look at you you know," he says, almost a sob, curling forward over himself, bracing his hands on the floor. A wet inhalation, a rasping exhalation. Charles sounds like he’s crying as he says, "I can't live with myself as it is, Erik, how do you think I feel when every time I turn my head you're thinking about how I'm a pervert, and wondering when I'll give in? You have to let me do what's best. Please."

Erik feels like Charles has stabbed him in the chest with a red-hot knife, and twisted the blade. "I don't think you're a pervert," he manages to say after a long moment, although his voice shakes a little. He gets down on the floor next to Charles, on his knees, himself, and reaches out to gently take Charles' forearms, trying to lift him up so he's at least looking Erik in the eye. "I don't hate you for this. It's my fault, anyway, it's not -- I always -- I know this isn't what you want."

"Then why are you doing this?" Charles says, resisting, curling in on himself further, and Erik swallows around the lump in his throat and tugs harder, forcing Charles up, says, "It's okay," trying to sound reassuring, because -- because he doesn't know how to stop it, he can't turn it off, whatever it is so deeply ingrained in him that even when he was a child --

Charles is hard.

Erik's heart stops in his chest, and he jerks his gaze up to Charles' wet face; Charles looks defeated, self-loathing written all over his features, and he twists out of Erik's hands, though he doesn't get up from his knees -- can't, maybe, because he says, "Leave me _alone_ , Erik, I've been humiliated enough for one night," shoulders curling inwards like he's bracing for a blow.

"What," Erik says acidly, "leave you alone so that you can go and jerk off to thoughts of me in the privacy of your own bathroom?" It's mean, and he regrets it as soon as he's said it, even if he's certain it's true. Whether Charles wishes it were or not. 

"Fuck you, Erik," and Charles actually thumps Erik in the shoulder with his fist. It’s the first time Charles has ever really struck him, hard enough to hurt, anyway; his eyes are wild, despair and disgust writhing through the air around him in a tangible aura, finally losing control. "Fuck you -- "

Erik catches Charles' wrist in midair before Charles can hit him again, grabbing it forcefully enough that Charles is rocked back on his knees; if he'd made contact, with that kind of power, it'd have left a bruise. "Stop it!" 

Charles twists away again, his other arm coming up --

" _Calm. Down,_ " Erik demands, throwing as much Will behind it as he can, desperate, heart racing as he throws his left hand up to block the next blow.

It doesn't come. Charles' arms have gone limp, and he's just kneeling there now, panting, sobbing, head bowed and shaking from top to bottom, like he's run out of steam all at once. Erik drops his hands, releasing Charles' wrist and sitting back on his heels, his pulse still throbbing through him hard enough it's practically the only thing Erik can feel.

"Good," Erik says, a little breathlessly, and presses both trembling hands to his face, dragging his fingers back through his hair. "Good. All right. ...Thank you."

"Don't." Charles wraps his arms around himself, making himself small. His voice is a bit distant, though perhaps that's just the lack of heat. "I'm sorry. That was wrong of me. I never lose my temper like that."

"I know," Erik says, and he reaches out almost hesitantly to place his hands on Charles' shivering shoulders, trying to still him. He can feel the warmth of Charles' skin through his thick sweater, like he's feverish. "Can we talk now? Please? I didn't mean to ... I didn't mean to hurt you. I shouldn't have said what I did. But ...." He squeezes Charles' arms, just a little, despite himself. "You don't know what it's like. You're the only person I have, in the whole world -- you don't know what it's been like these past several months, thinking you didn't love me anymore!"

"How could I not know?" Charles asks the floor. "I'm a telepath. I know. But it's not as important as keeping you safe. Nothing's as important as that."

"Safe from you?" Erik says, and then shakes his head. "Charles, look at me." Another order; Charles' head comes up slowly, but he obeys, meeting Erik's gaze. "You couldn't hurt me, and I know you'd never want to. I already told you, I don't mind. If you want to have sex with me, it's all right. Isn't that better than -- than whatever you're doing to yourself, right now?" Torturing himself, from the appearance of it. Erik bites the inside of his lip and says, "What's most important to me is _you._ "

"It's wrong," Charles says, his face doing something complicated. "I'm supposed to look after you."

"Yes, well, you haven't been doing a very good job lately," Erik says dryly, and he drops his hands down to rest on Charles' knees, keeping careful distance, for now, between where he touches him and the erection still straining at the fabric of Charles' trousers, further up his lap. "Look. I'll make this simple. Answer _honestly._ " He holds Charles' gaze, steady, and asks, "Do you want to fuck me?"

Charles' mouth tightens, and he leans back, against the door, stiffening again; Erik scowls, frustrated, and pushes harder. "Yes or no, Charles. Answer the question."

There's a beat of hesitation, and a sound like a choke before Erik can tangibly feel Charles’ will giving way and Charles finally says, head bowing, "Yes."

At this point, it's almost a relief to hear Charles admit it; Erik lets out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, tension draining from between his shoulder blades. "All right," he says evenly. "See? That wasn't so hard." 

And Erik imagines it feels better just to have out with it, considering how much Charles moralizes sex -- considering the two of them together is technically illegal, since Erik's underage, since Charles is his guardian and his physician. He understands that much. But surely Charles knows by now how far Erik would go for him, if asked. He's -- he's _happy_ to do this for Charles if this is what Charles needs from him. 

If this is what is required, now, for Charles to love him….

"Come on," he says gently, and reaches for Charles' hands, pulling him after as Erik slowly rises up to his feet again. Charles' legs seem weak but Erik holds him steady, squeezing his hands in his. "Listen to me. I consent." It's what Charles needs to hear, he's certain of it. "It's fine."

Charles is shaking his head, slowly, but his hands are clinging to Erik's, holding on like Erik is an anchor in a storm, Charles' fingers curling tightly. "I can't," he says, his head drooping forward to rest his forehead against Erik's chest. "I can't."

"You can," Erik says. The difference in Charles’ aura is tangible, the way he softens when his will is overridden something Erik has come to know intimately through their practice together. Charles is in shallow subspace now, that much is obvious -- whether he needs Erik to push him down more so he'll be comfortable, Erik isn't sure. He rests a hand on the back of Charles' head, smoothing his fingers down toward his nape gently, gently. Charles sighs, relaxing all over like Erik’s found the knot of his bad feelings and taken them all away, replaced them with calm.

This could be a good thing for Erik, too, Erik realizes as he slowly strokes Charles' hair. If Charles is with him, then he isn't with anyone else, with Rémy or Gabrielle or one of those dozens of Doms Charles has been dating, each of them worse than the last. He'll have to make good on his promise never to leave Erik again. And maybe, after this, he won't feel he has to anymore. He won't feel so damn guilty for thoughts he's not yet acted on. That Charles would fuck him eventually was inevitable, surely both of them know that -- everyone who wants Erik always has him, in the end -- and at least now Charles can know that Erik is all right with it. That will help.

Charles' cock is pressing hard against Erik's hip, stiffening further as Erik caresses the back of his neck. "Go upstairs," Erik says at last, nudging him with just enough Will to take the last doubts away, he hopes. "Come on."

"Okay," Charles says, and he steps to the side, wearing that distracted, dreamy expression he gets when Erik really puts him down. He heads for the stairs, leaving his coat discarded on the floor and taking the steps slowly, hesitating on the fourth, confusion flitting across his face.

"Keep going," Erik says, and then Charles does, Erik following after, sliding his fingertips along the handrail up and up until they're stepping out onto the landing and Erik says, "Your room," because Erik only ever fucks people not-here, he doesn't have any of the right materials in his own bedroom. Besides, perhaps this will help -- being in familiar territory, on Charles' part, even if he has let Erik take over control.

Charles goes, hesitating again on the threshold, half-turning to look over his shoulder at Erik. "This is okay?" he asks slowly, like he's looking for reassurance.

"Yes," Erik says, and he smiles, settling his hand at the center of Charles' back. "I promise." 

Charles' room is dark; it's gotten late without Erik realizing it. He flips the lamp at Charles' bedside table on and it pools golden light across the nightstand and the near side of Charles' bed, still unmade from this morning. At least, Erik thinks, this is nothing new -- he knows what to do, here, unlike before, downstairs when they were so ... when everything felt like it was falling apart. 

He takes a few steps forward into the room, then turns around to face Charles again, Charles still standing half-shadowed in the doorway. "Do whatever you want," he says. "I don't have any rules for what you can and can't do to me. So do what you want."

Charles steps forward, into the light, blinking as it dazzles him, and comes up to stand right in front of Erik, close again. He looks up at Erik for the longest time, examining his face, before he reaches up and pulls Erik's head down to kiss his mouth.

Charles is a good kisser. It makes sense, he's old enough he's had plenty of time to practice -- but Erik appreciates it, all the same, especially after all the high school Doms with too much tongue shoved down his throat. There's a reason, Erik thinks, that he likes older Doms. Older ... sub, in this case, he has to remind himself, needs to make sure he keeps his behavior appropriate --

 _God,_ Charles is a _really_ good kisser. Erik reaches forward to set his hand on Charles' hip, drawing him closer as he licks his way into Charles' mouth; he sits back, on the edge of the bed, and curls the fingers of his free hand into Charles' soft hair, nipping lightly at Charles' lower lip with his teeth. Charles lets out a little moan, a throaty sound Erik can feel vibrating between them in the moment before Charles climbs up after him into Erik's lap, settling there to keep kissing him, his thighs splayed around Erik's torso and his hands roaming Erik's back, stroking.

It's ... distracting, and Erik can't keep himself focused on the progression of things he ought to do -- he doesn't know how to fuck a sub, not really -- he's fucked people as a Dom, but they were always Doms themselves, homosexuals, not true submissives -- and they always ended up Dominating Erik, in the end. He needs to stay alert, to be able to give Charles what he needs, but that focus keeps sliding away from him with the weight of Charles on his lap, pressing down against his thighs. 

Erik draws back, just a little, their mouths still so close his lips brush Charles' when he orders, "Take your shirt off."

"Mmm, okay," Charles says dreamily, and sits back, hands reaching up to the collar of his sweater and taking it in hand; he pulls it off along with his t-shirt, a long upward slide of fabric that reveals his navel, then his abdomen, then the heavier muscle of his upper chest, before his head emerges, tousled and flushed, lips swollen. He drops them both to the carpet where they land with a quiet thump.

Erik's seen Charles with his shirt off before, of course, most recently when he walked in on him in the shower six months ago or so, but he's never seen him like this, close and warm beneath the touch of Erik's fingertips skimming along bare skin, his nipples pebbling when Erik rubs his thumbs over them. Feeling strangely dizzy, Erik leans in to press his lips to Charles' sternum; Charles' heart is pounding hard and fast and he can feel it against his mouth. Charles smells like clean cotton, like detergent, like flesh.

Charles makes another humming sound, his fingers clutching at Erik's back before curling in his shirt, tugging. "You?" he asks, his hips rocking a little in Erik's lap, his aura now a kind of sweet hunger, like a breeze wafting between them. "Please."

"Since you asked so nicely." Erik leans back enough to pull his shirt off over his head, tossing it onto the floor in a pile with Charles'. Charles sits back again, and he just looks, at first, before his hands come to stroke over Erik's chest, slow and circling, rubbing his palms over and over until Erik's skin is warm and sensitized, able to feel every brush of the calluses on Charles' fingers from wielding a pen.

"Lie down?" Charles asks then, looking back up to meet Erik's gaze, his own still far away, no trace of worry or fear any more. "Please."

Erik smiles slightly and brushes a kiss to Charles' mouth again. "All right. You'll have to get off me first, though." He nudges Charles' thighs with both hands and Charles slips off his lap, letting Erik shift to get fully on the bed, settling down lengthwise with his head on one of Charles' pillows. Charles follows, lying down beside him and curling one arm under his head, the other hand going back to Erik's chest, stroking him, as Charles leans forward to kiss him again, eyes closing.

Erik kisses back more forcefully this time -- Charles seems to be taking things quite slowly, which is fine, but Charles' cock isn't going to stay hard forever.... Erik slides an arm around Charles' waist and holds him there as he kisses down his throat, licking at his pulse point, then lower, lower again, laving over one peaked nipple as Charles moans and presses his hand harder against Erik' chest. 

No toys, Erik decides; Charles doesn't seem to be pushing them in that direction, anyway. Maybe tomorrow night, or later on, he can have a chance to play around with whatever contains the small metal motors he can sense in the box under Charles' nightstand. Erik lifts his head back up to Charles' mouth and moves his hand on Charles' waist, pressing it down between their bodies this time to palm Charles' hard cock through his trousers, slowly rubbing.

"Tell me how much you want me," he says, and bites at Charles' lip, holding his gaze, Charles' dilated pupils flicking rapidfire between Erik's eyes at the proximity.

"All the time," Charles says, his breath soft on Erik's face, little pants as his hips twitch under Erik's palm. His cock is stiffening further, straining the fabric. "I want -- so much, but I shouldn't want. When you Dom me. I'm not supposed to." He's frowning again, a worried look on his face, though his hips are still jerking under Erik's ministrations, pushing up against his hand.

Hmm. More Dominance, then -- Erik kisses that frown, teasing it slowly out of existence. "Get a condom and lube," he orders a few moments later, nudging Charles gently back under the surface, still palming Charles' cock, squeezing slightly at the shaft. "I won't be restraining you tonight, so you'll have to be very, _very_ good and do exactly as I say. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Charles says, relaxing again and turning his face to rub the bridge of his nose along Erik's cheek, nuzzling him. He rolls away a moment later, opening the bedside drawer and taking out a bottle of slick and a strip of condoms, tearing one off the end and putting the rest of them back. When he turns back over he offers them to Erik, as if presenting them for approval.

Erik nods, and takes them from him, setting them aside on the bed for now, and pushes himself up, moving higher up the bed to lean against the headboard. "Stand up and remove your trousers and underwear. _Slowly._ I want to watch you."

The bed creaks as Charles shifts back, getting to his feet by the bed and reaching down for his fly. He flicks the button open with a quick twist of his fingers, but then he takes his time with his zipper, glancing up at Erik as he lowers it, revealing more of the dark line of hair that leads down from his navel, until it vanishes under the hem of his underwear.

Charles' cock is tenting out the front of his briefs, released from the hold of his trousers; there's a gap at his waist where the elastic is pressed out from his belly, and Erik imagines that if he stood up he could see down and inside, find Charles' cock peeking out like a private peep show. Erik has the sudden and nearly overpowering urge to put his mouth there, to wet Charles' briefs with his tongue so he can see flesh through the translucent fabric. 

He's watching attentively, now, his gaze dragging along Charles' nearly-nude body. Charles is much fitter than Erik had realized -- he must be going to the gym after work instead of coming home to Erik. The muscles of his chest and shoulders are firm and well-developed, his thighs tight and rounded. Erik flicks his eyes back up to Charles' face, Charles' red red lips, then down again, to where Charles has kicked off his trousers and is slipping his thumbs under the elastic hem of his briefs.

Slowly, obediently, Charles tugs them down over his hard cock, dragging the thin fabric down his thighs and letting them puddle at his feet, straightening up once more to show Erik his naked body, his erection standing proud and flushed away from his thighs, thick and swollen. _Fuck_ , Erik thinks, and there's a heat building between his own legs, tension drawing up in the pit of his stomach as he feels himself start to harden. 

"Come here," Erik demands, and his voice sounds strangely hoarse to his own ears, like he's been swallowing gravel.

Charles obeys immediately, climbing back onto the bed and crawling across to lie back down next to Erik, shamelessly nude. "Good?" he asks, reaching out to trail his fingers across Erik's belly, like he can't be this close and not touch.

"Very good," Erik agrees, and kisses him again, because he needs to, this time, can't look at Charles bare like this without ... _wanting_. Charles' mouth is warm and wet, sliding against his own with an ease that feels familiar, now, and yet still novel at the same time, a buzzing growing in Erik's ears. 

He's out of breath when he pulls back again, catching Charles' hand and guiding it lower, until Charles' thumb is a lined heat against the metal button of Erik's fly. He's never needed this before -- not like he needs it now, the way his body seems to ... _crave_ it. 

"Undress me."

"Mmm, okay," Charles says, and flicks open the fly of Erik's jeans just as easily as he did his own, his head lowering so he can watch his hand as he unzips Erik, looking at the bulge in his underwear and stroking it with his fingertips, pausing in removing Erik's pants to trace over the shape of it, lips parting. "You're hard," he says, sliding his hand inside Erik's pants. "I didn't think you would be. You don't really like sex."

"You’re right," Erik says, because he is, if Erik's honest with himself -- he doesn't tend to get aroused at all, and even now he's not sure if the tension in his groin is circumstantial, is because Charles is a submissive and not a Dom, or just because Charles is Charles. Charles' hand is a heavy weight over his cock and when Erik shifts it drags over his shaft, tugging the fabric of underwear along with it, the friction sending a shiver up Erik's spine. He hasn't let anyone touch him like this, _there_ , in a long time. Since the arrests.

He slides his hand down Charles' arm to Charles' wrist, although he doesn't push Charles' hand away. Part of him wants to. Not because it doesn't feel good -- it does -- but because it ... he can't explain it. It's strange-feeling, and Erik isn't sure what to do with himself, like this. The heat between his cock and Charles' palm builds.

"Go on," he says, and finally he moves Charles' hand to the waist of his trousers. "Take them off."

Charles complies, tugging at the fabric until it starts peeling down Erik's legs; he has to lift his hip off the bed, and Charles moves, getting up to crouch over Erik and taking hold with both hands as he pulls Erik's jeans and underwear down, moving backwards down the bed until he reaches Erik's feet and finally tugs them all the way off, letting them fall on the floor. When he's done he comes back up, crawling over Erik until he reaches the top of the bed again and can press his lips to Erik's left breast, just over where his heart beats -- a _bouche de coeur_ , a submissive's gesture, eyes lowered so all Erik can see are his lashes.

"You're being very good," Erik says, and he rests his hand on the crown of Charles' head, fingers curling slightly in the dark waves of Charles' hair. He can feel his pulse quickening already beneath Charles' mouth, and knows Charles can feel it, too. He reaches to his right, finding the small bottle of lube, and presses it into Charles' hand. "Two fingers," he says. He can take that. It'll hurt, but doesn't it always? "Get me ready."

Charles blinks slowly, and sits up, shifting his weight until he's kneeling, and opens the cap, squirting slick onto the fingers of his right hand. He smears it across them with his thumb, coating them, then nudges Erik's thighs wider with his left hand almost absently, looking down between Erik's spread legs at his cock, then lower still. "You're big here," he says, his left hand moving as if drawn again to Erik's erection, stroking up its length with the heel of his palm.

Erik shivers again, but he doesn't withdraw. "Do you like that?" he asks, not sure if he wants to know the answer.

"Yes," Charles says, his voice falling an octave, and then -- and then --

Charles bends his head, curling forward, and _licks_ at the head of Erik's cock before taking it into his mouth.

The inside of Charles' mouth is hot, and wet, and it's so unexpected that Erik nearly jumps before he manages to keep himself still -- he's never -- no one has _ever_ \-- but Charles is, and he's enthusiastic about it, too, making little sounds deep in his throat as he sucks at Erik's cock, stroking the underside of it with the thumb of his left hand as he works his lips around it, flicking the tip of his tongue over Erik's frenulum then dipping it into the slit at the top.

It feels like all the blood in Erik's body is in his dick, now, throbbing between Charles' lips. "Fuck," he whispers, and he grabs at the bedsheets on either side of him, twisting his hands into fists around the cotton to keep from reaching for Charles' head instead and pushing it _down_. His hips keep jerking up despite himself, but Charles doesn't seem to mind; he gags a little, once, but then pulls back enough to recover before carrying on right where he left off. 

"Charles," Erik says, and his voice comes out raw and hoarse. "Charles, I've never done this before, I -- you should -- _god_ \-- "

Charles lifts his head, letting Erik's cock fall out of his mouth and looking up at him along the length of Erik's torso, his lower lip red and slippery-wet. "Do you want me to stop?" he asks, sounding worried. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to."

"No," Erik says quickly. "No, if you want to, then you should -- I just -- " He shakes his head, and thinks, _fuck it_. "Do it. Suck me."

Charles moans, eyelids fluttering, shivering from head to toe -- strange to see on his bare body, the way he quivers at the strength in Erik's tone. He bends his head again and takes Erik back between his lips, sucking him in once more and this time starting to bob his head up and down, working the first three inches of Erik's cock in and out of that tight suction. He seems to remember about his slick right hand, because a moment later he nestles it down between Erik's legs and strokes his hole, softly, round and around, not pushing in but just -- teasing it.

Erik groans. He can't help it; the tension beneath his stomach is only building now, the heat getting hotter -- is this how it always feels? If so, he can't understand Doms who manage to last more than a minute. It's ... impossibly good, lighting up his whole body and making him feel like there's an electric current running just underneath his skin, sizzling between their skin where Charles touches him. It makes him feel ... _powerful_ , having Charles do this for him, _to_ him, when it's always been Erik down on his knees. It feels like being in control. Dominant. 

"Put your fingers in me," he gets out through gritted teeth, and tilts his head back, even though his gaze doesn't leave Charles for an instant, staring helplessly at the sight of his own hard cock disappearing in and out of Charles' flushed mouth. Dizzying -- he can barely breathe, somehow, and giving the order is heady enough, but when Charles _obeys_ \--

Erik comes suddenly, so hard he gasps, one hand abandoning its grasp of the bedsheets to cling to Charles' shoulder -- and he can't help the way he squirms beneath Charles' mouth, trying to fuck his way up deeper into that heat and suction as his orgasm surges through him. Charles doesn't pull off, though his throat pulses around Erik as he chokes on his cock; he moans and keeps working him, his fingers curling inside Erik's ass where they're worming their way in. Only when Erik has finished spurting does Charles start coming back up, though he's sucking gently as he does, licking with the broad flat of his tongue, until when he lets Erik go his cock comes out with a slick sound, cleaned of come.

"Was that okay?" Charles asks, laying his head on Erik's hipbone, low and submissive.

"Yes," Erik manages to say, breathless; his hand trembles when he reaches to rest it on the crown of Charles' head, smoothing slowly down to his nape. God, Erik thinks, he must be insane for never having let someone do that before -- He strokes his fingertips lightly down the back of Charles' neck, a steady motion just while he catches his breath, and Charles makes this _noise_ , somewhere between a moan and a gasp, rubbing his face against Erik's skin and pressing up into his hand.

"You like that?" Erik asks, amused, and he strokes along Charles' neck again, down toward his spine then back up toward his hairline.

"Mmm, I ... " Charles says, and if he sounded floaty before, now he sounds like he's orbiting somewhere out past Neptune, utterly gone. "Makes me hard. My head is ... feels good." Erik realizes, looking down, that Charles' hips are moving slowly against the bed, like he's rubbing himself against the duvet. "Telepath. Lots of blood ... to my head."

Jesus, Erik thinks, suddenly alarmed -- is that what was going on every time Erik would stroke Charles' hair like this? Charles always rushing off to somewhere-or-another, always being interrupted -- How could Erik not have realized? Unless Charles was _making_ him not realize, which is ... concerning, but a discussion for another time, when they aren’t naked and in bed together. 

"You don't come until I say you do," Erik says, trying to pull himself back together enough to put force behind the order. More difficult than it should be, but Erik's distracted, now, and his mind and body still feel warm and loose from his own climax. He reaches down between his legs with his free hand to take hold of Charles' wrist, guiding his fingers in and out of him more strongly. Charles picks up the motion, thrusting his fingers in and out of Erik's hole, spreading them a little when Erik squeezes his wrist.

Charles lets out a sigh as Erik's fingers drag a little heavier over his scalp, his stubble dragging over Erik's hipbone. "Nice," he says, seemingly quite content there even though his erection must be painful by now.

Charles is too far gone to do this without clear direction, Erik determines, and after a second he uses his grasp of Charles' wrist to tug his fingers out of his ass, his hole clenching around air in the absence of something to fill it. "Put the condom on," he says. "Then come back here."

He shifts lower on the bed, until he's lying flat on his back with his head on Charles' pillow, legs still spread open, and waits until Charles has rolled the plastic down over his dick and returned to kneel between Erik's thighs, flushed from his face halfway down his chest, erect cock standing proudly between them, his hands lax and open. 

"Like I said," Erik murmurs, "you know how to do your postures when you want to." He leans up to curl a hand behind the back of Charles' neck and pull him down, kissing him again, taking what he wants from Charles' mouth with his teeth and tongue. Charles' mouth looks swollen when they part again, his eyes bright and glassy. "Now fuck me."

Charles shuffles in closer, until Erik can feel the tip of Charles' cock brushing his perineum, and he loops his arms under Erik's knees, lifting them a little and splaying them wider, making room for himself before he reaches down and lines himself up to push inside.

Charles' cock is thick, and Erik is nowhere near ready for it -- he grits his teeth and sucks in a sharp breath as Charles' shaft spreads his hole wide around it, an ache that grows into a throbbing pain that lances up through his stomach toward his chest. "God -- " he gets out, and tightens his hand on Charles' neck, keeping him from backing away, trying to wrangle his body under control, force himself to relax. Charles' hand is touching Erik's belly, stroking him, his eyes wide and worried.

"Stop," he says, his hips coming to a halt, only halfway in. "I'm hurting you."

"I'm fine," Erik says, and he grabs at Charles' hip with his free hand, digging his fingertips into the flesh of Charles' ass as he tries to pull him forward, force him deeper in to prove it. "It only hurts at first -- I'll get used to it, just keep going."

Charles still looks worried, but he lowers his gaze and presses in again, sliding further into Erik's body until he bottoms out, his groin pressed against Erik's ass. He's panting, flush deepening, biting at his lower lip. Erik can feel Charles' cock throbbing inside of him, held so tightly inside, almost as if he can feel Charles' pulse. Erik closes his eyes and he’s nearly somewhere else, some- _when_ else -- he looks back to Charles, quickly, and the memory fades half-formed. Erik takes in a slow, shuddering breath, and when he exhales he smiles up at Charles, and relaxes the hand at his neck to smooth it down his back instead, down past his waist and toward the swell of his ass. 

He feels -- relieved, almost, that they're finally doing this. Charles has his hard cock in Erik's hole, now. There's no going back from this. It solves everything, fixes _everything_ , and Erik is ... enormously happy, for that. 

"Start thrusting," he orders, and lifts one of his legs higher up, curling it around Charles' waist. He feels the shift of muscle right before Charles pulls back, and then Charles is pushing back in, panting, his cock starting to slide in and out of Erik's wet hole with growing rhythm, stroking his clenching channel. Charles' eyes are closed and his lips are parted, his head tipping back a little as he fucks Erik, arms tightening around Erik's splayed thighs.

Charles looks beautiful like this, Erik thinks, with the lamplight glittering on his skin, the way the musculature of his chest and arms moves as he fucks Erik, all the little familiar things about him seeming both novel and comforting, now, and Erik's so terrified of losing him, that there would ever be a chance Charles could just ... walk away from him, like he almost did tonight, and Erik can't think of anything that would hurt more in the entire world than that. 

"Kiss me," Erik says, and Charles does, his mouth warm and still tasting slightly of come, his tongue sliding alongside Erik's -- to reach, he's had to push Erik's knees back past Erik's ears, the stretch along Erik's hamstrings familiar and delicious this time, like it’s never been before. Charles' cock is still moving, hips pumping, and at this angle he's going deep, fucking in and out like a piston, the tip of his cock brushing repeatedly over Erik's prostate as he thrusts. It makes Erik feel impossibly warm inside, that sparking starting up again in his groin. _Really?_ Erik thinks, incredulous, and he cups Charles' face between his hands and kisses him harder, sucking on his lower lip until Charles moans.

He's flirting with danger, though, he knows -- Charles is fucking fast, now. Rough is fine, Erik doesn't mind rough, but this is desperate, needy, almost animalistic, and Erik can feel something else clawing at his insides alongside the slow-burning arousal, can feel someone else’s hands on his skin, not-Charles’. Fuck. Resenting himself for it, Erik says, "Slower -- " and twists his fingers in Charles' hair to make sure he's got his attention. "Slower, not so ... not so hard." He'll ruin this for both of them if he loses touch with reality right now.

Charles lets out a soft whining sound but he does as he's told, his hips slowing to a steady glide, in and out, like he's drawing a circle with his cock, dragging it slowly along Erik's inner walls and rubbing his prostate. "Like this?" he asks, burying his face in the side of Erik's neck, his hot breath gusting over Erik's throat and collarbone.

"Yes," Erik breathes out, and he wraps both arms around Charles' body, holding him close. "Perfect."

Charles' cock keeps moving inside him, a constant Erik can't lose focus of, not even for a moment. His body is starting to feel hot all over, the weight of Charles on top of him bearing him down, and that shouldn't make it easier to breathe, only it does, somehow. He wishes they didn't have to use the condom; he wants Charles to feel him on his bare skin, to eliminate that one last barrier between them, but it's Charles' own rule. 

On impulse, Erik pushes forward, rolling them over so Charles is on his back, lying on the bed next to where Erik had been only a moment before -- and he manages it, miraculously, without Charles' cock sliding out of him, which has to be some kind of record. "Stay there," he says, and straightens up, bracing his hands on Charles' chest so he can start grinding himself down slow and hard on top of Charles' cock, squeezing around him, dragging his hips forward until Charles has almost pulled out, only to sit back again.

Charles sobs, gasping for breath and staring up at Erik, eyes wide now, pupils dilated so wide that the blue is almost hidden; he looks pleasure-stricken, his hips twitching under Erik, trying to thrust without leverage. "Please," he says, half a moan, chest heaving. "Please ... "

"Not yet," Erik says, and a thrill runs through him with the words. He picks up the pace, and reaches for one of Charles' hands, bringing to to curl Charles' fingers around his cock -- hard again -- and making Charles stroke him in rhythm with Erik's hips. When Charles has taken over for himself, Erik lets his hands go back to exploring the topography of Charles' chest, pinching his nipples and smoothing his fingers down over Charles' ribs, toward Erik's own thighs. 

He can feel himself getting close, now, and he's doing no better than before as far as keeping himself in check -- his pulse is pounding through his entire body, Charles' cock dragging in and out of him, thick and weighty, as Erik works himself over him, rides him, a bead of sweat slicing a cold path down his spine. 

"Please," Charles begs again, squirming under Erik, hips twisting like he's trying to corkscrew up inside him. "I need to -- I'm going to -- please let me?"

"Ssh," Erik says, and he presses a finger over Charles' lips and tries not to thrust up into Charles' hand, still moving quick on his cock. He can see stars on the edges of his vision now, hurtling toward the edge, and he -- _fuck_ \--

He comes, for a second time, splattering thick white ropes of come up Charles' chest, one landing as high as Charles' neck, pooling between his collarbones. Erik shudders through it, and the force leaves him feeling boneless, exhausted, but he makes himself keep fucking himself on Charles' cock all the same, ignoring the ache of Charles' cock as it slides past his hypersensitive prostate.

"Okay," he gasps, splaying one hand in the center of Charles' chest. "Okay. Now."

Charles cries out and just -- just like that he comes, on command, hips fucking up into Erik as his head tips back and his mouth falls open, orgasming inside Erik's body. His every muscle has spasmed hard, but then -- Charles collapses onto the bed, limp and breathing hard, trembling.

It takes Erik a second to find the control over his own body to reach down beneath himself and grab the base of Charles' cock, holding the condom on him as he slowly pulls off and lifts himself away, settling down at Charles' side. Charles' cheeks are flushed pink, and Erik smooths his hand up Charles' chest, past his own drying come, to rest it over Charles' pounding heart. "There," he says, and his voice sounds exhausted even to his own ears. 

Charles rolls over, placing his face back in the crook of Erik's neck, and curls in close, sighing. He's putting off an aura of warm contentment, drowsy and serene, and Erik smiles at him even though Charles can't see, tilting his head down to press a soft kiss to Charles' temple. He can't find the words to describe to Charles how much it means to him, that Charles seems to want to be around him now, even if he has to be in subspace to show it. After months of nothing but evasion from Charles, Erik's desperate even for the smallest signs of affection, and this .... This is perfect.

He kisses Charles again, on the shoulder this time, where Erik knows there are tiny freckles scattered like a dusting of cinnamon, even if the light's too dim to see them now; Charles sighs again, hand coming to rest, curled and passive, against Erik's sternum. Erik can feel Charles' softening cock pressed against his thigh, the wrinkling condom still around it. He decides to stay, at least until Charles is up out of subspace. He can try to make the transition back easy for him, and ... and, if he's honest, he doesn't want to leave, back to his empty bedroom, same place he's spent the past several nights, wondering why Charles still isn't home yet. 

But Charles doesn't stir again, just stays there, breath slowly evening out, and after a while Erik realizes that he's fallen asleep. Erik relaxes, slightly, and twists just enough to grab one of Charles' pillows, tugging it down to rest his head there. After a long while he dares to shift slowly away, edging out of Charles' embrace even though each movement reminds him how sore his hole is, stretched out by Charles' cock. He doesn't go far, though -- just enough to reach the edge of the bedsheets and tug them up to cover them both, blanketing them in the warmth of the duvet. Charles makes a meaningless noise and shuffles closer to Erik in his sleep. With a sigh Erik lets him, settling back down in the halo of warmth from Charles' body, and thinks -- fine. Fine. And he listens to the slow in-out of Charles' breaths until he finally falls asleep.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: dubcon, underage sex, statutory rape


	18. Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at [this super awesome art](http://i.imgur.com/CDVYDvL.jpg) that **etirabys** did for last week's chapter! :D
> 
> We know we haven't got to all of last week's comments yet -- thank you all so much for them! Spicy is away for work this week so things have been a little rushed but we absolutely will answer all of them, there was some amazing discussion going on in the comments too that is just so cool to see as writers. Now on to the fic!

_Charles_

Charles wakes up slowly, stretching against the mattress, his body feeling ... good, buoyant almost, as he arches his back and presses his hands against the headboard. It's still dark out, but only just, the first hint of winter sun showing around the thick curtains. He's muzzy-headed, blinking slowly against the need to open his eyes properly, when he reaches down to scratch at his chest and finds hard, dried patches on his chest, catching under his fingernails.

Then Charles wakes up all at once. The first thing he sees when he turns his head is Erik, curled up beside him in the bed on his stomach, dead to the world and, as far as Charles can see, utterly naked.

Fuck. _Fuck._

" _Fuck,_ " Charles whispers, lungs heaving out a sob, and he kicks and throws aside the covers with his hands and feet, a whole-body convulsion flinging them from his body in his haste to see -- he sees -- oh, _God_ \--

Semen. Erik's, spattered across his naked chest and dried in tight clots like blood at a crime scene, Charles' own cock laying against his thigh, innocent-seeming until he sees the used condom stuck to his calf, wrinkled and flaccid and streaked with come.

Somewhere far off someone is drumming a hard, fast rhythm, and that loud beat is thrumming in Charles' ears, like the blocked-off sound of the cabin pressure changing in an airplane; he stares blankly down at himself, and then lurches from the bed to run to the bathroom and gag over the toilet, dry-heaving and scratching at his skin, trying to get it off, horror and self-loathing rising up to meet over his head like a drowning tide. He feels Erik waking up at the disturbance and firmly sends him back to sleep -- this is bad enough right now without having to try and moderate his reaction for Erik. The porcelain is cold against his bare skin where he’s sprawled across it, staring down into the bowl.

He fucked Erik. There's no escaping that -- he remembers clear as day the sight of Erik mounted atop him, riding Charles' cock with his cheeks flushed and hands moving over Charles' body, playing him like an instrument as he took his own pleasure and gave Charles his; Erik's voice, deep and throaty as he ordered Charles hard enough to sink his will and leave him utterly subsumed, open and unrestrained from his careful self-control. It would be easy to lay blame at Erik's door, but Charles knows ... Charles knows that this would never have happened if under it all he hadn't wanted it. If he hadn't set this up, all unknowing, for Erik to topple over like a line of dominos.

Charles braces his forearms on the seat of the toilet and retches for breath, his legs like jelly under him, unable to stand. He did this. He pushed Erik away -- pushed a boy who needed him away so hard that of course Erik did this, reacted the only way he could, a violent and desperate response to cling to the person he relies on, the only person. Erik is a damaged boy, whose lessons have been entirely in taking what he's given and holding onto it for fear of losing it if he lets go. No wonder he felt that the only way he could keep Charles was to ... to give in, to what he knew Charles wanted. To make it happen.

All of this is Charles’ fault. The fact his body feels so good only makes the cataclysm worse, all of his submissive hormones happily buzzing through his blood and making him lightheaded and anxious for more, a craving he can’t appease.

After a while Charles manages to get up, and he stumbles into the shower to start scrubbing himself off, removing the evidence along with a good portion of his skin cells, his skin red raw from the rough brush; he tries not to think of Erik, long and golden-tan and naked in his bed, still sleeping, a small smile on his lips like he's dreaming something good.

When he's ... clean ... Charles removes the compulsion from Erik's mind and makes himself turn the water off and dry himself, doesn't meet his own eye in the mirror as he gets dressed in his chunkiest sweater and a pair of jeans that usually stay buried at the back of his closet. Normal clothes. Clothes that cover what Erik should never have seen. And after he's done hyperventilating, his face buried in his suit jackets to hide the sound in case he's loud enough to wake Erik, Charles slips out of his bedroom and goes downstairs to have breakfast.

By the time that Erik comes down Charles is halfway through the _Times_ , pretending to himself that he's reading it as he eats his toast.

"Hey," Erik says, as he walks past Charles toward the coffee machine, pouring himself a fresh cup. He's wet-haired, wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants, casual, like this is any other Sunday. Charles looks away, the same nausea rising up in his throat -- but it's mingled with a different kind of lust now, the kind that comes with intimate knowledge of what that body looks like naked, feels like when he's sucking Erik's cock, the sounds Erik makes.

"Good morning," Charles says after a beat too long, turning the page of the newspaper as if he's actually taken in anything it says.

Erik's mind is humming along like nothing's changed, thoughts blurry with the last lingering effects of sleep, and he seems content, now, satisfied with himself, happy to have found Charles sitting down here like things have finally gone back to what Erik considers normal. "Did you sleep well?" Erik asks, walking toward Charles to set his coffee down on the table -- Charles meets his eye very briefly over the edge of the paper and Erik smiles at him, the timbre of his mind tilting toward warm affection.

Charles doesn’t answer, too busy trying not to throw up, not to lean towards Erik like a flower towards the sun.

Erik turns again, going back to the cabinet and getting out the box of granola; it's hard not to pay attention to the way his muscles shift in his back, visible beneath his thin cotton shirt. But ...

Charles had decided, in the shower, and in his closet, and sitting down here making himself keep his head out of his hands, that the only way to deal with this is never to mention it at all. He can't undo it -- what's done is done, but if Erik thinks that he's achieved what he set out to achieve ... that he's got Charles back, has paid enough for his attention, then once ... once should be the only time. It's not as though Erik makes a habit of fucking people who don't approach him first. It's probably cowardly, but it's all Charles has right now without breaking down completely.

"What are you doing today?" he asks, turning another page of the paper, staring blankly at a photograph of the mayor shaking some foreign dignitary’s hand.

"I need to finish my English essay," Erik says, carrying his bowl of cereal over to the table and setting it down next to his coffee, then sliding into the chair opposite Charles, dipping his spoon into his bowl. "It's due tomorrow. So, that. And Madelyne wanted to get together and do something, but I haven't decided if that will work out yet or not." He lifts his spoon to his mouth, chewing his cereal. 

Oh, God. Homework. No matter how tall he is, how Dominant, Erik is still truthfully, biologically, only sixteen years old, even if he has just celebrated his 'seventeenth.' 

Charles takes another bite of his toast, though he barely tastes it, doesn’t chew it quite enough and it rasps down his throat, dry and painful. "You should, if you have time," he says, astonishing himself with how normal his voice sounds. "You'll realize when you get to college how important it is to spend time with friends while you can. Maddie's a nice girl." And far more appropriate a submissive, should Erik ever turn his eyes that way.

Erik's thinking quite plainly that he'd rather spend time with Charles, resenting the fact that yes, in two years he'll be in college, far out of Charles' reach. "Maybe," is all he says, though, sipping at his coffee with his eyes downturned. Charles can't look at his fingers on the mug without thinking of those same fingers smoothing over Charles' bare skin, curling around Charles' wrist, stroking the nape of his neck. After several long moments Erik says, too evenly, "I was thinking we should go out to dinner tonight, together. Sushi."

It's a test -- Erik's trying to ascertain if it 'worked,' or if Charles is just going to invent an excuse and evade him again.

"In this weather?" Charles asks, past the croak that wants to come out of his throat. "Sushi is summer food."

"Indian, then," Erik says, and he meets Charles' eyes across the table, unblinking. 

"All right," Charles says, and manages to smile, a brief, awkward twitch of his mouth before he turns his face down to his paper again, the muscles of his lower back spasming with all the tension he can't show anywhere else.

"Good." Erik grins, the expression wide and bright on his face. 

Erik radiates happiness for the rest of the day, whether he's working on his schoolwork, or reading, or on his computer. He's taken to trailing Charles around the apartment, if unintentionally, always showing up in a room ten minutes or so after Charles does with some perfectly understandable excuse. It's excruciating. Charles just wants to be alone, to think more -- if he's honest, brood more -- about what happened, to try and decide what the hell to do about it all, but with Erik acting like this it's impossible to just react, having to think all the time about how Erik will see his behavior, whether he'll then feel a second dose of the same horrendous 'medicine' will fix things between them.

The only place Charles gets any peace is in the bathroom, but even there he knows that if he stayed too long Erik would be checking on him, or perhaps just bursting in like he did that time before, catching Charles sitting on the toilet, fully-clothed with his head resting on his knees, wanting to just ... stop existing.

He can't, won't, change Erik's memory, or change his mind. That's a step over a line Charles has fought all his life not to cross, one he already toys with when he turns people's attention, and he just ... he can't. Not to Erik. Even if it means setting himself on fire.

By the time they're leaving for dinner Charles has got around to freaking out about other people finding out -- Erik isn't exactly discreet about his dalliances, after all, and Charles ... Charles probably should go to jail for this. Even when they're walking down the street he can't stop wondering if it's obvious to everyone who looks at them what happened -- if it's written in their body language, in the way they look at each other, that something happened. He feels paranoid and jittery, flinching at his own reflection in store windows as they pass, and he catches Erik thinking about it, sometimes -- notices Erik looking at him and remembering the way Charles looked last night, and the way Erik feels both incredulous and appreciative at the same time.

He doesn’t even taste his dinner, just mechanically puts it in his mouth, chews, swallows, somehow tricks Erik into thinking they’re having a normal conversation by pretending to himself that they are, almost hard enough to make himself believe it.

Erik loops their arms together the moment they're back on the street after eating, pulling Charles in close and babbling on about something at his internship, gesticulating excitedly with his free hand. It's started to snow again, heavily this time, and Erik's body is warm and solid pressed up alongside Charles' own, impossible to ignore. Erik seems so ... happy, Charles thinks, trudging onward through the slush until they reach the subway entrance, and feels like someone is operating his body from far away, putting on the right faces and saying the right things but never really experiencing them. They're shoved like sardines together on the busy subway carriage, and Charles tries to ... tries not to remember how it felt, how he felt, when he was under and everything was lovely. Before reality came back in with the morning paper.

They reach the apartment and as they walk in the door Erik reaches for Charles' scarf, unwinding it from around his neck with an easy, proprietary air. Charles is about to say something -- he's not sure what, but he has to say --

"Take my coat off," Erik says, orders, and Charles feels his hands move before he can stop them, already reaching for Erik's buttons and slipping them loose, one by one. It's easier, then, not to argue, he thinks, to do this and then stop, once he's let Erik show him who's boss, let Erik reassure himself.

When the coat is hanging open Charles slides his hands under the lapels to slip the coat off Erik's shoulders, catching it before it can fall from his wrists and draping it over his arm, brushing errant snowmelt from it with one gloved palm. "I'll just go hang this up," he says, turning to go to the closet.

"Yes," Erik says behind him. "And when you're done, come back and kneel at the foot of the stairs." 

He's getting better at giving orders -- there's a Dominance behind it that's both casual and not-at-all, exactly as strong as Erik intends it to be. "Why?" he asks in lieu of outright refusal, his back and shoulders tensing up even as he places Erik's coat on its hanger and starts unfastening his own, rescued from the floor when he got downstairs this morning.

"If I felt the need to give you a reason, I would have," Erik says, and when Charles turns around he's still standing where Charles left him, his arms folded loosely over his chest. There's another layer of force behind it when Erik says, again, "Come here and kneel."

Slowly, Charles finishes unbuttoning his own coat and hangs it up beside Erik's, trying to resist -- but his legs disagree, and as soon as he's done he finds himself walking back over to Erik, lowering himself to his knees at Erik's feet, shivering all over and looking up at him, a lump in his throat.

"You're not my Dom, you know," Charles says, and his voice isn’t half as firm as he’d like it to be. "I -- "

“No? That didn’t seem to be your opinion last night.” Erik hasn’t touched him, is still standing there with Charles at his feet and his arms folded against his chest, but there’s an undercurrent of hurt in his mind that betrays him even though his voice is cool, stiff. “Didn’t you -- ” he pauses, and Charles feels the sharp, queasy insecurity that twists through Erik, as hot and anxious as if it were his own, “-- didn’t you like it?”

Oh, God -- how to answer this question. If he says no, it’ll cut Erik deeply, make a bad situation worse by activating his oldest programming, probably trigger something awful; if he says yes, is honest, then ... Charles swallows hard.

“Yes, but … ” he says, swallows again, wanting to say the right thing.

“But nothing,” Erik says with a note of finality; Charles feels the tension unwinding again in Erik’s mind and Erik’s hand comes to rest atop Charles' head, fingers trailing along the top of Charles' scalp -- and Charles -- he can’t find the rest of the words to explain. He feels like he’s being torn in half, the part of him that knows it should protest fighting against the part of him that just _wants_ , so badly, to be Erik’s.

"Your posture's better," Erik says after a moment, and his voice is soft, his thoughts gentle again. "But this is still a problem. Feel the difference." He presses against the crown of Charles' head, until Charles has to bend his neck, exposing the nape and drawing his gaze away from Erik's face. "There. Now, arms behind your back."

Dresden posture, Charles remembers, the pose making his mind quiet, and obediently he moves his arms behind his back, taking hold of each wrist and sliding his hands in a long stroke towards his elbows before gripping there, tightly. He was supposed to ... there was something ...

"Good," Erik says, and the approval washes over Charles in a warm wave, sending him sinking further downward. "Relax, Charles. Close your eyes. Count to twenty, and then rise."

Everything feels tender, now. Quiet. Charles does what Erik asked him, counting, slowly, out loud -- until he reaches twenty, and then he rocks back onto his heels and stands, keeping his arms folded behind his back, since Erik didn't say to let go. The only voice he can hear in his mind is Erik’s, everyone else is gone. Erik didn't say for Charles to open his eyes either, so he waits instead in the darkness behind his eyelids, just listening to himself breathing. He might as well be alone in the quiet gallery.

After a moment he feels Erik's fingers slipping along his cheek, warm and slender, and then Erik's mouth presses against his. He wants it, so badly -- it’s so much easier, like this, when he doesn’t have to think about it. Charles sighs and parts his lips, kissing Erik back -- tilting his head a little to keep their noses from colliding and sliding his tongue alongside Erik's, stroking it. With his eyes closed it's all Charles can think about, kissing, and he lets out a throaty sound, wanting more.

He loses track of time -- at some point Erik brings them upstairs, back to Charles' bedroom, where he undresses Charles with sure hands and pushes him back onto the bed, which still smells like last night, a musky heady scent that makes Charles feel dizzy. He means to just lay there, but he wants -- he _wants_ viscerally, yearningly, and so he reaches out one hand towards Erik, even as he keeps the rest of himself still, lying with his legs dangling over the edge of the mattress, can feel himself already hard and throbbing, ready to take whatever it is Erik wants to give him, as long as it's from Erik.

Erik tsks him and catches Charles' wrist, pushing it back, away from him. "I didn't say you could touch," he says, and there's something light and teasing in his voice, warm. "If we're doing this, we're playing by my rules."

He kisses Charles' brow and then pulls back, crouching down on the floor next to the bed. Charles, subsiding, hears the sound of him opening the box Charles keeps under his nightstand, and of him rustling around in the contents, exploring. 

"Wow," Erik says after a moment, sounding taken aback, and he emerges with Charles' huge prostate massager held in one hand, his brows lifted. "Charles. I had no idea you had it in you."

"I like it in me," Charles says, feeling shy all of a sudden. "I'm allowed?" He's not sure he meant for that to be a question.

Erik smirks, and says, "You're allowed to have it in you if I'm the one putting it there." But he crouches down again, putting the toy away in the box. "Next time, though," he says from out of sight. "Tonight, I have plans."

When he crawls back onto the bed, Erik brings with him a length of silken rope, tugging one of Charles' wrists up over his head by the metal in his watch. "What do you think?" he says, lips curling sharply upward. It's not a question.

Charles sighs, lifting his other hand over his head as well, and shifting up the bed, closer to the headboard, so his legs aren't dangling any more. "Safeword?" he asks, anticipation lighting him up until his cock is hardening against his thigh, starting to lift away, filling with arousal.

Erik gives him a disbelieving look. "For a little light bondage? Hardly seems necessary," he says, looping the rope around Charles' wrists, tying him up just tight enough to restrain him. Then his mouth is on Charles' ear, tongue laving at the curve of cartilage, down toward the lobe, which Erik catches between his teeth, tugging. "You look perfect like this," Erik murmurs, but his lips are still moving on Charles' ear, his throat -- he might not have spoken it aloud at all.

The compliment ripples through Charles, anyway, the bliss of approval like warmth, only accentuated by the sharper pleasure of Erik's teeth, the nip and pull of them, pinching Charles and making his breath hitch. 

"Safe?" he asks, a momentary flicker of worry running through him, though he’s weighed down by Erik's hands, Erik's body. 

“Yes.” Erik’s mind pulses with the sincerity behind the word, his skin a soft warm drag against Charles’. “You’re safe. I promise.”

“Okay.” He wants to touch Erik in return, but when his hands tug at the rope it digs into his wrists, restraining him, and he moans, tugs harder to feel the pressure. "I want to ... "

"You want to what?" Erik says, and his tongue traces a languid circle around one of Charles' nipples; Charles groans when Erik's hand reaches between them and curls around his cock, pulling a few slow, firm strokes up his length.

"I want ... " he manages, biting his lower lip as his hips twitch up into Erik's hand, heels digging into the mattress. "I want to touch. Please?" He pulls on his hands again, arms straining a little, but he's caught fast.

"Later," Erik says, and then he's moving down the mattress, lower, pressing his hand down to the very base of Charles' cock as he licks up Charles' shaft. 

Charles moans aloud, his head falling back against the pillows, and he can't help it -- his hips jerk upwards, seeking the warmth of Erik's mouth but only succeeding in rubbing his cock up alongside Erik's nose, across his cheek, a damp trail smeared on his skin. "Please," he says, trying to control himself, to behave.

"Please what?" Erik sounds amused, and he grabs at Charles' cock again, tilting his head to one side of it to drag his mouth up along its length from balls to tip, his tongue leaving a wet streak along the sensitive skin. "You want me to suck your cock, Charles?"

It feels so good, the slick touch of Erik's mouth, and Charles' toes curl. "Yes, please -- " He spreads his legs further, makes himself more vulnerable on instinct, offering himself up to the Dom between his thighs.

"All right, then," Erik says, and then he's leaning down and taking Charles' cock into his mouth, drawing him in deep, deeper -- until somehow, impossibly, he's sucked Charles down to the hilt, swallowing him down his throat without so much as gagging. It feels --

Charles moans loudly and pulls harder at his wrists, the burn of the rope only enhancing the feeling of Erik all around him, warm, wet, his throat rippling around Charles' cock as he works him, and Charles can't -- he's gasping, biting his lower lip hard. Erik makes a strange sound, and Charles realizes belatedly he's laughing, his mouth and throat vibrating around Charles' cock and making his hips jerk upward despite himself, thrusting the head of his cock against the back of Erik's throat. 

Erik hollows out his cheeks as he drags his mouth back up toward the head of Charles' cock, the suction intense, incredible, and then he goes down again, slow, almost teasing, one of his hands cupping Charles' balls and massaging them in a way that makes Charles squirm helplessly.

Charles feels exposed, caught, splayed open and toyed with; Erik is clearly enjoying Charles' reactions, and there's a kind of intense pleasure in being used in this way, in submission, that Charles can't help but wallow in, the past and future both gone, only the present heat slipping up and down his sensitive shaft existing any more. "Erik ... " he breathes, eyes closing, and his arms go limp, accepting his capture.

It's a slow, torturous build, Erik taking his time drawing each and every reaction out of Charles patiently, artfully, his mouth slick and hot on Charles' cock and the friction building an insurmountable tension beneath Charles' stomach, tightening between his legs. By the time he finally comes he feels as if he's floating above his body, like a balloon on a string, and the orgasm itself is -- it goes on, and on, spasming through him as he moans brokenly, cock twitching in Erik's mouth.

Erik swallows every bit of it down, until at last his mouth slides off Charles' cock and he sits back on his heels between Charles' trembling legs, lifting a hand to wipe his lips with his thumb. When Charles opens his eyes again Erik's cock is visibly hard, pressing up against the fabric of his trousers, but Erik's attention is all on Charles, wandering from Charles' face, down his chest to his softening cock, then up again, to Charles' bound wrists.

"I pulled too hard," Charles says dreamily, can feel bruises starting to form, pulsing under his skin. "I want to touch you now."

"Not yet," Erik says. His voice is thick, roughened with want; his fly is undone before his hand is even down at his hips, reaching into his jeans to pull out his own erection -- he's so big, his cock thick and long and just so ... God, Charles wants it. Erik rises up on his knees, jerking himself off hard and fast, his hand practically a blur on his swollen cock. 

It doesn't take long. Erik groans and spurts come out onto Charles' bare stomach, gasping out Charles' name as he tilts forward, bracing one hand on the headboard next to Charles' arms, his whole body shaking in the aftermath. 

Charles waits patiently for a few moments, just watching Erik's face, his cock, eyes flitting between the two, before he finally says, "Come here?"

Erik obeys, surprisingly, his fingers moving to unwind the rope from around Charles' wrists before he leans forward to press his brow against Charles' shoulder, his breath warm and heavy against Charles' bare skin. 

Charles brings his arms down and curls them around Erik's torso, the feeling of Erik's clothes almost rough against his bare skin, still sensitized from his orgasm. "Was I good?" Charles asks, his legs still splayed around Erik. "You looked so ... "

"Yes," Erik says; he shudders slightly in Charles’ arms and Charles feels his long eyelashes moving against his skin as Erik closes his eyes. "I don't know what you're doing to me. You're ...." 

But he doesn't say anything else, just shifts slightly, presumably to tuck his cock back into his jeans, then settles his hands low on Charles' hips, his thumbs pressing into the hollows beneath Charles' hipbones.

Everything is quiet for a while, in Charles' head and outside of it, as they lie and breathe together, Charles nude, Erik fully-dressed again and laying half on top of him, his angular frame curled a little around Charles, like he's cuddling a favorite toy.

It’s nice. It’s so nice, not having to try, being able to let Erik control it all.

“What are you thinking?” Erik says after a while, his fingers moving against Charles’ skin in small, warm circles.

Charles sighs, so relaxed that he barely thinks about his words, they just come out of his mouth unfiltered and unselfconscious. “I like that you made me,” he says, tingling all over with afterglow and the slow rub of Erik’s touch. “I can never make me give in. It’s easier if it’s not me making me.”

Erik’s silent for a long moment, but his hands keep moving, the same pattern, slow and steady. “I’ll do whatever you want,” he says at last, and his voice is quiet, breath coming out warm against Charles’ neck. Beneath Charles’ palms his sweater is a little scratchy, thick and soft. “You know I will.”

“Mmm,” Charles says, nuzzling against Erik, drowsy. 

Slowly, though, Charles floats back to the surface, first a feeling of sourceless anxiety, then a sensation of prickling guilt, and finally he thinks -- it happened again. I had sex with Erik again.

Charles takes a deep and shuddering breath in and feels his heart begin to pound in his chest, his lungs stuttering on his inhale, like they're uncertain what their job is now; he shifts under Erik to try and get out from under him, the weight of him almost obscene now, his body touching Charles' naked one everywhere it shouldn't be, everywhere there's skin. God. This is -- this is the worst thing that could have happened, the worst --

Erik leans back a little, thankfully, finally, enough that Charles can see his face, Erik's eyes -- grey in the evening light -- flitting across Charles' features, his mouth tilting down. "Are you all right, Charles?" he says, and his hand is on the side of Charles' neck, tilting Charles' chin up toward him.

"I need to get up," Charles says, his voice half a croak, tugging at his chin to keep Erik from looking at him directly. "Can you -- move, please."

Erik moves, shifting his weight off to the side. "What's wrong?"

"I need to go to the bathroom," Charles hedges, immediately sliding towards the edge of the bed and getting to his feet, though his knees are watery, unstable until he forces them firm; he reaches for his robe, draped over the chair, and tugs it on, covering his nakedness and wrapping it around himself, hiding his body. Part of him wants to be -- wants to be angry, to scream and shout and fight Erik, to reject this emphatically -- but then, that's what got him in this mess in the first place. The harder he fought, the harder Erik fought back, until he reached the Charles inside who wanted nothing more than to submit and to take what was offered, to love Erik back and make love to him.

The worst part of it is knowing that he would do it again, that he wants it, really, under any and all masks of civility and morality. Charles would do it all over, a thousand times, if it meant he got to feel the way he did when Erik took him under and kissed him like he meant it. He’s a terrible person, too weak to make this stop before he can make it any worse.

His hands tie the waist of his robe jerkily, lashing it in place.

"Charles," Erik says, and Charles hears the shift of the mattress as Erik gets out of bed, and then his hands on Charles' shoulders, light and hesitant. "Don't lie to me. I can tell you're upset. What is it?" His hands drop away, and then Erik crosses around in front of him, peering at Charles like he could read the truth in his gaze, radiating concern, upset, hurt. "Tell me."

"I shouldn't -- this shouldn't have happened," Charles says, thinks, _Coward_ , and when he tries to make himself take in another shuddering breath, he finds to his horror that his eyes are wet, that he’s -- oh, no -- panic swells up inside him again, and Charles steps back, away from Erik’s reach, pathetic, child’s tears starting to run down his face as he chokes out, "I'm supposed to be _responsible_ , not ... not naked. Not doing _this!_ I’m -- I’ve fucked it all up -- "

“You haven’t fucked anything up,” Erik says, sounding alarmed; he steps forward into Charles’ space and reaches for him again, touching his elbows with just his fingertips, like he isn’t sure what to do or if Charles will push him away. “Charles, calm down, I promise you everything’s fine.”

"That's not the problem," Charles says despairingly, and despite the rapid-fire racing of his heart a tingling sensation is spreading from the light touch, radiating outwards -- his body knows what Erik has done to it, is already looking for more. He feels simultaneously like he has to hide or to flee, fight-or-flight, at the prospect of being Dominated again, even though Erik would never hurt him -- has, in fact, only tried to give Charles what he wants. "Erik ... you're _sixteen_. I'm nearly _thirty_. That's not okay. There is a real ... a real power imbalance, here, I’m your -- and it's not -- it’s bad, I’ve fucked it all up, I fucked everything -- "

“You didn’t make me do anything, I did this of my own accord, you _know_ that," Erik says, and his hands touch Charles more fully now, as if holding him in place, grasping around them and squeezing. “And I’m seventeen. Not sixteen. Remember?”

Charles shakes his head. "Not biologically. Not until May. And nitpicking about your birthday is not going to make this okay!" He can’t -- he has to get away, or -- he can’t stop, now he’s started, and a growing part of him, his hindbrain, the part that got him into this mess, wants Erik to put him down again, just to make the panic stop, jittering against Erik, shivering all over. "I'm -- I'm raping you, Erik! By any legal definition I am _raping_ you -- "

"Stop with that," Erik snaps, and he shakes Charles slightly, scowling at him with eyes that have gone suddenly hot. "You think everything is rape. Did it look like you were raping me when I was down there sucking your cock? Because it didn't feel like rape to me!"

But there’s something else there, in Erik’s mind that underlies those words, something anxious and defensive that Charles finally pegs as the same thing it always is -- the same thing Erik always _felt_ , even just three years ago, when he came to live here and he was so afraid of displeasing Charles that he would walk on eggshells and flinch if anyone so much as spoke loudly. Erik would say, would _do_ , whatever he thinks Charles wants of him, and Charles --

"I can't do this," Charles says, trying to jerk free, but Erik holds him fast, and Charles swallows hard. "I -- oh, God, I'll try harder to be what you need, but I can't -- this is torturous, Erik! I can’t, I don’t -- I don't know what to do," and Charles’ legs bend before he even knows it’s happening, dropping him back down on the edge of the bed, hyperventilating a little and wishing he could just curl up in a ball and stop existing, sidestep reality and not have to struggle through any of this any more. “I don’t know what to do.”

"It's all right," Erik says after a moment, and he moves forward, sitting down on the bed at Charles' side, his arm slipping around Charles' waist and his lips pressing into Charles' hair, kissing him just above the ear. "You don’t have to do anything -- and please don't worry about me. It was going to happen eventually. I'd rather know I'm participating in it than let you keep using me for sexual gratification without knowing it every time I stroke your neck."

Oh, _God_. "I wasn't -- I didn't mean," Charles chokes out, and he turns his face away, eyes screwing tightly shut. Except he did. He let it happen, just like he's letting this happen now, and Erik -- knows everything. "Can't you see, Erik? I'm despicable. If anything should tell you so it's ... I couldn't make myself stop! Doesn't that _bother_ you?"

"Not really." Erik wraps his other arm around Charles as well, then, embracing him as he presses his brow against Charles' head, his breath coming out in soft, warm exhales against Charles' neck, his lashes fluttering against Charles' skin. "It's not your fault. And I care for you more than anyone else in the entire world. Why would I think less of you because of this?"

"I'm not supposed to want you like this," Charles says, chokes out, but he can already feel himself caving in, disintegrating, like a hollow in the ground, slowly filling in with shifting sand. "I'm ... I was supposed to be your parent."

"And you _are_." Erik pulls him in closer, a warm weight pressed against Charles' side, the presence of his mind familiar and comforting. He’s thinking calming thoughts, and as receptive as Charles is right now they get right inside his head, soothing the panic and making things quieter again, taking the sharp edge from Charles’ fear. "It doesn’t have to be one or the other. It’s just that now you're my submissive, as well."

"I'm not," Charles says, but it’s a weak protest.

Erik makes a disbelieving noise against his throat and then lifts his head; Charles can feel him looking at him even without turning around or opening his eyes. "What do you think this is, then? Are you just fucking me for a -- for a _hobby_ , and you'll go back to Rémy LeBeau or Gabrielle Haller once you've had your fill?" He sounds angry, even if his voice is steady. "That's fine if so, but let's sort it out up front so I can know when and where and how long you’ll want me."

"No," Charles says, the hollow walls collapsing further, burying him. "It's not a hobby. I don't -- I don't know what this is."

"Are you ever going to find a Dominant who can put you under like I can?" Erik says, pushing on doggedly. "Are you ever going to be satisfied with anything else, now? I'm the only person in the world who can give you what you need. And _I_ need _you._ "

Charles sags, his weight fully supported by Erik's body now, his head bowed forward far enough that it's almost hard to breathe. "I'm not thinking about me," he murmurs, even as Erik's breath licks across his bared nape, making the small hairs stand on end.

"You have to let me make my own choices," Erik says. The lean muscles in his arm strain with the effort of holding Charles up, clearly delineated along his forearm. "Stop pushing me away. This is what you want, and I -- it’s no sacrifice for me, Charles, it really isn’t. You remember last night; I _liked_ it. That never happens for me; I’ve never felt like this before.” He pauses, one of his hands moving on Charles’ shoulder, slowly, up and down. “And I know _you_ like it. We don't need a team of rocket scientists to work out a solution to this problem."

Finally, slowly, Charles turns, but he doesn't meet Erik's gaze this time. Instead he just lays his head on Erik's shoulder, hiding his eyes in the crook of Erik's neck, leaning into him, too tired to argue any more. There are so many things he should say -- of course Erik's never felt like this, he's sixteen and he's never fucked a sub; just because their bodies want it doesn't make it right; any number of things. And yet he doesn't say anything at all, all of them piling up inside him until none of them can escape.

"Go to sleep," Erik murmurs after several long minutes, stroking Charles' hair lightly, his hand not going low enough or heavy enough to cause any extra effects -- probably intentional. "Tomorrow's Monday. Early morning." 

"I should brush my teeth," Charles says, mumbles, really. Though he's not sure he can get to his feet.

"You can," Erik says, and it's only then that Charles realizes he was asking permission. Erik stands, pulling Charles along with him; and Erik stays with him, as if he's watching to make sure Charles doesn't try to do anything illicit, while Charles brushes his teeth and washes his face, cleans the drying come off his belly. He only leaves for Charles to pee, and even then when Charles opens the bathroom door once more Erik is waiting for him in the bed, settled as if he's always belonged there, reclining against the pillows.

"Are you staying, then?" Charles asks awkwardly, from the bathroom doorway. It feels wrong, like he’s accepting their new dynamic, but he can’t bring himself to throw Erik out, either, needs too badly to be held, soothed. _Pathetic_.

"Do you want me to?" Erik says, glancing over at him with his eyebrows lifting a little. 

Charles swallows, shifting his weight, looks down. "I normally wear pajamas." It's not really an answer, though Erik seems to understand the implicit question.

"You can wear whatever makes you feel comfortable," Erik says. He shifts, getting out of bed himself; he seems taller, somehow, when he stands in front of Charles this time, or maybe it's just because he's still fully dressed and Charles is in nothing but a robe, barefoot on the rug. Erik lifts a hand and trails his fingertips along Charles' cheek, curling around the back of his ear, and then he kisses him, the soft, warm press of his lips making Charles feel -- dizzy, effervescent, almost, despite everything that says he shouldn't allow this, should rebel. He parts his lips before he's even thought about it, leaning into Erik with a loud hitch of his breath that echoes in the silent bedroom.

When the kiss breaks Charles is serene, drowsy enough that his anxieties have drifted away. "Are you staying?" he asks again, eyes closed, against Erik's mouth.

"Yes," Erik says, his thumb moving against Charles' cheek. "I'll need to brush my teeth first, and change, but -- yes."

"Okay." Charles glances at the bed, but doesn't move away until Erik says, "I'll be back," and steps away, heading into the corridor and down to his own room.

The calm carries Charles through until he's dressed in his pajamas, old t-shirt and flannel pants, and under the blankets, which are dragged up high around his shoulders, fluffed and warming from his body. Erik returns a little while later, wearing pajama bottoms and carrying his phone, which he sets down on the other nightstand before he climbs into bed next to Charles, curling in close to him under the sheets, his hand finding Charles' and lacing their fingers together between them. 

"I set my alarm for 6:30," Erik says. His breath smells cool, minty.

Charles makes a grumbling, disapproving sound. "That's inhuman."

"I have _school._ "

"Times before seven thirty should not exist," Charles says, "and times before eight thirty exist only on sufferance."

Erik's face makes a complicated movement, and then he smiles, squeezing Charles' hand. "I'll make it worth it for you. French toast breakfast. A blow job, if you're very good."

And Charles ... makes himself smile back, even if it is small, and rather awkward, with a heavy sense of sin that he can't erase.

*

_Erik_

Madelyne drags them all to Starbucks after they get out of their last class for the day, citing snow and cold air as perfect reasons to sit around indoors and drink hot cocoa. It's only four -- an hour before Charles will be getting off work and heading home -- so Erik agrees, and the five of them, Madelyne, Erik, Evan, Petra, and Petra's new friend Frank, head uptown instead of across when they leave school. Even bundled up in wool coats and scarves, they all have ice crystals frosting their brows and eyelashes by the time they're in the dry hot air inside the coffee shop.

"Fuck," Petra says, "It's too hot in here."

"Better than out there," Erik says, stripping off his gloves and pulling his phone out of his pocket, letting the TouchID read his thumbprint to check his texts and see if Charles has replied to his yet. He has.

>   
>  **Charles:** What time will you be home? Remember that you can’t mention things to anyone. It’s not safe.
> 
> **Erik:** I don’t know, maybe 6. For Christ’s sake Charles, I won’t tell. Do you really think I would?

There's no answer for a while, until they've all ordered their drinks and sat down in some of the comfy armchairs towards the back of the shop; then Erik's phone chirps again.

>   
>  **Charles:** Okay.
> 
> **Erik:** Good. I'll see you soon.

"What are you smiling at?"

Erik looks up and finds Madelyne smirking at him from across the table, her eyebrows raised; her nose and cheeks are still pink with the chill, her hair frizzy, like a russet halo around her head. “You look like the cat that caught the canary.”

"Nothing," Erik says, trying to stay casual even if just the question makes his heart beat faster automatically. He wipes the expression from his face quickly, setting his phone down on the arm of his chair and crossing his legs at the knees, one swinging atop the other. "Just having a good day, that's all." He hides his mouth with his coffee cup, taking another sip of the burning-hot liquid.

"A good lay, more like," Evan says, and Frank guffaws, as does Petra, the three of them laughing loudly enough to garner looks from the other patrons. Erik almost opens his mouth to say so what if he did -- but it's only his promise to Charles to keep this secret that keeps that truth buried deep in his chest, where it belongs. 

"Wouldn't you like to know?" he says instead. He grins sharply and sets the five tips of his fingers down atop the screen of his phone again, half-expecting someone to try and snatch it away from him even though he knows that’s ridiculous, paranoid, and even if they did he could crush it with his power before they saw a thing.

"It's not exactly a news story if Erik gets laid," Petra says once she's finished giggling, rolling her eyes. "It'd probably be more shocking if he didn't."

Frank smiles, and nudges her with his elbow. “Come on, give the guy a break. Just because you’re all jealous of his success.”

Frank is a tall and burly Dom, at least six foot six and might as well be as wide; Erik’s not used to being short these days, but when they were walking in he felt dwarfed by Frank’s sheer physical size, even his hands enormous, like shovels. They make the coffee cup he’s holding look like a novelty item, too small for him. It would be striking enough if he was fat, but from what Erik can see under the winter layers Frank is built entirely of muscle. At first it reminded Erik of Victor Creed -- at least until Frank opened his mouth and that long, slow Texan drawl came out, good-natured and patiently taking its time getting to the point. Now he just reminds Erik more of the bodyguard they had following them around for a while last year, the one with metal on his bones.

He goes to the university -- a bit older than the rest of them, but for some reason he seems to have taken to Petra. It’s odd, but Frank seems nice enough, so it’s no real hardship to include him. He’s far enough away from home that maybe when school’s out his only choice of company is high schoolers.

“Anyway,” Evan says, picking up his own drink and slurping at it. "Winter break is coming up. What are we doing for it?"

"Aspen," Petra says immediately. "Or Vail. We haven't been skiing since year before last. I swear, if Daddy drags us off to Bali again, I'll scream. It's winter, you're _supposed_ to be cold!"

"I'm up for Aspen," Madelyne says, perking up in her seat from where she had been picking at the label on her cup sleeve. "We could stay at our place, Mother and Father won't mind.” She turns to Erik, reaching out to prod him in the arm. “You should come too! It'll be super fun, I promise."

"I can't leave the city, remember?" Erik says, and he gives her a smile just to soften it. "Not without a military escort, and somehow I doubt the Department of Defense is going to want to bankroll a ski vacation for an entire army platoon." Not that he's particularly bothered about missing out; Charles takes the winter holidays off work. For the first time in his life, Erik is feeling very keen on the idea of spending an entire day in bed, having sex. Not too long ago he would have thought that sounded like the height of boredom, and uncomfortable to boot.

"Damn," Madelyne says, pouting and slumping again in her seat. "What fun is that? Surely they know by now you're not going to blow up anything. I mean, you could fuck up New York to kingdom come and they don't follow you around here."

"Seeing as they can't even keep me in suppressor bracelets, I don't know how they expect to stop me from doing whatever I want," Erik says bluntly. "Luckily, I like New York. LA, on the other hand...." He grins to make sure they know he's teasing. He's learned never to expect great things from humans, especially where mutation is concerned.

Petra frowns, stirring the dregs of her coffee with a plastic stick. "Isn't your Dad, like, super brain though?"

She means Charles. "My father died in 2002," Erik says, flattening his hand over his phone.

"No, like, your Dad," she says, waving her hand, dismissive. "The doctor."

"Charles?" Erik arches an eyebrow. Has he been letting her get away with calling him that? The implication makes him feel uncomfortable all of the sudden and he shifts in his chair, uncrossing and recrossing his legs. "He's not my dad, he's my guardian. But no. They won't let me leave with him, either. Even when we went to the Hague, we had to go with a military unit." As if Charles alone wouldn't be enough to stop him, if Charles really needed to, if he put his mind to it -- and if he had the will to go through with doing what might be necessary to stop Erik. Erik feels, abruptly, very exposed. "It's fine. You all have fun. I don't mind staying in the city."

"That sucks," Madelyne says, looking into her cup. She seems weirdly dispirited today; Erik has no idea why, but she's not said much all day. He figures though that she would tell him if she wanted to, so instead of pushing he picks up his phone again, opening the lock screen and typing a new text to Charles.

>   
>  **Erik:** What are you doing right now?
> 
> **Charles:** Working?
> 
> **Erik:** Do you want something in particular for dinner or shall we order in?
> 
> **Charles:** I’m fine with whatever -- you choose. I have a patient now, see you later.

Erik glances up at the others, frowning and turning his phone between his fingers. He’d like to text Charles something else to get a rise out of him, something a little more … _risky_ , but …. If Shaw was paranoid about someone tapping their disposable phones somehow, he’d have a fit if he knew what Erik was considering with a registered mobile line. Erik waits for a natural pause in conversation to say, "Do you think the government is tapping my phone?"

"Duh," Frank says. He leans forward and puts his elbows on the table, shoving thick fingers back through his short, curly hair. "They're tapping everyone's phones. That goes extra for people of interest. They probably double-tap yours." He gestures to his own forehead with his fingers crooked like a gun, miming two shots.

"You’d think they would stop bothering after a while,” Erik says, even though he knows better than to hope for as much. “Surely they’re tired of reading my text messages to Madelyne, asking her to check my grammar for my English paper.”

"Probably waiting for you to send her a dick pic," Frank says, with an awkward shrug. "They’re all pervs anyway; likely they know what porn you beat off to, dude. Sorry."

“I don’t,” Erik murmurs, mostly to himself, and turns his phone over in his hand again, rubbing his thumb against the darkened screen. He doesn't like thinking of his private life being so ... on display ... but he doesn't like the idea of restraining himself, either. Of not texting Charles what he wants to, when he wants to. Of not living his life exactly as he pleases.

"Maybe I should text something actually incriminating," Erik says after a moment, dropping his phone down into his lap. "Let me message you that I'm going to tear up the Brooklyn Bridge and see if anyone shows up to stop me."

Frank grins and shakes his head, holding up one hand. "Nuh-uh. Don't get me thrown in Guantanamo along with you. I'm too pretty for jail."

"It's just a little harmless teenage experimentation," Erik says, and he smirks, the banter feeling easy somehow between them, in a way Erik doesn’t usually get with near-strangers. "I have to get it out of my system before senior year."

"Rather you than me," Frank says, and gets to his feet, a motion that seems effortless even as it feels like it ought to come with a rumbling, mountains moving sound. "I'm going to get a refill. Any of you fetuses want more coffee?"

"I have to head home," Erik says, unfolding himself out of the armchair and standing up as well, slipping his phone into his coat pocket. "I want to go ahead and get started on homework. I'll see you all around later."

"Okay," Madelyne says, and everyone says goodbye in fairly ragged order, turning back to their conversations as Erik gathers up his things to leave.

He's out on the street heading for the subway when Frank catches up to him, huffing and puffing a little in the cold air and breathing out steam. He’s never approached Erik without Petra before -- this is new. "Hey," he says, pinching Erik's sleeve for a moment before coming to walk beside him, to-go cup clutched in one hand. "If you want to hang out while doing homework, my dorm isn't far away. I could give you a dorm tour, see what the student life is like before you start applying. You know, where we eat, where we sleep. My roommate is away."

"Oh," Erik says. He'd been looking at his phone, typing out another text to Charles -- Frank's distracted him now, made his mind feel as if it's being pulled in two directions at once, slightly frazzled. "No -- I really need to get back today." Before Frank can react he reaches over and clasps his arm, just above the elbow, smiles. "Later this week, all right?"

"Okay then. Let me give you my number," Frank says, holding out his hand for Erik's phone. "It's good to get an idea of what college is like beforehand, even if it's just to see how rocklike the mattresses are."

Erik closes out the text and passes his phone over, leaning in closer to Frank to watch him type in his information, mostly making sure Frank doesn't click out of the app and see anything he shouldn't. It occurs to him only now that Frank must have been propositioning him -- he wanted to fuck Erik, only Erik wasn't paying attention, missed the signs. It's too late to take back his rejection now; he'll just have to make it up to Frank double tomorrow. 

"Thanks," Erik says when Frank finishes and passes his phone back, trying not to look too eager to have it in hand again, his fingers numb as they clasp around the aluminum chassis. 

Frank shrugs. "No problem. Drop me a text, okay?" And he ambles off, seemingly contented with that. At least he's not angry that Erik didn't take his cue.

Erik heads down into the subway, shooting off the requested text to Frank before he goes back to what he was writing to Charles, just letting him know that he's on his way home and will be there in half an hour. That Charles should be waiting for him.

*

_Charles_

Raven texts him on Monday night to set up a lunch date for the next day -- just at the mom and pop place around the corner, nothing too fancy. Charles feels nervous about it from the moment he accepts. The problem is -- the thing is, Raven knows Charles better than anyone alive, other than maybe Erik, and she knows something was wrong when she left the apartment on Saturday, will read it on his face the moment she sees him. The thought of being exposed to her like that, like the dregs of a teacup laid out before a fortuneteller, is chilling.

Still, Charles leaves his office at half past twelve and makes his way down the still-snowy sidewalk to the diner, spotting Raven sat alone in one of the booths at the window, just tugging off her gloves. She waves to him as he walks past, and Charles smiles at her, tight and strained, before ducking inside.

"Hey," Raven says when he gets close enough, beaming up at him in the moments before her eyes truly catch his face, flicking up and down, like reading a book. Her tone is less bright then, almost testing. "Hey. Sit down, and we'll order right away. I'm starving."

"Okay," Charles says, sliding into the leatherette booth opposite Raven and picking up a menu -- it's something to do with his hands at least. "How've you been? You obviously got home safe Saturday."

"Yeah," she says, picking up her own menu, though her eyes are still on Charles. "It wasn't too bad when I left. Got worse later."

For a few minutes they're quiet, save for debating the merits of the various options -- Raven always derides Charles' first choice, suggests a second, then mocks him for changing his mind when he acquiesces, her nose wrinkling with amusement, eyes twinkling. It's an old game, one they play with aplomb -- Charles never chooses what he really wants first, and Raven never fails to find something wrong with it. The waiter comes over while they're partway through the second act -- derision -- and leaves again to let them get on with it, clearly sensing that they're nowhere near ordering.

Raven eventually picks something, though, and places her menu down on the table, leaning her chin on her hand, her elbow braced on the table. "What was all that about on Saturday, anyway?" she asks, dragging a finger across the slightly sticky wood, flicking aside some loose grains of salt. "Erik seemed really worried. Are you guys fighting?"

"No," Charles says, keeping his own menu in hand, pretending to still be considering -- it gives him an excuse not to meet her gaze. No, they're not fighting. Not when Charles has the distinct memory of fucking Erik for a third time playing on repeat in his mind, last night's intimacies in full color -- tight, slick heat, Erik's hand on the back of Charles' neck, dragging him in closer and squeezing him there just as his ass -- "No, we're not fighting," Charles says, trying to fight down the flush he can feel coming to his cheeks. "Erik was worrying too much."

"It didn't sound like nothing, Charles," Raven says, her hand stilling. "Still doesn't, from the tone you're using. Tell me what's wrong."

Charles makes himself sigh, looking up from the menu as if he's tired of the subject already and giving Raven a wan smile. "Erik has been getting much more Dominant lately, as he grows into himself. It's been a difficult adjustment," he says, with a shrug that feels more calculated than casual. "I'm practicing with him, of course, and that's blurred our family dynamic a bit. I've had to put my foot down a bit about what is and isn't appropriate behavior."

The waiter comes over then to take their orders, and Charles turns to him gratefully, ignoring Raven's pulse of annoyance at being interrupted. "Lasagne for me, thank you," he says, then glances at Raven. "What'll it be?"

"I'll have the same," Raven says, though moments before she'd been planning on having the salad. She’s frowning, and once the waiter has left she says, "Erik said you’d stopped practicing together.”

Oh. Shit. Charles, caught off guard, is quiet for a little too long -- he knows it even as Raven’s frown deepens, and he says, hurriedly, “We had, for a few days. But everything’s fine now, so we’re practicing again.”

Raven isn’t convinced. He can feel her niggling at it in her mind, and Charles can’t, he _can’t_ let her figure it out, even the smallest part of it, because she’d never look at him the same way again -- knowing that Charles is a pervert, that this is something he’s … something he’s allowed to happen.

"I'm fine," Charles says, keeping his expression neutral, burying all his worry down in his stomach, where Raven won’t see it. "You know Erik’s a little high-strung, he always has been; he read too much into the pause, and started thinking he’d done something wrong and that I was angry with him. He relies on me, so it makes him anxious if he thinks we’re not okay. We’re just establishing new boundaries. It'll be fine."

"Hmm," Raven says.

"It's fine," Charles says, and changes the subject.

It's not as though he can talk to Raven about his and Erik's real dynamic, the quicksand shift of it from Charles in complete control to Erik giving increasingly more intimate orders, and Charles following them; the way they've gone from parent and child to equals to being Dominant and submissive in all but name in the space of a year, obliterating what came before. Charles knows he’s lost control over what's happening between them, it's plain to anyone with eyes that Erik is taking command, now, stepping into his size 7D boots and wearing them with pride. There's no option for Charles to ask Raven's advice, or tell her how afraid he is that people will find out, that he'll be seen as a deviant, taking advantage of a young man who doesn't know any better.

"Come over for Christmas dinner," Raven says when they're nearly finished, wiping her mouth with her napkin and setting her fork aside. "You and Erik. Hank is cooking, and it'll be nice to have a family meal. What do you think?"

"That'd be lovely," Charles says, and he manages a real smile for her this time. Then he tries not to imagine Erik ordering Charles to kneel at his side for it, placing his hand on the top of Charles' head, and has to smother a cough to conceal his thoughts from Raven. "I'll let Erik know," he croaks, waving over at the counter to get the bill.

Raven hands him a glass of water, and snorts. "Well, just you tell Erik to behave himself, okay? You’re there to look after him and he’s there to be a pain in the ass," she says, and Charles ...

Charles doesn't say anything at all.

*

That evening, after Erik has fallen asleep, Charles moves Erik’s arm from where it’s fallen across his chest and pushes himself up to sitting, drawing his knees in to his chest and resting his folded arms across them, then his chin on top of that, staring off into the dark. He’s exhausted, but he can’t turn his mind off, not now that it’s come back to him after rising out of subspace, like coming up from the bottom of the ocean, ears popping from the change in pressure.

He can’t keep doing this. He can’t. And yet somehow he seems to … at every point that he could protest, make it stop, Charles’ mouth stays closed, his words catching in his throat as he looks at Erik and thinks -- he’s so happy.

It’s fucked up, but Erik is _happy_ , for the first time in months, and Charles is ... 

He swallows and shifts so that his forehead is resting on his wrists instead, breathing against the soft fabric of his pyjama pants, the sound loud in the small space between his legs and his torso. In, out. In, out. Subtly out of time with Erik’s breaths beside him, which are deeper and longer as he sleeps.

Charles is … _allowing_ this. To all intents and purposes, Charles is giving implied consent. He can’t pretend otherwise -- it’s been three days, and though he tried on the first day to explain to Erik why it was wrong, Erik argued back, and Charles didn’t put his foot down, didn’t say no. He’s never said no to Erik, and he can’t be sure that it’s not because he wants him so badly, because this way he can _have_ him, and like this it doesn’t have to be Charles’ fault, not really, because Erik is the one who is doing this, Charles is just … the recipient, not a participant. 

It’s a poor and pathetic excuse for fucking his teenage ward.

Really … what are his options? Charles can’t tell anyone, or he’d end up in jail and who knows where Erik would end up -- back in foster care, probably, with people who wouldn’t understand his needs and who would dismantle everything Charles has achieved with him over the past months, who wouldn’t be able to keep Erik safe the next time the Hellfire club comes calling. No, it’s too dangerous, and frankly who knows what Erik would do if another person he loves ends up imprisoned.

Have Erik moved, then -- make up some excuse, some reason why he can’t live with Charles any more? The same issue applies as before -- plus Charles sincerely doubts Erik would stay where he was put. More likely Charles would come home every night to find Erik on the couch watching TV or doing his homework, stubbornly sticking to his routine, refusing to be moved, unless Charles -- no. He won’t make those sorts of edits to Erik’s mind, not for any reason short of life or death. Not an option.

If he stops being Erik’s psychologist then he’d have to give the state a reason seeing as they’re still paying him to deliver an appointment a week, and what would he say? That he’s too close to the case? If he did that then Charles’ testimony would be called into serious question at the trial, and the Hellfire Club could walk free on half the charges brought against them, cleared of their brutal assaults on Erik due to an insufficiency of reliable evidence. No.

Charles can’t see a way out, can’t see any way that he can make any responsible choices -- go to prison, abandon Erik to who-knows-what fate. Move him and be forced to use his telepathy in ways he wouldn’t stomach even on a stranger, let alone someone he loves. Charles swallows hard, his breathing unsteady. Perhaps … he really should put his foot down and make things stop now, try to limp on as they were before, when he didn’t know what Erik looked like naked and aroused, reaching out in an embrace ...

Beside him Erik rolls onto his stomach with a low sigh, stretching out on the bed and settling again, deeply asleep and dreaming something wordless, shapeless, just feelings and sensations. Charles curls his fingers hard into his opposite elbows, digging them in until he feels like they’ll bruise, until he’ll have rings of little bruises around his arms, because no matter what he does the real problem here is that he’s a fucking awful human being, trapped between bad choices and unable to act, too busy getting what he wants to stop it from happening, to keep himself from perpetuating Erik’s maladaptive behavior and stop him from becoming even more co-dependent on Charles. 

Charles’ breathing grows ragged now, and he muffles it against his leg, to keep from waking the boy beside him.

It’s not healthy for Erik to have everything centered around one person, it’s not good for his recovery or for his future. What happens when Erik goes to college, has to move out, has to get a job? Is he going to stay with Charles forever, trapped in this little bubble, never venturing out into the world to meet new people? It’s not as if they could ever truly be together even if it were healthy, even years from now when Erik is of age -- not without scandal, and mass media scorn, and losing everything. It’s never going to work, and it’s not worth the heartache it would bring, even if Erik really did want Charles instead of what this is -- Erik just fulfilling what he sees as Charles’ needs, the way he did the Hellfire Club’s before that.

And yet, Charles’ body craves more of the same, like a drug, the relief of giving over control and being cared for when he doesn’t have to give in first, doesn’t have to make himself vulnerable -- when someone can just take it from him and he doesn’t have to do the terrible, reflexive math of how well he can fake trusting them, because he’s been burned before and he’s too afraid of fire to sit near the hearth.

Charles sits in the dark and doesn’t sleep, stays there fighting with himself until finally Erik wakes enough to mumble, “What’re you doing? Go t’sleep,” and tug Charles down to lie beside him, placing a hand around Charles’ middle and dragging him down with him into blissful oblivion.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: dubcon, underage sex, statutory rape


	19. Nineteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW at notes at the end of the chapter!

_Erik_

It's his last day of classes before the winter holidays when Frank texts him again, as if he'd somehow known Erik was nearby, and thought to make contact. Erik's sitting in his Solid State Physics and Cosmology class at Columbia when his phone buzzes next to his laptop; he unlocks the screen and glances at the message behind the cover of his Macbook.

> **Frank:**  So, picking up where we left off -- fancy that college experience? My roommate already left for vacation.

Erik sets the phone aside for a moment to type down one of the points the professor just made, then picks it up again, typing back to Frank.

>   
> **Erik:** Sure. I'm on campus now, actually. I take math, physics, and CS here in the afternoons MWF. Are you free in an hr?

Less than a minute before Frank replies again.

>   
> **Frank:** Yes. Meet me outside the CS building, I'll come get you.
> 
> **Erik:** Ok. See you then.

Erik finds Frank leaning against the metal railing at the computer science building's front stairs when he gets out of class, broad and strong-looking even in his thick peacoat, smoking a half-gone cigarette. "Hey," Erik says when he's within earshot, standing just outside Frank's personal space, far enough away that he doesn't have to smell the tobacco smoke.

"Hey," Frank says, smiling at Erik around the cigarette; he plucks it from his mouth and crushes it under his heel, the spark fizzling out on the wet stone. "How's it going?"

"Not bad," Erik says. "How was your week?"

Frank shrugs and starts walking, gesturing for Erik to follow. "It was okay," he says, tucking his hands into his pockets. "Same old, hung out with Petra, did some classwork. I spent most of it doing activism prep for next semester."

"Activism?" Erik prompts him, glancing sidelong at Frank, suddenly wondering if this was such a good idea; he doesn't know Frank very well, and while he doubts a Humans First fundy would be interested in fucking a pro-mutant ex-terrorist, stranger things have surely happened.

"Yeah, I'm the head of the campus MLA chapter," Frank says, with another of his earthquake-looking shrugs. "Mutant League of America, you know? Got voted president this year."

"Really," Erik says, suddenly much more interested -- the MLA is a separatist organization, one of the biggest in the country, and for Frank to be president of the Columbia chapter .... "You didn't mention you're a mutant. What's your ability?" Super strength, he guesses privately. Frank certainly has the build for it -- although, then again, sometimes that's misleading. Shaw had super strength, and he was nearly as slim when Erik knew him as Erik himself is now.

"Physical performance enhancements." Frank smiles, then: "Though the more interesting part is that I can sense other mutants. My own personal gaydar, kind of thing."

Christ, but he would have been useful in Hellfire, Erik can't help thinking. "All right," he says, gesturing at the quad spread out before them. "Who?" He grins back when Frank meets his eye, already feeling more buoyant, less like he's simply here to do Frank a favor.

Frank looks around them at the other milling students, and says, pointing, "Her, but something really minor. Him. And you, of course." He looks back at Erik and wriggles his eyebrows up and down. "Good, huh? Makes recruiting for the League a lot easier."

"I'm sure," Erik says, trying to push down his excitement so it isn't too visibly obvious; people have settled down somewhat around him, but that doesn't mean he wants his enthusiasm misinterpreted as anything less than benign. "Can you sense strength? Can you track specific mutants over long distances? Or is it just like, well, gaydar, as you said?"

"A bit of both." Frank starts walking again, casual as anything; his broad nose is red from the cold, and his breath comes out in thick puffs of steam. "Strength, yes, like pinging broadband signals. Tracking, kinda, I guess. Depends on the distance. I've not really tried, since I don't have anyone to hunt down."

"Let me know if you ever want to test it out," Erik says, slipping his gloved hands into his pockets, walking a little closer to Frank now, more comfortable than he was. It's hard to control his excitement over having found another mutant, one who isn't an integrationist like Charles. "We can make a weekend of it. I'll ride the trains around the boroughs and you have to text me with where I am and where I've been."

Frank snorts, face crinkling with amusement. "More like I'd have to follow you around, I'm not GPS," he says, rolling his eyes. "But sure. Knowledge is power, right? And self-knowledge most of all."

"Exactly," Erik says. It's another ten minute walk to Frank's dormitory, and they spend it discussing the MLA and Frank's involvement, Frank's opinions on the growing mutant separatist movement in the US and how it's trying to distinguish itself from more extremist groups like Hellfire and Humans Last (a recent arrival on the scene, created in response to Humans First). Erik pulls out his phone when they get in the elevator in Frank's building, typing out a quick text to Charles to let him know he'll be back later than usual, probably after Charles is home from work, then turns the ringer to silent.

"Here's my room," Frank says, getting his key from his pocket and unlocking the door. "You go in, I need to read these messages." There's a whiteboard stuck to the outside of the door, and it's covered in various handwriting, the pen dangling from a piece of string.

Erik lets himself inside, pushing the door open the rest of the way with his power. Frank's room is pretty normal -- a little messy, but not outrageous -- except for the mutant power fist poster above the bed, and the massive stack of pamphlets, leaflets, and separatist literature piled on the desk. There are two beds, of course, one Frank's and one presumably his roommate's, and a black mini-fridge with clean dishes stacked atop it.

It's been a while since Erik's been in a college dorm room, but from what he can tell this is mostly par for the course -- plus or minus a number of empty alcohol bottles anyway. Erik pauses at Frank's desk, glancing through the MLA flyers and Frank's dog-eared copy of Yancey's _Mutant in a Dying World._

"That's probably my favorite," Frank says, coming inside and closing the door behind him, then, with a flick of his thumb, turning the lock. "Yancey has a real way with words, she really gets across what I want to say."

"That's why this is a classic," Erik says, tapping the cover of the book with two fingers and turning around to face Frank, placing one hand on his desk, leaning against it. “She speaks to the Everyman, not just the ivory tower. She makes the cause accessible.”

Frank crosses the room and slides the book out from under Erik's hand, opening it and flicking through. "I always tell new students to read this," he says, eyes scanning the page. "Here, where she talks about survival of the fittest and the need to struggle to be the fittest, since biology doesn't care who wins? I love that. It's the whole battle for mutant power in a nutshell. Integrationists just don't get that humans want to survive just as badly as we do, and they'll bash our brains in to do it and nature won't care. It doesn’t have favorites."

Tell that to Charles, of course, and he’d just give Erik a very disappointed look, like Erik personally had broken his heart. It's always amazed Erik, a little, how Charles can be so intelligent and yet so idealistic at the same time.

But Frank didn't invite Erik here to talk about separatism. Erik tugs the book out of Frank's grasp slowly, setting it back down on the desk; they're standing very close, now, without the book between them. Erik meets Frank's gaze and watches his pupils swell, dilating. "Tell me why you brought me here," Erik says. It's forward -- too forward, if Erik's meant to be submitting, but he’s having trouble reading Frank. He hasn’t asked Erik to kneel, but that could mean nothing, just engagement with their established conversation.

"All right," Frank says, mouth quirking. "I'm gay, you're hot, and I hear you like sex. So do I."

"Another thing we have in common, then," Erik says, letting it remain ambiguous exactly how much of Frank's statement he's referring to. He takes a half-step forward, and when Frank doesn't step back in turn Erik presses the tips of his fingers to Frank's broad chest, pushing him. "I wonder," he says, almost idly, not breaking Frank’s gaze -- it's really incredible, Erik's found, how similar seduction is whether the Dom is gay or straight -- "if you will submit for me. I think that you will."

Frank lifts an eyebrow, and simply rocks back to where he was. "I think you'll have a hard time making me," he says, reaching up to take hold of Erik's hand. His grip, when Erik pulls against it, is steady and utterly implacable. There’s something fascinating about that, too, the physicality of Frank’s mutation put on display like this. It would be easy to conflate Frank and Shaw, were Frank shorter, more slender, not the behemoth of a man he is. Erik doesn’t think he’ll have a problem staying grounded, today.

"That depends," Erik says, and this time there's an edge to his smile. He lets Frank keep his hand for now, even as his other tugs at Frank's belt buckle, starting to undo it, slowly. "What's your DS score?"

"2D," Frank says. "Have you learned how to drive, then? I figured maybe you were still wearing training wheels on your 7."

"Not anymore." The belt comes undone and Erik tugs it free, the leather slapping against Frank's belt loops before Erik drops it onto the carpeted floor. "I could put you on your knees, if I wanted," Erik says, hand going back to Frank's fly, thumb popping open the first button. "But that would be too easy. I like a challenge."

"Well then." Frank's other hand captures Erik's, and he turns, pressing Erik's knees against the bed before bending him down onto it. "Let's see who wins."

Forty-five minutes later Erik's pulling his clothes back on, just his jeans and sweater for now, leaving his coat and scarf draped over the back of Frank's desk chair. Frank is still lying in bed, nude and shining slightly with perspiration, the sheets tangled up around his hips. Frank was rough enough that Erik's sore all over, marks on his back and thighs that are sure to become bruises by morning. He lost five minutes or so to non-reality, to a dark room and Victor Creed, but he’d warned Frank in advance -- Frank knew to just fuck him through it, that Erik would come out of it eventually, and he did. He’s fine. Like always, he’s fine.

"You should borrow any of those you're interested in," Frank says, gesturing at the pile on his desk. "I loan them out all the time. Just bring them back when you're done."

"Thanks," Erik says, and he picks up a few of the pamphlets and one of Frank's books he hasn't yet read, leaning over to slide them into his satchel. He wonders what the media would say, if they found out Erik planned to attend these MLA meetings. He finds he doesn’t particularly care.

Frank grunts, shifting his hands to rest under his head; it puts his chest on display, a nice view, Erik supposes, if you like that sort of thing. "So, did you let me win?" Frank asks, lifting an eyebrow. "I'm strong, but Will's stronger than muscle."

Erik gives him a very small smile. "A little," he admits. "Don't take it the wrong way. I was very interested in seeing your mutation in action."

"I'm gay, what do I care," Frank says, rolling his eyes. "Someone has to win or there's no fucking at all. Will I see you naked again?"

"Maybe," Erik says, pulling on his coat and scarf now, and reaching for his satchel to lift the strap up onto his shoulder. "Next time I'll order you to do something, if you like. We'll see just what kind of defenses you've got in place."

"All right," Frank says, chuckling. "Now go home, I have MLA work to do. Call me."

"I have your number," Erik says, and he goes, ass aching all the way down the stairs and back out onto the sidewalk, heading, finally, home.

Charles is in the kitchen when Erik gets back, in front of the refrigerator; Erik can feel the metal of his watch resting against the fridge door. "I'm home," Erik calls, stripping off his outerwear in the gallery and hanging it up in the closet, checking his phone for messages as he heads down toward the kitchen.

When he gets there Charles is still stood looking into the fridge, illuminated from in front in his worn old pajama pants and a holey sweater; his posture is unnaturally stiff, however, and he doesn't look around when Erik comes in, just stays standing there, staring at the eggs. Erik sets his phone down on the island and comes up behind him, sliding his arms around Charles' waist and pressing his lips to Charles' temple, breathing in deep the scent of his shampoo.

Charles' voice when he speaks is low and dark. "Let go of me. Right now."

Erik obeys, startled, his hands dropping back down to his sides as he takes a quick step back and away. Yesterday they’d fallen off the couch and had ended up in fits of laughter together, and Charles had kissed him spontaneously, like he wanted Erik more than anything; Erik had thought then that everything was good, that it was finally dropping into place. "Charles," he says cautiously, his heart beating faster already, even though he hasn't the faintest idea what's wrong. "What's going on?"

He doesn’t think Charles has ever spoken to him like this -- not once, not ever, no matter what trouble Erik got into. He feels like he’s swallowed ice water, cold spreading from his core out, through his limbs.

"I'd ask where you've been but I already know, quite aside from the fact that you reek of sex," Charles says without moving, his back still to Erik, though he does shut the refrigerator door, closing off the light that was shining on his face. "I suppose I should have expected it, but I'm a fool, apparently. Of course, I already knew that."

"What are you talking about?" Erik says, reaching out to grasp the edge of the island, hard enough that it hurts when it digs into his palm.

He isn’t prepared for Charles like this -- doesn’t know how to handle him, and he hates himself for the reflexive fear that’s crept up his spine these last few seconds, tension gripping the back of his neck and making him want to turn away, to … submit.

Erik says, "Yes, I had sex -- so what?" Charles has never cared before. Or if he has, he's never been ... like _this_ , never angry about it, not even when Erik was fucking people at risk to himself. The only other time he seemed truly upset was after Victor Creed, when he thought Erik planned to leave him -- only this is not at all the same as that. Erik's here, he's come home, has no intention of leaving Charles for anyone. "It has nothing to do with you," Erik says firmly, expecting that to resolve the matter -- or, hoping, if not expecting.

Charles finally turns, and now Erik can see that his eyes are burning, defiant and openly angry, the line of his mouth tight and thin as he raises his chin, not submissive at all now. his eyes flit down to Erik's jaw where he knows there's a hickey, then back up to meet Erik's.

“If you still want to go catting around, then you're quite right, it’s none of my business,” Charles snaps, “it really isn’t. But you can leave me entirely out of it. I won’t be your safety blanket fuck any more. Now go take a shower so you can stop rubbing what an idiot I am in my face, you stink of sex.” He shoves past Erik, knocking him with his shoulder, and heads for the corridor, his steps fast and sharp-angled, every muscle in his body tensed and rigid, anger crackling off him.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Erik snaps out on reflex. He’s much taller than Charles now, his legs longer; he catches up quickly. When he grabs Charles’ arm it’s to pull him back, catching him with both hands gripping just above Charles’ elbows, holding him there. He’s frustrated, but confused, too, or maybe they’re the same thing, feeling hot under his skin and weirdly anxious.

“You’re jealous,” he accuses, and the incredulity that stings in the forefront of his mind is -- foreign, surprising.

“I’m _angry_ ,” Charles counters, fiercely staccato, his aura so fiery that it feels like touching him should burn Erik's hands. “You say all of these things -- argue me around or override me when I tell you all the reasons why this is a terrible mistake -- you try and make out like you’re grown up now, that you know what you want and you’re making your own choices, that I’m being prudish or foolish. And I’ve let you, I admit that -- I could have pressed my point, or refused to have sex with you, and I didn’t, because I wanted it, even if I couldn’t admit it. But I am not some submissive dildo, there for when you haven’t found anyone outside the apartment to fuck the shame into you instead.”

“Fuck you,” Erik says, and the coldness is gone now -- he’s hot all over instead, burning with a sudden inexplicable fever. “ _Fuck_ you -- you’re the one who wanted this, not me! And what I do outside this house is none of your damn business. You don’t understand anything, do you? For all your telepathy, you’re still just as blind as you want to be.”

“I’m a fucking coward, is what I am,” Charles snaps, and he jerks his arms, knocking Erik’s hands loose, a hint of a snarl around his mouth now, terrifying on Charles’ normally-soft face, like there’s a whole different person in there, staring out at Erik with disgust. “I’m a coward, and a -- a fucking _pervert_ , and I should never have let you see any of what I wanted, let alone try and appease it -- I should have put a stop to this before it ever happened, before we ever -- “ Charles stops, hands in fists at his sides, looking like whatever he wants to say is stuck in his throat, like he’s choking on it.

“Before we ever what, Charles?” Erik says, and he knows he’s being cruel but he can’t stop himself now, too hurt and embarrassed to hold it in. “You can wank off to it, you can even act on it -- but you can’t say it? You _are_ a coward.”

Erik feels sick down to the very core of him, as if even his atoms are trembling and febrile, like if he felt any more he would combust and cease to exist. Charles’ eyes are wide, staring at him, and his jaw is so tense it makes his face look utterly changed, no longer soft but hard from all angles.

“I can’t do this any more. I won’t.” Charles’ hands are so tight now Erik can practically hear his bones creaking. “I can’t pretend any more that this is a -- that this isn’t my fault, that you started this and I got caught up in it, that I’m somehow being forced against my will into a sexual relationship with you. I could have put a stop to this if I was a good person, I have the power to force it to stop, but instead I’m just another one of your abusers. The only difference is that I’m a sub, and you get to feel in control of how I abuse you.”

“Of course it’s not your fault -- you can’t help that you have to live here, you have to be _around_ me --”

“Erik, for fuck’s sake,” Charles says, “I didn’t do anything for most of two years until we fought the other night, I’ve already proven I can keep my fucking pants on. And I’m a sodding telepath. If I wanted to stop you from initiating I could have done that, but I didn’t, did I.”

No, he didn’t -- and that’s the point, that’s the _fucking_ point, Erik thinks -- Charles has no right to keep flagellating himself over this when it was a choice he made for his own damn self. Never mind that Erik knows what kind of person he himself is, the effect he has on anyone who gets too close. Maybe that makes him a hypocrite; maybe he has no right to be angry at all, when if he weren’t the way he is, Charles would never have wanted him in the first place.

Erik feels like he’s breaking, pieces of himself snapping off and falling away, a slow demolition that is far, far worse than if he were to just -- shatter.

“ _Why_ , then?” Erik says. “ _Why_ didn’t you stop me, if you are just going to hate yourself for the rest of your life for doing this!” Erik’s body hurts, the new bruises throbbing beneath the surface of his skin thick with blood, and it’s all he can do not to lie down on the ground in front of Charles and press his face against the floor like a stupid, _subby_ child. “I just want you to be happy. Won’t you please let me do that, at least?”

There’s a long pause, in which it feels like the corridor is closing in around them, until the pressure of the silence is worse than hearing Charles speak in that tone. Then:

“Because -- ” Charles’ voice breaks for a moment, and then he says, “because I’m not perfect, Erik, and I’m not strong, and when you asked me if I wanted it I did. I -- the first time, I was in subspace, and that meant I was being totally honest, and I couldn’t -- you wanted me to want it, and I wanted it myself, and I couldn’t keep refusing forever. I’m weak, do you understand? You’re offering me something I’ve wanted for a long time, and once we started …. ” He trails off, looks away, the look on his face one of abject shame.

Erik can’t find it in himself to keep being angry. It’s like all that fire has just being extinguished at once, leaving him sopping and heavy and cold everywhere he can think to feel. Erik relaxes the grip of his hands on Charles’ arms, and before he knows it he’s pulling him in, wrapping his arms tight around Charles’ body and pressing the palm of one hand against the back of Charles’ head, holding him there. “Listen,” he says, once he thinks he can say it without having to stop to catch his breath, his heart beating fast against his breastbone. “If you want this, you know I’ll give it to you. And if that means you need me to stop fucking other people, then you can ask me to do that too. I care about you more than them -- more than _anyone._ If that’s what will make you happy again ….”

Charles is warm against him, warmer still when he wraps his arms around Erik’s waist, holding him in return, leaning into him without letting Erik take his weight. “It’s not right,” he says, quietly, firmly. “It hasn’t been right from the start. Erik … you know, don’t you, that I would never have touched you if you hadn’t put me in subspace? I was saying no until that point, and … well, I know that after that I said yes, but really you shouldn’t have accepted that yes. It wasn’t given when I was fully in control of myself. It makes my consent dubious at best.”

Erik shakes his head. “You’re wrong -- you _would_ have done it, sooner or later.” Erik leans back enough that he can look at Charles, even if they’re so close his eyes struggle not to cross. His pulse -- or maybe it’s Charles’ -- beats throughout his entire body, a horrible rhythm. “You were already using me for sexual gratification without my knowing about it. You can’t say you never would have gone further -- of course you would have. You were pushing further every _day._ I won’t apologize for giving myself final say on how and when you get to use me.”

Charles stiffens, his whole body tensing, and he lets go of Erik’s waist, stepping back, out of his reach. “I’m sorry,” he says, lifting his chin as if he wants to do just the opposite, a sharp, jerky motion. “I’m -- I’m so sorry, Erik. You deserve better than to be subjected to this, and better than me. If -- it would probably be better if you -- if you lived somewhere else to finish out high school, somewhere safer. Where you can trust you guardian not to -- not to.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Erik says, and it comes out snappish again, that sudden panic rearing up inside him; Erik feels it scratching against the underside of his skin even as he forces himself to stay where he is, standing on his own two feet even as his arms feel awkward and useless hanging at his sides instead of touching Charles. “It would be the same anywhere else I went. At least with us we know where we stand. We can _admit_ it, can’t we? You won’t be doing either of us good by pushing me away.”

“It really isn’t the same everywhere.” Charles folds his arms across his chest. “It really isn’t. I know I haven’t made a good case for that, but … I just want the best for you, and that’s not me. You need to be safe.”

“I _am_ safe. You don’t get to decide what’s best for me -- you don’t get to tell _me_ what is and is not abusing me. I’m not leaving, Charles.” He makes that as clear as possible, throwing Dominance behind it even though it isn’t an order; Will isn’t just about making other people do what you want, after all, it’s about making it damn clear you can make your own decisions, and that no matter who your opponent is, unless they’re 7D too you can out-stubborn them. It practically burns in Erik’s veins, the heat of it, painful in a way that isn’t at all physical. “If you don’t want to fuck me anymore, that’s fine. It won’t last. But that’s fine, too.” Not that Erik expects Charles would even make it a month on that front. “If you aren’t fucking me, though, then you can’t dictate what I let other people do, either.”

“See, that’s the problem,” Charles says, with a wry, bitter twist of his mouth. “You’re just … _letting_ me do this to you. With you. And I can feel that, too, when I let myself pay attention -- to you this is just … it’s a physical exchange, tit for tat, you could take it or leave it but you want to please me. It’s not like that for me. I get -- I get attached, to my sexual partners. I’ve never had a sexual partner I wasn’t romantically involved with. And that’s not what you’re feeling -- it’s just another payment to another adult who wants something from you. I can’t be utilitarian about this, I just can’t.”

“You think I’m not attached to you?” Erik can’t help but laugh, then, both his brows going up as he takes a half-step back, shaking his head. “You’re right, I’m giving you what you want, but you’re wrong that you’re just like everyone else I give that to. You actually _matter._ ”

He doesn’t understand how Charles can be a telepath and yet so willfully ignorant of that fact; he must know how Erik would do anything for him, _has done_ anything for him.

“And the difference is because you actually care what happens to me,” Erik says, holding Charles’ gaze now, steady. “None of the rest do. But you care. That you get attached is what _makes_ you different.”

“You don’t understand,” Charles says, letting out a long, rasping breath. “And that’s not your fault. I’m not sure I can explain to you in a way you’ll really get why I shouldn’t be doing this.”

Erik hates ‘should’ -- always has -- but Charles has used it more times in this conversation than Erik can count. “Just because it should be one way doesn’t mean it is,” Erik says after a moment, and he feels exhausted in a way, marrow-drained and light-headed. “We’re in this situation now, and you have to deal with the way things are the best way you can. I feel safe with you. I don’t feel that way with everyone else.”

“You could stop with everyone,” Charles says, without quite looking at Erik.

“But I won’t,” Erik says, frankly, and Charles looks -- Erik’s not sure how he looks, but he can feel Charles’ uncertainty, swaying between iron determination and a softer, embracing feeling, his aura shifting every moment as Charles wars with himself.

“I could make you not do it any more,” Charles says, but Erik knows better than to believe Charles ever would.

Erik’s looking at him, Charles’ gaze still elsewhere, focused around the region of Erik’s ear; he might even be holding his breath. Erik shrugs one shoulder and says, “You could.”

Charles is silent for a long time, then, until Erik is starting to think he’s said something wrong, or worse, that Charles is actually considering it -- but then finally Charles says, “I don’t … I don’t know, Erik. This feels like a trap. You saying it’s better for you if it’s me, that it keeps you safer if I -- I feel like if I agree, decide, to have this kind of a relationship with you, because it’s better for you and I’d be doing better for you than if I didn’t, then it’s just … it’s too … convenient. It feels like an excuse.”

Erik holds his arms out to his sides, palms facing Charles -- nothing to hide here, nothing he _could_ hide, even if he wanted. “I’m not saying anything. I’m not trying to talk you into this, that’s not the point. All I am trying to say is -- I’m not an animal. I can keep myself safe, and I can make my own decisions.” He drops his hands again and looks away from Charles for a moment, toward the streetlight just outside their window, a glow past the thrumming iron of the fire escape. When he looks back at Charles he feels flat inside, as if someone has taken his emotions and wiped them all away, leaving nothing but a blank slate. As tactfully as he can, Erik says, “Charles -- if us having sex hurts me somehow, then I expect the damage has already been done.”

It would be inaccurate to call what Charles does a wince; it’s more like he’s been struck in the chest, an all-over flinch that’s mirrored in the pain that flits across his face.

“I … ” Charles looks at Erik, then, and lets out a long, unsteady breath. “I want to lie to you, and say that we can be close again and it can be like it was before everything happened, but that would be dishonest, because the truth is … the truth is that I don’t think I could do that without my … attraction ... spilling over again. And I remember how awful it was when I was trying to stay away, for both of us, but especially you. I don’t want to do that to you again, but I don’t have any good choices here.”

Erik presses his mouth into a thin, bitter smile. “You leave me, or you stay, but every time you look at me you think about everything you won’t let yourself do. Or the things you _do_ do, and then hate yourself for after.” Like all the times Charles used Erik to get himself off, a desire that for all his virtue he couldn’t resist, in the end. And Erik can’t watch him hate himself like that forever. “Forgive me if neither sounds very appealing.”

“This is why I said maybe you should live somewhere else,” Charles says, hands tightening. “I can’t watch you learn to hate me, either. And I just can’t see an option where you don’t wake up one day and despise me. That would kill me.”

“I could never despise you,” Erik says. He wants to reach out and touch Charles, press his hands to Charles’ arms and draw him in, but doesn’t dare. “I told you. I told you you can fuck me. You don’t have to feel guilty about it -- we’d both go into it with our eyes open.” And then maybe Charles would forget all his self-loathing, if he knew Erik didn’t mind, really didn’t. As much as Charles might say otherwise, everything Erik wants from him -- his love, his attention, his affection -- all of it is dependent on this. Either Charles abandons him altogether, or he stays. And if Erik doesn’t fuck him, nothing changes; they’ll grow farther and farther apart by the day, everything between them wrecked by the things Charles won’t allow himself to do. So Erik has to give him this. There’s no other choice, and both of them know that, now.

Erik takes a tiny half-step forward, then stops, keeping his hands firmly, forcibly, at his sides. “It was nice with you,” he says softly, and he doesn’t look away from Charles’ eyes. He wants Charles to read the truth in this. “It was better.”

Charles’ breath shakes, and he looks -- so uncertain, lost, a feeling of him fighting himself tangible in the air around them. “I’m not sure it not being bad is a good reason,” he says, but he sounds less determined to set himself on fire than he did before. “You’re rather damning me with faint praise, here.”

“I just want you to stay,” Erik says. He hates the way his voice sounds … pleading, desperation tinging the edges of each syllable, but if it works -- “I want it to be like how it was. Please.”

“How it was before I couldn’t hide things any more, or how it was the last few days?”

“How it was yesterday,” Erik says. “How it was when it seemed like you loved me again without hating yourself for it.” Those little moments when Charles seemed to forget what this was, what he was doing -- when he could be with Erik as himself, without all that tension drawn thick and taut between them. “That’s all I want.”

The sensation of Charles wavering intensifies, like being caught in one of Janos’ whirlwinds; and then Charles looks away, and he says, tightly, tentatively, “You would have to promise me -- you would have to not sleep with anyone else, like you said. I can’t let you do that, not if we’re … I can’t share you, if things are like that between us.”

It’s not what Erik had expected -- for Charles to actually capitulate, to give in to this in contrast to his better values, all his stiff moralistic virtue -- and for a moment he thinks he must have misheard. But he hasn’t, and Charles is actually being … _honest_ , with himself as with Erik, and that in itself is shocking considering how hard Charles has tried to flagellate himself over this.

“All right,” Erik says very carefully, feeling strangely like he has to tip-toe now, like Charles will change his mind and devolve back into that self-loathing state he’d been in a moment before if Erik doesn’t keep him here, steady, sane. Giving up other Doms … it won’t be easy, it’s too much of a habit to be broken without thought, and Erik is not at all looking forward to the first time he has to figure out how to tell someone ‘no,’ but he’ll manage. For Charles, he will.

Charles shifts from foot to foot, then finally says, “I was making a snack. Do you want anything?” He just looks tired now, standing there in his pyjamas, suddenly strangely his own age -- he normally looks much younger, but right now Erik can see him as he is, wistful and doubting and fatigued, the lines at the corners of his eyes where they crinkle normally now just little wrinkles. Charles is thirty, almost twice Erik’s age, and for once he actually seems it. “You could … well, it would be nice if you would go shower and change.”

“Just peanut butter on toast,” Erik says. It’s not an order. For some reason he feels … anxious, about doing that again, when they’re on the brink of such a momentous change (and it feels like a change, even if what it is, is Charles deciding that, yes, they will go on as they have been these past few days). “I’ll -- “ he lets the words taper off, gesturing over his shoulder toward the stairs, and then he makes himself go before he can stand around and let things get any more uncomfortable than they already are.

Upstairs, he strips off his clothes and leaves them in a tangled pile on the floor of his bathroom. He catches sight of his nude body in the mirror behind the sink -- it’s too clear, all the places Frank has touched him, bite marks and bruises darkening the skin above older scars. The bruise from Frank’s thumb on his ribcage where Frank gripped a little too tight is right above the gleaming white circle from a time Shaw put his cigarette out on Erik’s flesh, two twin spheres now, one light and one dark.

Erik showers quickly, and tries to be thorough about it, rubbing soap into his skin until the room is filled with its honeyed scent. He can feel Charles moving around downstairs, putting bread in the toaster and opening the fridge doors. It makes him want to wrap things up faster, and after he’s done with the shower he towels off too quickly; his hair is still dripping water onto the collar of his t-shirt when he gets dressed. It’s late enough to wear pajamas, but Erik goes for a plain shirt and dark jeans instead. He almost doesn’t want to look too casual in front of Charles right now, as if that might remind Charles of Erik’s own age the way Erik had been reminded of Charles’.

When he gets downstairs Charles is in front of the fridge again, reaching inside, and Erik gets such a strong sense of deja vu from before that he has to stop, his heart in his throat, suddenly panicked that the argument is about to start again, that Charles will speak to him as harshly again as he did earlier, cutting at already bloodied wounds. He lingers back and watches Charles pick out sliced strawberries, graham crackers, and almond butter, the overlong sleeves of his sweater draped around his strong wrists and hiding his square, practical hands.

“I think I should ask,” Charles says into the quiet, closing the fridge door and moving over to the countertop to start on his own snack, “what you want from this relationship, Erik. I can’t help but feel this is all me right now.”

“You know what I want,” Erik says. He feels a little more centered now, being given a straightforward question he has to answer; he walks over and pulls out one of the stools to sit down at the island, reaching to tug his plate of toast across the counter toward himself. “I want it to be like how it was. I don’t want you running away from me -- or running toward someone else and forgetting about me.” He doesn’t mean to be quite so honest, but the words have tumbled out of him despite that, and it’s only after he’s said them that he flushes and turns his face down under the pretense of taking a bite of his toast.

Charles is spreading the almond butter over his crackers, smooth, steady movements of his hand that Erik can only feel through the knife -- Charles’ back is still turned, though his voice is normal. “I meant what I said about not sharing, Erik. I don’t do casual. I don’t sleep around. It’s too messy, telepathically speaking, and it’s just … well, it’s not me.” He moves on to the strawberries, putting down the knife. “And I would never forget about you anyway. Don’t be silly.”

“I don’t care if you sleep around. I don’t care if you fuck someone. Just don’t love them more than me.”

There’s a tangible pause before Charles says, everything about him stilling, like saying it is dangerous, “I don’t love anyone more than I love you.”

Erik smiles at his back, and turns his gaze down to his toast again, still smiling when he takes another bite and washes it down with water from the glass Charles filled for him. Hearing Charles admit it makes him feel warm in his chest, a soft heat beneath his breastbone that spreads slowly out through his limbs. “Good.”

Charles lifts a cracker to his mouth and bites into it with a soft crunch, and after a second Erik slides off his stool and walks across the kitchen to where he’s standing, leaning against Charles’ back and tilting his brow against the nape of Charles’ neck even as he keeps his arms at his sides, not reaching for him, just keeping that single point of bare contact where their skin meets.

“Don’t let me ruin this,” he murmurs, his breath making the fabric of Charles’ shirt ripple slightly, and Charles sighs, reaching back for him with one hand, curling his fingers around the side of Erik’s head.

“We’ll be okay,” he says, and takes another bite of his cracker. Erik wishes Charles would look at him, but he doesn’t want to push if Charles doesn’t want to submit, so instead he moves his hands forward to rest lightly on Charles’ hips, over flesh-warmed flannel.

“You’re the telepath,” Erik says. “You’d know better than I would.”

Charles snorts, and finally turns in Erik’s arms to face him. “I’m not a psychic,” he says, with a small, tight smile. “I can’t see the future. Besides, this only ends one way -- eventually it ends, or someone finds out and I go to jail, and lose my medical license. But for now I think we’ll be okay.”

“Or no one finds out and we do as we please for as long as we want.” Erik says it brazenly, even as he knows it’s naive; better to think that than think Charles might be right. “How would anyone ever know? I won’t tell anyone, and you won’t, and if they catch us you can wipe their minds. No one has to know.”

“Keeping a secret this dangerous over a long period of time is difficult,” Charles says, though he sounds calm. “And like I said. Either things end between us -- that’s your option -- or someone finds out. We couldn’t pretend forever.”

“Why not?” Erik draws back now, even if he keeps his hands where they are, and looks Charles in the eye. “I don’t mean to draw a direct comparison, but Shaw kept me secret for twelve _years_. He only got caught because he did a little terrorism on the side. I doubt you’ll run into the same obstacle.”

“Shaw and company lived apart from society and moved every few weeks.” Charles gives Erik a fond look, even if it is tinged with sadness. “It doesn’t matter now. More likely you’ll go to college and meet someone, and that’ll be that.”

“Don’t be absurd.” The prospect of Erik meeting some college Dom or sub and falling madly in love with them is the most ridiculous thing Erik’s heard in a while; he can’t imagine being able to stand being _around_ one person for longer than a few days, never mind in close contact, fucking them. The only thing more laughable is that said person would even want to be with Erik in return. “You haven’t answered my question. Why can’t you just wipe someone’s memory? What’s the point in being a telepath if you won’t use your power when it matters?”

“Having the power to do something doesn’t give me the right to. How would you feel if I altered your memory to suit me?”

“If you did it to keep me from putting you in jail, I think I’d be pretty damn happy about it,” Erik says. “We’re more important than any of the rest of them. I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep you safe. You should do the same for yourself.” Unless, of course, Charles’ determination to punish himself for all this overrides basic self-preservation.

“Besides,” Charles says, apparently choosing to ignore Erik’s arguments entirely, “Plenty of people would be happy to be with you. You’re not repulsive, Erik, inside or out. You don’t mind being around me, so clearly you’re capable of having warmer feelings about someone. Potentially someone younger, nearer your own age. I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“Is it possible to Order someone to stop being ridiculous?”

“I don’t know. Stop being ridiculous,” Charles says, with a hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth.

Erik rolls his eyes and steps back again, toward the island, reaching over for his toast. Only after he’s taken another few bites, swallowed, does he say, “You’ll have to be clear on what you want from me with this. Do you want me only to fuck you, or do you want me to Dominate you outside of that?”

Charles stays where he is, leaning against the counter. “Do you like Dominating me?” he asks, and he sounds awkward now, made uncomfortable by the question. “I don’t want to ask for more than you’re happy to give. Not willing, happy. There’s a difference. I don’t want to be your john, getting payment in kind.”

Erik grimaces slightly; can’t help it, the way Charles tends to make these unflattering comparisons toward himself. “Of course I’m happy to. I told you before that I enjoy it. It’s a,” he makes a vague gesture with his hand toward his head, the hand that isn’t holding his toast, “chemical thing.”

“Well, then,” Charles says. “Okay. But you need to listen to me if I tell you to stop. You could force me to do anything if you tried hard enough, and if you tried I’d have to stop you, and I don’t want to do that. I know Shaw didn’t use safewords, but we need one. If I say ‘buttercup’ you have to stop.” His voice sounds neutral, but Erik can feel Charles’ slight tension, like the air itself is taut and worried.

That’s the only thing that keeps Erik from rolling his eyes again, that sense of anxiety that Charles is projecting, however minutely. “All right. Whatever you want.” He puts his toast down and brushes the crumbs off his palms so he can reach for Charles again, stepping forward to lean in against him, bracing one hand on the counter behind him. He feels Charles’ breath catch at that, a sharp shift of his chest. Erik watches him for a moment, watches his eyes, trying to gauge Charles’ reaction, and when Charles’ gaze flickers briefly down to Erik’s mouth Erik leans in and kisses him.

Charles leans into him, kissing back; his lips are gentle, not demanding, his hands coming to rest on the sides of Erik’s waist. He tastes like nuts and strawberry, predictably, and Erik lets more of his weight rest against Charles’ body, smoothing his touch up from the small of Charles’ back toward his nape. “You’re such a good kisser,” Erik tells him after a few moments, something he’d been wanting to say since the first time they slept together.

That startles a laugh from Charles; he looks up at Erik almost quizzically, the corners of his mouth curving right up. “Thank you,” he says, that bemusement still in his voice. “It’s nice to be appreciated.”

Erik smiles back and kisses him again, with more intent behind it this time, touching Charles with both hands now and pulling him away from the counter and onto his own two feet, stepping toward the center of the kitchen. “Tell me what you want the most,” he says, close enough Charles’ breath is still hot against his mouth. “Pretend everyone else doesn’t exist -- tell me what you want.”

Charles’ eyes close, and he shivers, face flushed. “I’d really like it,” he says, “if you would fuck me. Top me from the top.”

It’s not what Erik had been expecting, but it’s not an unpleasant surprise, either. He smooths his hands down Charles’ sides, to his hips, then back up again. “I’ve never done that before,” he warns. “I might not be any good at it.”

“It’s not that complicated,” Charles says, then, “but you don’t have to,” and his voice is neutral, calm in that misleading way he has when he wants something very badly and doesn’t want to let on. Erik thinks about the prostate massager in Charles’ drawer, and the way he’d said, the other night, almost shyly, _I like having it in me._

“No, I do,” Erik says, and then a quick revision, before Charles can overanalyze it -- “I will. You just might have to … I’m not sure I know how.” He makes a face, a little chagrined, apologetic, and manages a half-smile. “I’ll do my best.”

“Okay,” Charles says, and reaches up to kiss him again, drawing Erik’s head down to meet his lips.

Now that he knows what they're doing -- sort of -- Erik feels more secure, steadier, and he licks his tongue into Charles' mouth, pressing their hips together as he steps back again, and again, slowly guiding them toward the den, and, beyond that, the gallery and the stairs.

 

*

_Charles_

It’s easier said than done to banish the spectre of feeling he’s doing something terribly wrong, but there’s an acceptance, almost, that he’s made some kind of deal with himself, that a line has been crossed, even if only in his mind. Charles has said yes, outright and in his own full control, and Erik is kissing him even as they make their way upstairs, along the hall and into the bedroom, Charles’ heart beating fast in his chest, the stirrings of arousal warming him from the inside.

Erik smells clean now after his shower, his hair still damp, and Charles strokes his fingers through it even as they come to a halt beside the bed, his bare toes curling in the short pile of the carpet. Erik’s hair is softer. He doesn’t look at the bite mark that mars the skin at the hinge of Erik’s jaw, a slowly darkening bruise.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks, and thinks, his submission, at least, is something Erik wants from Charles alone, that his other lovers -- other Doms -- won’t give him. This is Charles’ to give.

"Take off your clothes."

Erik's gaze is lowered, watching Charles' hands as he reaches for the collar of his sweater and pulls it off over his head, letting it drop to the floor beside him. Although he’s seen Charles strip before, it’s never been when Charles was entirely out of subspace, and Erik’s eyes are intense, hot on Charles’ skin; Charles shivers as he reaches for his pajama pants next, self-conscious, and pushes them off his hips to fall around his ankles. He’s not wearing any underwear.

It feels dangerous just being naked in front of Erik of his own volition.

"Pick those up. Fold them and put them away," Erik says, and the Will in his voice washes over Charles’ bare skin, which prickles, the fine hairs standing on end in the cool air.

“Okay,” he says after a moment of pause, and steps out of the pants, then bends to pick them up along with the sweater, taking them over to the dresser. It’s a minor delay, but it gives him a moment to compose himself, and the way Erik is directing him … it feels good, and Charles takes his time folding the clothes until they’re as neat as he can get them, a little pile on top of the dresser. That done, Charles takes a breath in, turns, and goes back to stand in front of Erik, his heart thrumming louder now, faster, like the crescendo before a storm hits.

"Good," Erik murmurs, his hand coming to cup the side of Charles' head. His fingers comb back through Charles' hair, slowly, and Charles hears the soft clicking sound as he undoes the fly of his jeans. “Take off my clothes now.”

He chose this. He can have this, have Erik -- this was his choice, and Erik’s.

Charles takes hold of the hem of Erik’s shirt, then draws it up over Erik’s head; Erik raises his arms to allow it over, and comes out the other end with hair ruffled, looking at Charles. Charles is looking at Erik, but not at his face.

His chest is bruised, a few dotted finger and thumb prints starting to show up plum-colored on his skin, especially around his hips, as if he’s been pinned down; they’re scattered as if the one pinning him adjusted his grip a few times, each time holding just a little too hard. They look especially ugly against the backdrop of Erik’s old scars, as if there was never a break between one and the other, and Charles breath feels thick in his throat, like he has to swallow it down. There are bruises around Erik’s wrists, too.

Charles takes a step back and away and, clutching the shirt, takes it over to the dresser to fold it beside his own, dawdling over it again and deliberately making it perfect while feeling Erik’s anticipation turn to curiosity turn to frustration at Charles’ delay.

“That’s good enough,” Erik says at last, and though he doesn’t snap there’s still an edge to his voice, a roughening around the syllables. “Come back over here.” He’s holding his hand out toward Charles when Charles turns around again, and when Charles is close enough Erik reaches for his wrist, tugging him forward and placing his hand over Erik’s groin.

“Impatient,” Charles says to cover his own hesitation; Erik pauses then, his hand relaxing its grip on Charles’ wrist and he says, suddenly uncertain, “Do you want me to slow down?”

It’s difficult not to say yes when Charles is still wondering if he’s made the right choice. But confronted with the evidence of what he’s keeping Erik from by doing this he shakes his head no anyway and rubs the heel of his palm over Erik’s crotch, against the soft, heavy weight of his cock under the parted denim. “It’s okay,” he says, keeps up the steady motion, massaging; he slips his hand inside Erik’s fly and the feel of him hot through the cotton of his briefs sends a tingle through Charles’ body. “There’s just no rush.”

Erik half-smiles, but doesn’t say anything; he lets go of Charles’ wrist to slide his fingertips feather-light along Charles’ hip, then curls his hand around the base of Charles’ cock. That’s nice; there’s nothing to do about Erik’s earlier encounter now, so instead Charles sighs and his hips tip forward, offering himself up. He’s stiffening despite his worrying, the anticipation when they were kissing and now the stimulation of being touched, though Erik’s hand hasn’t moved yet. It feels vulnerable and exciting just to have Erik holding him there, like Erik is containing that part of him, controlling it. He keeps moving his own hand over Erik’s crotch, though Erik is still soft, because he hasn’t been told to stop.

The hand on his cock tugs, once, and Charles moans, his erection twitching in Erik’s grasp.

“You still haven’t finished undressing me like I told you to,” Erik says after a few moments, almost idly, and Charles says, “Sorry.”

He lets go of Erik’s crotch and moves his hands to either side of Erik’s hips, hooking his fingers into the waistband of his jeans and his underwear and pushing it down; there are more bruises on Erik’s thighs, ones Charles tries to ignore, which is made easier when Erik doesn’t let go of Charles’ cock despite the order. Charles has to bend awkwardly to slide the fabric down enough to hit the floor, the angle putting a tension on Erik’s grip that pulls at Charles’ groin, a slight pain that makes matching arousal throb warm through him, letting out a low groan as his erection hardens further.

“You like that?” Erik sounds a little surprised, but he pulls a stroke up Charles’ cock all the same, rubbing his thumb just under the head and sending an electric spark through Charles’ groin.

“Yes,” Charles says, a little breathless; the two sensations toy with each other, indescribably magnifying one another. “I, ah -- like a little pain. Nothing that breaks the skin.”

Erik shakes his head, and Charles is far enough inside Erik’s mind to feel Erik’s heartbeat picking up pace, a strange sensation when it’s out of sync with his own. “I can’t do that,” Erik says, and whatever his intent he only succeeds in sounding wary. “I won’t hurt you. I’m not --” _like them_ “-- that kind of Dom.”

Unlike his friend Frank, Charles thinks, with a heavy dose of irony.

Charles steps in a little closer, loosening the pressure of Erik’s hold on him so it’s just a solid grip, now, not pulling on anything. “It’s not about that so much,” he says honestly, feeling a flush coming to his face -- it feels silly to be embarrassed about it now, but he is, trying to talk to Erik about this out loud. “It’s, well, it’s the control element. You had hold of my cock, you could decide what to do with it. Pull on it or stroke it, like … control it or reward it, do you see? For me some pains are good pains, they make it better, but if you’re not comfortable with that it’s okay. Not everyone likes it, that’s why a Dom should ask beforehand if their partner is okay with bruising and marking.”

Perhaps predictably, though, Erik’s mind has latched onto only half of Charles’ words, as if he heard ‘make it better’ and then stopped listening. He certainly didn’t catch the veiled reference to Frank. “I want you to feel good,” he says, and he sounds more certain again now, pulling two quick strokes up Charles’ cock and then grasping him at the base again to say, “Don’t just leave those clothes on the floor.”

The order feels good rippling down Charles’ spine, and he takes in a shallow breath before looking down at the jeans and briefs on the floor at Erik’s feet, and Erik’s hand clamped around his cock between them. When Charles bends around Erik’s arm to reach for them it means moving such that the grip pulls tight around the base of Charles’ erection, and he bites his lip on a whine at the pain of it, a sweet ache as he reaches carefully for the clothes, has to bend further, pull harder -- “Fuck,” he breathes, finally snagging the jeans with two fingers as Erik obligingly steps out of them and lets Charles straighten, panting a little as the tension lessens and the pain fades. He can feel his whole face flushed red now, breathless.

Erik’s glancing between Charles’ face and his cock like he expects something other than what he’s seeing, that Charles -- that anyone -- could actually enjoy some degree of pain completely foreign to him. And it would be, of course; no matter how many years he spent living as a sub, he never was one, not really, has never been wired that way. For him, pain only ever meant punishment.

“Fold them, now,” Erik says, clearly grasping onto the order as something familiar amidst his confusion about the rest of it, tugging once on Charles’ cock to underscore the words.

“Okay,” Charles says, if not drunk on the sensation at least tipsy; he shakes out the jeans in his hands, smoothing out any creases, then folds them carefully in half, then again, until they’re neat. The dresser is halfway across the room -- there’s no way Erik can keep hold of him without moving. “You’ll have to let go,” he says, looking back at Erik.

But Erik doesn’t -- he just steps toward the dresser himself, tugging Charles along in his wake with his grip on Charles’ dick like he has him on a leash. Charles is fully hard now, and he follows obediently, hot all over, his bare skin prickling with goosebumps and nipples small and tight with arousal. When they reach the dresser he lays the jeans down with the rest, straightening the pile, then looks at Erik -- nude, pale gold in the lamplight, tall and strong and -- oh.

“You’re not aroused,” Charles says, reaching for Erik’s big, flaccid cock at first until he thinks maybe best not, and redirects his hand to Erik’s hip. “Is everything okay?”

“I’m fine,” Erik says, perhaps too easily; he steps closer, tilting forward -- his lips brush the curve of Charles’ ear, his neck, Erik’s other hand moving with slow steady motion along Charles’ waist.

“If it makes you uncomfortable, I don’t need pain to feel good,” Charles says, even as Erik enfolds him, his warm breath on Charles’ skin utterly distracting. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.” Maybe Erik is still traumatized from earlier somehow, he’d seemed pretty sanguine about it but --

“It’s not that.” Erik kisses him where his shoulder meets his neck, suckling lightly at that sensitive skin, the drag of his hand along Charles’ cock slow and delicious. “It might just be … difficult. It’s not how I was trained.”

Hmm. Charles shifts, laying his head against Erik’s chest, his own hands stroking over Erik’s torso, caressing him in turn. “You got an erection when we’ve had sex before,” he says, thinking back over their previous encounters - it hadn’t seemed to be a problem then, and Charles had almost dismissed it as a concern, surprised but pleased, in his soothed state, that Erik was enjoying himself when Charles hadn’t been sure he could. “Is there something different about this time versus those times?”

“You were in subspace,” Erik says. “I don’t know why that should make a difference, but it did.” He nips at Charles’ skin with his teeth, not hard enough to leave a mark, not where people might see. Then his tongue smooths over it, wet and warm, smoothing the brief soft pain back out of existence.

It’s no mystery to Charles why that would be, and he considers it even as he keeps moving his hands over Erik’s back. Erik would have felt most in control with Charles in subspace, not a threat but someone he could order and arrange to his liking, soft and eager to please. Given Erik’s difficult past with sex, it’s not surprising, though it does make a pang of guilt run through Charles at exposing Erik to that again, even if he has mostly convinced himself it’s better for Erik if it’s Charles and not every other person who just wants to use him.

“If it were because you don’t want this, you’d say so?” he asks, pulling back just enough to see Erik’s face clearly, reading his thoughts at the same time. The last thing he wants is for Erik to be just … going through the motions, even if he knows enough to know Erik isn’t going to just throw himself at Charles.

“Of course,” Erik says, and his gaze flicks away from Charles’, at Charles’ own face, like he’s trying to figure something out, read a secret hidden in Charles’ skin and mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to get hard. I told you that before.” He means in therapy; it’s part of the notes Charles had to hand over to the defense lawyers. Erik had also admitted though that he had had a spontaneous erection that time he had sex under the influence of cocaine, and had been more Dominant; perhaps that’s the connection, that exerting his Dominance helps Erik overcome this ingrained reflex to repress his own sexual desire.

Charles thinks about offering for Erik to put him down again, to make it easier, but that feels too much like escaping responsibility for his own choice, and so instead he says, “I could suck you if you’d like, that might help.” Manual stimulation can’t hurt, especially in something Erik sees as a purely submissive gesture; he doubts, too, in the pettiest of ways, that that’s something Frank would have given him.

“All right,” Erik says, but he doesn’t let Charles go to his knees just yet; he pulls him over to the bed again first, still holding onto Charles’ cock, only letting go when he goes to climb up onto the mattress, pulling the sheets back and settling there leant against the headboard. Charles waits until Erik is comfortable and then climbs up after him, kneeling between Erik’s thighs and placing his hands on them to press them further apart. Erik’s cock is nestled between them, big even when it’s flaccid. Charles’ mouth waters.

His physical, animal self, at least, has no problem with having sex with Erik.

He gets down on his belly on the bed and loops his arms over Erik’s thighs, bracing his hands on Erik’s hipbones to either side -- hiding those bruises under his own hands, his arms, pretending they’re not there at all -- and then Charles bends his head and gently draws the head between his lips.

It’s soft in his mouth, tastes clean from the shower, and Charles sucks on it carefully, stroking the underside with the flat of his tongue and drawing it over the frenulum; it feels strange, he’s not used to having a partner who’s not at least a little aroused at this point. Above him Erik settles a hand in Charles’ hair, running light fingers along his skull, and Charles can sense him trying to relax his mind and let Charles circumvent whatever guards and defenses he has in place. That’s easier said than done, of course, but at least Charles can tell it feels good; it’ll just be a matter of making it feel good long enough to override Shaw’s training and the unconscious part of Erik that feels he needs to fight his own arousal every step of the way.

Damn, the hand in his hair is really distracting.

Charles keeps sucking, since there’s not a lot else he can do while Erik’s cock is still soft, and he brings one hand over to trace his fingertips up and down the shaft, more teasing than trying to force arousal. After a minute or so he moves his lips a little lower, taking in more, and lets his fingers move to stroke Erik’s balls, the skin very tender there, hopefully sensitive.

Erik’s thighs tremble slightly and his hands curl twin fists in the sheets beneath them, that last bastion of resistance lasting only a minute or so before Charles finally feels his cock starting to respond between his lips, twitching and slowly beginning to fill. When Charles glances up at him Erik’s cheeks are flushed, old shame and fear tangling with the new and present pleasure.

A little reassurance perhaps. _You have a lovely cock,_ Charles says silently, still working it in his mouth, hard enough now to start bobbing his head as he sucks and moaning a little around the thickening shaft. _I could stay down here all day._

Erik makes a soft noise and twists his fingers in Charles’ hair, tugging hard enough that Charles can’t help a little shiver of his own, feeling hazy. Now that Erik’s given into it, of course, things progress much more quickly, until Erik’s cock is swollen and fully-hard in Charles’ mouth and Charles’ jaw aches from stretching around it. He glances up at Erik again and draws back enough to lick at the tip, flicking his tongue over Erik’s slit.

 _Are you still okay with fucking me with this?_ he asks, and sucks hard around the fat head.

“Yes,” Erik says, and he pulls Charles off his cock, up his body until they’re close enough Erik can kiss him, keeping Charles close with both hands. The drawer in the bedside table slides open and only then does Erik take one of his hands off Charles’ skin, reaching over for lube and a strip of condoms, dropping them on the bed at their side.

Charles sucks on Erik’s lower lip and drags his fingers down Erik’s chest, rubbing the pad of his thumb hard over Erik’s nipple even as he rocks his own cock against Erik’s hip, his thigh against Erik’s crotch. “Please,” he murmurs, feeling his arousal building again from where it had been sat in his belly like a banked fire, waiting to be released. He hears Erik popping off the cap of the lube with his thumb and a few moments later Erik’s wet fingers press up between his cheeks, teasing at his hole.

“You like having things put in you?” Erik asks, though it isn’t a question, not really -- he’s thinking of the prostate massager, and the way Charles had looked when he’d asked Erik to fuck him, the way Charles arches toward the press of Erik’s fingers even now.

“I love it,” Charles says, though he feels a little embarrassed at how fervently he says it, biting his own lower lip as Erik strokes around and around his rim, the muscle fluttering under the light touch. Just the thought of having Erik inside him is an anticipation of a deeper pleasure -- loathe as Charles is to admit it, he is a bit of a size queen, and _Erik’s_ erection is … God. He wants it, even if he couldn’t admit it for the longest time, even if now that he has it he still knows he shouldn’t.

Erik smiles, and in the same moment his finger breaches the tight ring of muscle around Charles’ hole, pushing inside.

Charles forgets his reservations.

He moans, and leans forward more heavily against Erik, arching his spine to press his ass further back onto Erik’s finger. It’s been a long time since he had anyone else to do this to him, and it feels good, his cock trapped against Erik’s warm belly and Erik’s hand tucked up beneath his cheeks, sliding his finger deeper. He can hear Erik’s surprise that Charles is doing this naturally when he, Erik, was trained to perform it, to fuck himself on whatever anyone put in him like he was desperate for more of it.

“Good,” Erik says, having decided to reinforce the behavior; he twists his finger inside Charles’ hole and strokes against his channel, trying to stretch him.

Charles rolls his hips, rubbing between the two pleasures; one of his hands comes to rest on Erik’s shoulders for balance as he works himself back and forth, and after a moment he says, “If you can, it’ll feel good if you can rub your thumb along my perineum at the same time,” his other hand reaching down to line up their cocks so he can stroke the two of them together.

Erik adjusts his angle, and Charles moans again, his whole body hot now with pleasure. The ache as Erik fits a second finger in alongside the first only makes it better, Charles’ hole stretching around his knuckles and Erik’s eyes are watching his face carefully as he fucks his fingers in and out of him, like he can’t trust that Charles is truly enjoying this.

“This is how it feels to me,” Charles says, hips still rolling, and he shares the sensation with Erik, the way his ass feels throbbing and full, his whole groin tight with arousal, the heat of Erik’s body and cock dragging alongside his own as Erik’s thumb presses against his prostate from the outside. Erik shudders against him, the spike of pleasure in Charles’ body overflowing into Erik’s own, and he thrusts his cock up against Charles’ hand and groans, free hand grasping tight at Charles’ hip.

“You can take more, then,” Erik says, breathlessly, and he forces a third finger into Charles’ ass.

“Aaaah,” and Charles’ mouth falls open, his eyes screwing shut; the stretch burns but it feels good, the slight pain mingling with the pleasure of it, being so full and opened up so wide. He’s lost his rhythm; he can only gasp against Erik’s shoulder where he’s fallen forward, shivering all over and pushing down the urge to come. “Oh, fuck.”

“Don’t come,” Erik says. It’s an order. When he pulls his fingers out of Charles’ ass it’s only to push Charles over onto his back, rolling with him so Erik is sprawled atop Charles, his weight pressing Charles down into the mattress as Erik tears open one of the condom packets with his teeth.

Charles lets himself be pinned there, still shivering with arousal and watching Erik pull out the condom, reaching down to roll it onto his cock. “Do you need any advice?” he asks, anticipation making his ass clench around the empty feeling of being open and not filled, the head of Erik’s cock bumping up against his hole as Erik slicks it with another palmful of lube.

“If you’re giving it away for free,” Erik says, hitching one of Charles’ legs up over his waist.

“Just go slow at first,” Charles says, spreading wider, his breathing shallow and excited. “It’s not rocket science, so don’t overthink it.” He looks down at where Erik is holding himself between Charles’ thighs, lining himself up. “And come here and kiss me.”

Erik smiles, just slightly, and does, kissing Charles with a slow sort of dedication that almost manages to distract Charles from the way his cockhead is pushing harder against his hole, Charles’ muscles straining against it at first -- only when Erik finally breaches him he gasps against Charles’ mouth, whole body tensing over him.

The intrusion feels big, thick pressure inside of Charles’ hole which clenches and ripples around it, trying to push it back out; Charles’ hands fist against Erik’s back, but he makes himself breathe, ignoring the way he wants to pull Erik in deeper to say, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Erik manages, gripping one of Charles’ shoulders a little too tightly, his brow pressed against Charles’. “You just -- it -- it’s good, it feels good.”

Charles sighs with relief, can’t help but laugh a little, softly, stroking Erik’s back soothingly. “It’s supposed to,” he says, makes himself relax around Erik’s cock, give him more room to move. “Come on. It’s even better all the way in.”

“Greedy,” Erik says, grinning, but he pushes in all the same, until he’s buried entirely in Charles’ ass. Charles can feel the arousal and pleasure and shock all rolling off Erik’s mind in waves, flooding through the both of them. It feeds into his own, and Charles hums with pleasure, the deep feeling of being so full heavy inside of him, stretching his inner walls around Erik’s huge cock, rippling around it. It’s entirely different from being penetrated by a toy.

He can feel in Erik’s mind how hot and slick and tight Charles’ ass feels around his dick, throbbing and intense, nothing like Erik had imagined it would be -- being inside Charles is making it difficult for Erik to keep himself from coming as it is, but somehow he makes himself start to move, slowly at first -- as instructed -- rocking himself in and out of Charles’ body, working his way up to truly thrusting.

Charles tugs Erik down to kiss him again, wrapping an arm around the back of his neck, and then it’s all slick, steady motion between his legs, Erik’s cock stroking him inside and sending a slow-burning pleasure through him, his own erection caught between them leaving a slick trail on Erik’s belly and Erik’s balls slapping against Charles’ ass. After the first minute or so Erik really catches his rhythm, and then it’s perfect, the stretch and burn of it, almost trancelike as Erik fucks him, Charles rolling his hips up to meet Erik’s and thinking of nothing except the feeling of Erik inside of him, in and out, over and over.

Erik bites at Charles’ lip and Charles moans, tilts his hips up even more, then deliberately squeezes down hard.

“Fuck,” Erik chokes out, and comes all at once, his orgasm like an electric shock between their still-connected mind as his cock thrusts and pulses inside Charles’ ass, Erik’s fingers digging in hard to Charles’ skin.

“Oh!” Charles didn’t mean for that to happen; he’s taken rather by surprise, and though he tries not to be, strokes Erik’s back and clenches around him again in rhythm to milk the rest of it out of him, he can’t deny being a little disappointed. It’s unfair; Erik is a teenager and not used to coming, it’s no wonder he doesn’t have much stamina, and five minutes is probably, if memory serves, rather good for Erik’s age. But Charles was enjoying himself, and it’s a bit of a slap in the face reminding him of just how big the age gap is. Charles hasn’t had a problem with premature ejaculation -- in himself or his partners -- for, God, _years_.

“Sorry,” Erik says as soon as he’s verbal again, his cheeks gone pink when he lifts his head up to meet Charles’ gaze. “I -- I didn’t mean to do that, I’ll be better next time.”

“It’s okay,” Charles says, banishing the disappointment so it won’t show in his tone, and smiling up at him, stretching his arms up over his head and trying for nonchalant, though his cock and ass are both throbbing for more. “You can just get the massager out of its box and I’ll finish that way.”

“You shouldn’t have to rely on a toy,” Erik says, pushing himself up a little more with one hand braced on the bed next to Charles’ shoulder, but he’s already used his power to pull the toy in question out of its box by its metal innards, his attention turning briefly away from Charles and to the massager as he turns it slowly in midair, examining it. His softening cock has slid out of Charles’ hole but Erik doesn’t seem to have noticed, the parts of his mind that Charles is reading all caught up in the mental blueprint he’s built of the toy through his sense of its mechanics.

“I’m not relying on it,” Charles says, sitting up on his elbows, legs still spread. “Erik, it’s _good_ that you came, I wanted you to. We don’t have to come at the same time for it to be good sex.” He feels guilty just saying it, like this is a perfectly innocuous conversation to be having with his sixteen-year-old, telling him he’ll get better at fucking his adult guardian in the ass. “Besides, you’ll build up stamina with practice. It’s normal.”

Erik looks at him, now holding Charles’ giant prostate massager by its base, and says, “You can give me the lecture _after_ you’ve gotten off.” He shucks off the condom on his dick with one hand and then reaches for the lube, passing both toy and bottle to Charles with the added instruction, “Slick it up as much as you need.”

The order makes Charles’ traitorous cock twitch, and he raises the bottle to squirt the lube over the massager, letting it run down the sides before he puts the bottle down and rubs the slick over the sleek plastic, until it’s glossy and glistening from tip to base. “It’s really nothing to be ashamed of,” he says, looking up at Erik, who is sat between his legs, watching. “I don’t mind, and it happens to every man. My first time I came almost as soon as I got in.” Of course, that was a good twelve years ago ...

“What did I _just_ say?” Erik says, and he reaches to start stroking Charles’ cock, very obviously trying not to think about it at all anymore in the hope that Charles will forget the fact that Erik sees this as a failure on his part, that he hasn’t held up his end of things -- that his one job was to please Charles, and he couldn’t even manage that. “Let me take that,” he says, reaching for the massager and pinning Charles’ hand that had been holding it out of the way as Erik starts to push the toy into Charles’ stretched hole.

Charles moans loudly at being penetrated again, can’t help it, his ass clenching and working around the toy as it slides into him on the slick left by Erik’s cock; it’s incredibly big inside him, and he arches, presses himself onto it, biting down hard on his lower lip. “I prefer to think that my ass was just that earthshatteringly good for you,” he says, though the weight of the massager inside him is utterly distracting.

“Shut up, Charles,” Erik says lightly, and before Charles can think about whether he needs to say anything more Erik turns the motor on and the massager starts to vibrate.

“Hnng,” Charles gasps through his teeth, the heat of his prior arousal gathering inside of him. It feels so good, and when Erik pulls it out a little and pushes it back in Charles tugs on his trapped hand, trying to free it, before reaching with his other hand for Erik’s wrist on the base of the toy.

“What?” Erik says, and the massager clicks up to the next level, vibrating harder in Charles’ ass, pressing down against his prostate.

“I just,” Charles is panting, “just wanted to touch you,” and he can feel Erik’s wrist tense for the moment before he starts fucking Charles with the toy, moving it in and out of his body in a mirror of his own cock beforehand, the toy rubbing against Charles from the inside and sending shockwaves through him, the stimulation almost too much.

Erik presses it in again and jams it up against Charles’ prostate once more, hard, and Charles comes with a loud moan, his cock jerking and spurting wet streaks up his own chest as everything goes quiet for a moment, subsumed in the pleasure of orgasm. When it passes he’s flopped languid on his back, the toy still buzzing away inside him, and he looks up at Erik sitting over him and says, “Come here and kiss me again.”

Erik does, leaving the massager in Charles’ ass for now -- though he does turn it off -- kissing Charles the way he must know Charles likes, his fingertips feeling unnaturally hot against Charles’ skin as they glide up his chest. It’s good, riding through the afterglow kissing Erik, thinking about nothing but how nice he feels right now, not worrying about anything.

And then Charles must touch Erik somewhere he’s bruised, because Erik flinches, and Charles flinches back, the kiss breaking as he looks down at the bruise on Erik’s hip under his fingertips.

“Sorry,” Charles says, and moves his hand up and away from it.

Erik shifts, though, reaching down between Charles’ legs to gently slide the massager out of his hole and letting it drift in midair, safe from mussing up the sheets. “I’ll go clean this,” he says, and Charles lets him go, his heart rate slowing as he wonders if this will ever -- if it should ever -- just be easy, without being seeded with so many landmines. It’s difficult not to wallow in shame and jealousy both at once, for touching Erik and for someone else touching Erik, when a small and sordid part of Charles just wants Erik to be all his, and damn the consequences.

When Erik comes back he puts the toy back in its box and settles on the bed next to Charles, leaning back against the headboard with his long legs crossed at the ankles, a metal something -- Charles can’t quite tell what it is, or where it came from -- orbiting over his left hand.

“I know you say it doesn’t matter, but I mean it -- I’m sorry I couldn’t last long enough,” Erik says after a while -- his voice almost surprising, as up until now his thoughts had been mired in the kind of blurry ruminative cycle that in Charles’ experience doesn’t usually lend itself to focused conversation. “I’ll try harder next time, or you can just fuck me. You won’t change your mind about us, will you?”

Erik is looking over at him, eyes like green sea-glass, unreadable if it weren’t for Charles’ power; despite the way Charles feels uncertain about his decision, still unable to be sure he’s made the right choice, he reaches up anyway and touches Erik’s face, then shuffles backwards so he can sit up against the headboard.

“It’s not like that, Erik. I decided to do this, I’m not going to just give up because you had an orgasm. It’s hard to get someone to come from anal alone. So don’t worry about it.” He feels slick and messy on the inside, sweaty and come-spattered on the outside, and he really would like to get up and go clean up, but he suspects Erik would interpret it as a tacit rejection, so he stays where he is. “It’s not a transaction.”

Erik gives him a small, plastered-on smile and leans over to kiss the corner of Charles’ mouth. “Of course not,” he says, and lifts his hand to lace his fingers through Charles’ hair, down toward the sensitive nape of his neck, and though Charles knows it for the distraction it is -- Erik’s mind is practically shouting it -- it still feels nice.

“You’re not … I don’t want you to perform for me,” he says, leaning into Erik’s hand. “There are no standards for you to live up to. I’m not marking you out of ten. I just want you to be happy.”

“I know,” Erik says, and this time Charles can tell he’s telling the truth, even if for Erik so much of his self-worth has always been built around one thing: being good at sex. Nothing more. He softens against Charles, slightly, his hand coming to slide along the skin of Charles’ stomach, and Charles lets it go, for now, since with this as with so many other things the only way he’s ever going to win Erik over is to show him that he means it instead of telling him so.

“Do you want me to stay here tonight?” Erik asks after a while.

For a moment Charles wants to say, _you’ve slept here every other night,_ but instead he says, “Only if you want to, you don’t have to,” wondering if Erik would rather have some space to himself, if he’s had enough of Charles for now.

“All right,” Erik says, apparently acquiescing, and he seems genuinely happy enough with the decision over the next hour before they go to bed. Still, the way he asked, as if trying to scope out the parameters of their agreement, makes it difficult to just be comfortable when they go to sleep, the two of them curled up together like it’s their new normal, and it takes a while for Charles to relax enough to drift off.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: references to past child abuse, discussions of recent dubcon episode


	20. Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content notes are in the note at the end! :)

_Charles_

He's awoken the next morning by the sound of a bell chiming. That on its own wouldn't be enough to really wake him up -- Charles is a deep sleeper at the best of times, and he turns his face deeper into his pillow, drifting back down to where it's dark and quiet and smells like detergent and his shampoo. Except there are hands on him now, one curling around his stomach and pressing over his navel, another one on the back of his shoulder, shaking him gently, and Charles groans, too drowsy to resist.

"It's time to get up," Erik says.

"Nnn," Charles protests, pulling away from Erik's hands and putting his face back down on his pillow. It's too dark to be awake; the world feels sleepy, which tells Charles most people in the city are still in bed. His hand clenches in the duvet and drags it higher over his shoulders.

"Come on," Erik says; there's more sway behind it this time, the order reaching in and tugging at the fringes of Charles' will. "Get up." 

Charles makes another grumbling sound, but he gets his arms under him after a few moments, pushing up from the mattress into a sitting position; it’s cold up here where Erik is sitting behind him, and grumpily Charles flops against his shoulder, burying his face in the side of Erik's neck to let Erik support his weight since that way he can be both upright and sluggish. "Why am I getting up?" he mumbles against Erik’s skin, the words smothered and almost unintelligible. He grabs blindly for the duvet and pulls it up the bed so he’s still covered from neck to toes, though he can feel it when Erik’s toes flinch at the sudden chill. "It's dark."

After a moment Erik's hand lifts up to press at the back of Charles' neck, just holding him there, his fingers light and cool on Charles' bare skin. "I’m going out to run in a few hours," he says, "and I thought -- I'd like us to have a routine together, in the mornings." There's self-doubt like a shadow in Erik's mind, but Erik's out-loud voice stays calm, confident despite it, determined to follow through. "I think it would be nice. Don't you?"

"Time is it?" Charles asks.

"Five. If you get up, I'll put coffee on downstairs."

"Nnnnng," Charles grumbles, rolling his face against Erik's shoulder. "S'twirly." He feels fuzzy, not really awake -- seven thirty is too early, and he _has_ to get up then on work days, and this isn’t even a work day. This is a vacation day. Five is ... "Why are you awake? Teenagers sleep."

"I sleep in class," Erik says, his fingers tousling the back of Charles' hair. "Come on. Out of bed. No need to sleep all day." It’s gentle, but an imperative nonetheless, one Charles isn’t awake enough to try and fight off.

"Okaaaay." Sitting up again is difficult enough, but once he’s properly upright Charles slides over towards the edge of the bed and puts his feet on the floor, which is cold. Then he sits there for a good minute, slumped over and rubbing his half-open eyes before making himself stand, the back of his hand covering a yawn that stretches his mouth wide and crumples up the rest of his face. He stays there, then, within reach of bed, trying to wake up ... he's really not at his best in the morning. He turns slowly to face Erik and asks, "What … ” yawn, “ ... routine?"

Erik is still right where he was on the bed, dressed just in a thin t-shirt and his boxers, hair still mussed from the pillow; he’s smiling tentatively at Charles, his mind all fond amusement and nerves over imposing this new program. "Bath first,” he says. “I'll wash your hair and shave you, and then pick out something for you to wear today. Then breakfast. We can cook together, if you promise not to burn anything." Erik grins, just a little. "Coffee. Check the news. And if you aren't too tired, I'll suck your cock before I have to leave."

Charles blinks slowly, his eyes still gummy, and finally realizes he should make some response. He feels slow, like he’s moving through syrup. "Okay," he says, and looks over towards the bathroom door. "Better ... go over there." He picks up his robe from the back of the chair it's laid over and pulls it on one arm, then realizes it'll only have to come off again for the bath, so he doesn't bother with the other arm, just walks towards the bathroom with it dangling off his shoulder.

He hears Erik make a noise from behind him that's suspiciously like a laugh, but a moment later the mattress creaks as Erik gets up and follows him into the bathroom, flicking on the fluorescent overhead light. 

"You like it warm, don't you?" Erik says as he turns the knob on the tub and reaches his hand out under the faucet to test the water temperature. 

Charles sinks down to sit on the closed lid of the toilet, the porcelain cold under his thighs where his shorts have ridden up. "Yes," he says, blinking against the bright light, his eyes watering. 

He watches as Erik leans down to stopper the drain, even his drowsy eyes drawn to the shape of Erik’s thighs and ass as he bends over, the legs of his boxers riding up to show off the muscle lean from all his running; Charles is too slow to look away before Erik turns and catches him at it, smiling briefly before he heads for the sink, grabbing his toothbrush from where he's left it in the holder next to Charles' and glancing over at him with one lifted brow. "Morning breath," he says pointedly, picking up Charles' toothbrush as well and holding it out in Charles' direction, gesturing.

“Okay,” Charles says, and gets to his feet to comply.

It's soothing, in its own way, having something simple to do while Erik does the hard thinking. Charles’ mouth tastes fresh and minty, and the tang of it is waking him up a little more; he remembers with a sudden frown and a pang that he and Erik had a fight last night, that Erik had sex with Frank. It stings to think of it even though he knows they’ve argued it all out, that he and Erik hadn’t seen things the same way ... but he can't help but look down between them at the bruises on Erik's legs where Frank left his marks, dark, plum-coloured thumbprints like the grease left on fingers after eating something cheap and bad for you. 

Erik catches Charles looking in the mirror, and leans down to spit out his toothpaste, wiping his hand over his mouth as he straightens back up. "I'm going to make up for that," Erik says, rinsing his brush out under the faucet and sticking it back in Charles' holder, twisting around to face him more fully. "I want today to be a fresh start."

"Mmhmm," Charles says, putting his own brush away, the drowsy feeling being replaced with just plain tiredness, now that he's been reminded so vividly. "Erik ... this whole routine thing," he says, leaning against the sink. "We've mostly just been having sex, up until now."

He catches a whiff of confusion from Erik, quickly buried. "You said you wanted me to Dominate you outside of that."

"Yeeees," Charles says tentatively, drawing out the vowel; it's hard to admit aloud, even given the fact they've slept together every day for the past week. "But there's ... " he yawns, "different, mm, levels. Of Domination."

“I don’t know what you want, then,” Erik says, his arms crossing over his chest. “This is all I know how to do.”

“Well … I don’t know,” Charles says, and he feels rather at sea, actually, confronted with a question he hasn’t even considered an answer to. He bites the inside of his lower lip, a small, sharp pain, and shifts from foot to foot, the tiles cold under his toes. “It’s never been an issue before. Nobody could Dominate me, so it felt rather … silly.” Like a children’s television presenter, exaggerating every motion and emotion to the extreme, hammy and false.

“It doesn’t have to be full lifestyle if that’s not what you want,” Erik says, without uncrossing his arms. Though he’s trying to sound nonchalant, Charles can hear Erik thinking that he’s being remarkably progressive, entertaining other options; Erik was raised full lifestyle, and as much as he still worries he isn’t Dominant enough, that Shaw’s brainwashing has stained him submissive to his core, it’s one of the many old-fashioned things that Erik still holds to, hasn’t shed despite his new experiences since leaving Hellfire. “But how do you know you like it or not, if you don’t try it?”

A kind of unease runs through Charles then that he can tell is less to do with Erik than it is to do with his own childhood, and the memory of having no choice at all but to obey, more unwilling puppet than trained submissive. But … Erik isn’t Cain, nor Shaw, for that matter, and he has no interest in hurting Charles, or in making him unhappy. It could be … it might be good.

“All right,” he says finally, trying to sound less tentative than he feels.

“Good.” Erik smiles and steps back, returning to the bath and dipping his fingers into the water before he turns off the faucet. "Okay, then. Get in."

Charles undresses slowly, still not at full speed, and leaves his clothes in a heap on the floor; the air is cold and he prickles all over, goosepimpling, before moving swiftly over to the tub and stepping into the water. 

It laps around his calves, hot but not boiling, the heat sinking into his flesh and warming it through, and so he sinks down into it so the rest of him can warm up, kneeling first before bringing his legs around to sit with his knees in front of him, looking up at Erik. "Now what?" he asks. "No bubbles?"

"What are you, five years old?" Erik says, but when he sees the look on Charles' face he quickly recants. "I like seeing your body, that’s all." He shifts behind Charles, moving to perch himself on the back of the tub with his legs in the water on either side of Charles' body, resting both hands on Charles' shoulders. 

The water is steaming around him, and it makes Charles feel sleepy again; he settles against the porcelain, breathing in the moist air as his muscles relax. "Shall I lie back?" he asks, starting to twist to look at Erik -- but Erik's hands stop him, keeping him where he is, facing forward.

"As you are," Erik murmurs; there's a splashing sound behind Charles, and then warm water pouring over his head from Erik's cupped hands, tiny droplets slipping down Charles' cheeks and tingling down his nape. Charles shivers. Erik wets his hair slowly, but thoroughly, by hand, until it's soaked and plastered to his skull, starting to curl. Erik's hands draw back briefly and Charles hears the pop of a cap, smells the rosemary scent of his own shampoo before Erik sinks his fingers into Charles' hair, beginning to massage small circles about his crown.

Charles moans, low and quiet, the sensation rippling through him; the wetness only makes the motion of Erik's fingers easier, and the pressure and stroking feels intense, awakening pleasure under his skin that relaxes his whole body. His eyelids fall to half-mast, and he tips his head back fully into Erik's hands, lips parting.

"I can put you down," Erik offers, scratching Charles' scalp, pressing his fingers down lower, toward Charles' nape, then behind his ears. "Unless you think you'd just fall back asleep, in which case I won't."

"Asleep sounds good," Charles says drowsily, rolling against the stroking, toes curling. "Still time. Still too early."

"No, I think not," Erik says, sounding amused. "Tilt your head back and rinse your hair." 

Even though he's said he won't put Charles under, there's a breath of an order behind the words all the same, and Charles obeys, shuffling forward in the tub so he has enough space to lie back in the water and dowse himself, running his fingers through his hair to wash out the shampoo. The warmth has closed over his chest and shoulders now, and he sighs, starting to sit back up. One of Erik's hands catches the back of his head as he does, fingers combing back through the wet hair then twisting in the locks to tug at it lightly, forcing Charles to tilt his head and expose his throat, resting the crown of Charles' head partly against his inner thigh. 

"Relax," Erik says. 

Charles opens his eyes slowly, and above him he can see Erik inverted, the underside of his chin and his hand holding a can of shaving foam, a straight razor floating in front of him. "You’re shaving me?" Charles asks, without so much as a quiver of doubt -- if he trusts anyone with a metal blade not to cut him, it's Erik. “Have you ever shaved anyone before?”

"Mmhmm." Erik squirts some of the foam onto the palm of his hand and lets go of the can; it's metal as well, and stays in midair where he left it as he rubs his hands together and reaches around to lather up Charles' neck and jawline, Charles' lips tingling where Erik's thumb smooths over them. He leans forward then, rinsing his hands off in the water behind Charles, and sets warm wet hands on Charles' arms as the razor blade comes forward of its own accord to slowly shave along the delicate skin of Charles' throat. 

It feels ... Charles doesn't shiver, that would be a bad idea, but the element of controlled danger gets to him nonetheless, staring at the steam-curled ceiling while the water laps quietly at the sides of the bathtub. The blade slipping over his skin scrapes off his stubble in even stripes, untouched by either of Erik’s hands, and Charles breathes carefully, steadily, in and out, even as he flushes all over, a mild arousal making itself known -- not enough to need to do anything about, but pleasantly distracting nonetheless.

The razor keeps moving on his throat, then up toward his jaw, flicking shaving foam onto Charles' cheek at the finish of each stroke. "What are you thinking about?" Erik asks, his hands shifting on Charles' arms, moving up and down slightly. 

Easier to open his mind, to share, than to speak aloud; Charles hums and shows Erik the drifting sensation in his mind, the drowsy, trusting feeling of being in shallow subspace, letting Erik groom him. It's so good, being able to relax his control and just hand it over to someone else for a while. There are no specific thoughts, only calm.

The blade stops, and Erik reaches past Charles into the water, then smooths his wet hand on Charles' cheek, his neck, wiping off the last bits of foam and testing the closeness of his shave. "Good," Erik declares, and his hand lingers on Charles' chest, fingers tracing delicate circles on his skin. Linked with him like this, Charles can read Erik's thoughts like they were his own, detect Erik's special interest in the sensation of subspace, what it feels like to obey for real instead of how Erik experienced being a submissive. Going under pleasurably, instead of just being hammered down until you finally give up and give in.

Charles sighs, his hips shifting and sending ripples through the water. "Done?" he asks, though he's perfectly happy to stay where he is a while longer.

"Not quite," Erik says. "We still have to shave your legs, remember?"

"Legs?" Charles asks, confused, and then he frowns, tipping his head back to look up at Erik. "You didn't say anything about my legs."

"It's quite normal," Erik says, with a strong burst of surprise; Erik had expected simple submission, had assumed this was something everyone did. He takes the straight razor from midair and sets it down on the edge of the tub, going on for all outward appearances as if this hasn’t at all caught him off guard. "It's a very traditionally submissive thing to do. Very classical."

If 'traditional' means 'old-fashioned'; these days it's only something that very prissy submissives who are going to be displaying their legs tend to do, and Charles doesn't expect to be wearing shorts any time soon with snow still on the ground -- not that he has ever shaved his legs even when he is wearing shorts. "I don't really ... " he starts, then pauses, not sure how to continue. "It's not something I've ever bothered with. Nobody will see them anyway."

"I will," Erik says, lifting one shoulder. 

Charles weighs the value of arguing his case versus actual discomfort involved, and he can't come up with any real reason not to let Erik do it -- it'll itch coming back in, of course, but it makes no difference to Charles one way or the other, and if it makes Erik happy, then, well. "All right," he says dubiously, lifting his right leg out of the water and bracing his foot against the far end of the tub.

Erik smiles at him, pleased, and reaches for the shaving cream again, squirting foam into his palm. He shaves Charles' legs just as closely as he did his jaw and neck, dark hair falling down to float on the surface of the bathwater and leaving smooth fresh skin in its wake. The whole time the razor is moving Erik is massaging Charles' head and neck, his fingers rubbing and stroking through his hair and over his scalp, and Charles blisses out, eyes rolling back in his head as the pleasure of it tingles through him. 

But when Erik is done shaving his legs Charles looks down at them, clean and sleek, and they don't look like his legs any more -- they look strange, naked somehow, like Erik's peeled away a layer of Charles' defenses. The skin tingles in the cold, trying to raise the hairs to keep him warm.

"Try it for a while," Erik says, lifting his head and leaning back, his hands going still against Charles' scalp. "If you hate it this time next week, we'll let it grow back in."

"Do you like it?" Charles asks, since that's the more important thing right now -- if not, they've spent a lot of effort on something neither of them are bothered about.

There’s a long pause as Erik considers the question. It hasn’t been long that Erik’s been taking on the Dominant role, after all, and to find himself not as the sub but as the one who enjoys subby things must be disconcerting. "I do," Erik says at last, his hands dropping to squeeze Charles' shoulders before he moves, stepping out of the tub onto the bathroom rug and heading toward the linen closet. The metal cap tugs loose from the drain, presumably under Erik's power, as he returns, holding out one of Charles' own fluffy white towels.

Charles gets to his feet, water running off him in splashes and rivulets down his skin, and takes the towel, wiping it over his hair first, then down his neck, before wrapping it around his shoulders and rubbing it down his back. He only steps out of the bath once he's sure most of the excess water has dripped from his body, and then he stands on the rug and works his way further down. 

“Do you enjoy being Dominant?” he asks before he’s even really thought of the question, the words just popping into his head unannounced, like a message from another mind; he glances up at Erik as he dries off his thighs, then down his calves and to his feet, where he bends to tuck the towel between his toes and soak up the water caught there. “I mean, do you like taking a Dominant role? Being the one who shaves, rather than the one who is shaved.”

“I … don’t know,” Erik says, and his gaze flickers away from Charles’, off toward the sink. “Sometimes I think I --” but he doesn’t finish the sentence, and when he looks back at Charles again he smiles, holding out a hand to take the towel from Charles and hang it back up to dry. “I like having sex with you. You used to be so … untouchable, but I can pull you apart so easily now.”

Charles can't quite keep himself from wincing, because of course Erik likes that aspect of it. Charles was probably the only element of his life he couldn't control, before, using either sex or his mutation. Now Erik has broken down that barrier, too, and can play Charles like a flute. Erik doesn't consciously mean it like that, of course -- he doesn’t see the problem with that statement at all, in fact, and Charles makes himself smile back, albeit less brightly.

“Sex and Domination aren’t the same thing, though,” he says, staying put on the rug, since if they’re going to try lifestyle Dominance and submission he needs to learn the rules before he starts playing his own tune. “You can enjoy sex without enjoying the rest of it, or vice versa.”

“I didn’t like sex at all when I was submissive,” Erik says, and then his voice firms, becomes more like an order; Charles can sense his mind shutting this topic of conversation aside, like blocking it off behind a steel wall. “We don’t have to talk about this. Come on, you need to get dressed. I won’t keep Suzanne waiting forever.”

Something to pick up another time, then, Charles thinks, and decides to let it go for now. “All right,” he says, and heads back into the darkened bedroom, where Erik chooses his clothes for the day, then follows him downstairs to be instructed on how to make breakfast, which Charles eats kneeling on a cushion by Erik’s feet and wondering if it’s nothing to do with Erik being happiest fulfilling Charles’ wishes at all, but if there’s something else there, too, another something-else to which Charles is being willfully blind.

*

_Erik_

Quite aside from Charles’ apparent instinctive need to be a therapist twenty-four hours a day, Erik thinks their experiment with the new routine this morning went as well as could be expected. He’s always a little surprised when Charles goes along with anything he says, that Erik’s capable of Dominating anyone at all; maybe he shouldn’t be, considering how long he’s known he’s 7D and how much he tries to practice, but he can’t escape the lingering sense of fraudulence. Like that one day, eventually, Charles will remember that this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, that the world will remember Erik’s an imposter, not really a Dom at all, and everything will end.

Every time Charles questions him it makes Erik wonder if he’s doing something wrong, not being Dominant enough -- as much as he thinks lifestyle could be good for them, he does privately worry he won’t be able to sustain it. That the effort he has to put into remembering to be Dominant, and _how_ to be Dominant, every minute of every day will eventually be too much and he’ll burn himself out.

Maybe that’s an inevitability, but for now at least Charles seems content enough with Erik’s best effort -- and that has to be enough for Erik, too.

Erik’s in the kitchen, pouring himself a second cup of coffee when his phone buzzes on the countertop, the screen lighting up with an incoming call: Frank.

Erik lifts his drink to his lips, blowing lightly across the dark, steamy surface, and reaches for the phone, tapping the screen to answer the call. “Hey,” he says, tucking the phone in against his ear. 

“Hey,” Frank says on the other end of the line, his Texan accent thick even on the one word. Erik can hear chatter in the background; a coffee shop, maybe, somewhere public. “How are you doing? Enjoying the vacation?”

“So far,” Erik says. He takes a testing sip of his coffee; it’s still hot enough to burn his tongue, scalding the back of his throat on the way down. He sets the mug back on the counter and leans back against the island, looking out the window behind the sink at the thick, clumpy snow falling down, blanketing the streets and buildings as far as he can see -- which isn’t very far, in this weather. “How’s yours?”

“Same old same old. Plenty of studying to do, and hardly anyone around to play distraction in between sessions. If you’re looking for company with Petra and co. off in the Andes or wherever the fuck they are, I could do with some myself.”

“Sure,” Erik says automatically, even as he immediately wonders what it is Frank wants, if it’s what Erik suspects he wants, how Erik can get around just giving it to him if that’s the case. He straightens up again, off the island; the edge of the counter had been digging into his hips. He could bring Frank here -- no danger then, not with Charles around; Erik’s never met a Dom so voyeuristic they were into having someone sit inside their mind while they fucked. “Do you want to come over? I was just about to make lunch.”

“I was thinking more like you could come here,” Frank says, as Charles comes into the kitchen, giving Erik a curious look. He can tell the moment that Charles realizes who he’s talking to because Charles’ lips press together, and then he just … goes to the cupboard and takes out a mug, starts making tea, as if everything is normal. Given that normally Charles ducks in and out at rapid pace when he’s watching one of his crappy shows, he’s clearly lingering to overhear the call.

“I don’t know,” Erik says, looking away from Charles, reaching for his coffee and drinking it even though it’s still too hot, just to have something to do with his hands and mouth. There’s tension in his back now, between his shoulder blades, making his neck feel awkward and stiff. “I was planning to spend time with Charles today, while he has off work.” It’s vague, avoiding the real point, but Erik doesn’t know how to tell Frank the real reason he can’t go -- and he knows if he goes, if he’s there and Frank’s there and expecting something from Erik, Erik … Erik isn’t sure he won’t just give it to him.

A shifting sound on the other end of the phone. “Well, all right,” Frank says, and at least he doesn’t sound disappointed. “Up to you, offer stands if you change your mind. Anyway, I was also wondering if you wanted to go to a lecture with me next week. Braden-Newell is in New York giving a talk on The New Mutant and I have two tickets. One of them’s yours if you want it.”

“I’m in,” Erik says, relaxing now that they seem to have moved on, away from the grenade Frank probably never even realized was there. “I’m thinking of applying to Berkeley just because he’s on faculty there; he’s supposed to be an incredible speaker.”

He steals a glance back at Charles, now; Charles is watching the kettle boil, but Erik can feel his attention like a touch on his skin, a false nonchalance. No doubt Charles disapproves of the reasoning, even though he’s always said that Erik will go away to college one day. Braden-Newell is one of the foremost thinkers in the mutant separatist movement, recognized worldwide as an expert on the legitimate side of the law. Erik has heard Charles pooh-pooh his theories on more than one occasion, but you don’t get tenured at a top-tier school if you don’t know what you’re about.

“He’s a fantastic speaker,” Frank says, enthusiastic. “I heard him once when he came to Dallas, he changed my life. Totally blew my mind.”

“Have you read his memoir? The one he wrote after he got out of prison.” They’d jailed him for peaceful protesting, in fact; it was a huge scandal a few years back, Erik remembers Shaw raving about it. Even the integrationists didn’t approve, and in the end Braden-Newell’s case was appealed to the Supreme Court where they ruled his incarceration inappropriate and unconstitutional. But by that point he’d spent two years in Sing-Sing wearing suppressors; too little too fucking late, and Braden-Newell advocates a very different kind of protest now. One, he says in his speeches and books, the humans will be forced to hear.

“Fine bloody academic, trying to stir up a bloodthirsty mob,” Charles mutters, not very quietly, as he pours the hot water over his tea bag. “Ivory bloody tower my ass.”

 _No one asked you_ , Erik thinks in Charles’ direction, but he can’t help feeling fond all the same, weirdly affectionate toward Charles’ obvious eavesdropping, and yes, even his absolutely deranged opinions on mutant issues.

“He had such a massive direction change, it was jarring at first but you really get the sense that he knows what he’s talking about,” Frank says, oblivious to the byplay. “This isn’t some guy writing about theory, he’s living it and fighting it every day. It’s powerful stuff.”

“Powerful rubbish spouted by a big-headed ponce,” Charles mutters.

“Hold on,” Erik tells Frank, and he tilts the phone away from his mouth slightly, frowning at Charles. “Have something to contribute to the conversation?” he says. “I can put it on speaker.”

“No,” Charles says, and picks up his mug. “I’ve just met the man, is all, and my opinion of him was only reduced by the experience,” and he almost stalks out of the kitchen, his thoughts nearly audible.

“My apologies,” Erik says once he’s adjusted the phone back to its usual position, turning about to watch Charles plop himself back down into his armchair in the den -- angrily, if such a thing were even possible. “Charles has very strong opinions about this sort of thing.”

“I take it he’s not a fan?” Frank asks, and he sounds amused. “Professor Braden-Newell was very civil when I met him. He certainly didn’t come across as the spawn of Satan. Just passionate about his subject and enthusiastic to talk about it with like minds.”

“Well, Charles can rub people the wrong way,” Erik says, albeit slowly; he can’t help but be curious now, of course, about what would give Charles such a strong reaction, but knowing Charles, just disagreeing deeply enough would probably do it. 

“Maybe he’d change his mind on further exposure,” Frank says. “Except -- damn, all the tickets are sold out. There’s no chance to get him one in time.”

“It’s not a problem,” Erik says, taking another swallow of his coffee, now cooled down enough to drink. “Once Charles’ mind is made up, that’s it. There’s no arguing with him.”

 _I wouldn’t spit on that man if he were on fire,_ Charles says from the other room, clearly paying very little attention even now to his marathon of old _The Bachelor_ episodes. _Let alone go to listen to his lecture. You’re better off not exposed to his brand of dolled-up bullshit._

“Never mind,” Frank says, his voice coming out over Charles’ mental one, easygoing as always; it’d be confusing if Erik weren’t used to it. “Means I get to spend more time hanging out with you and less time being interrogated as to my intentions by your parental unit.”

Erik flinches, something in him recoiling instinctively at the thought of Charles-as-father, especially Charles as the kind of father that would be curating Erik’s friends. “Text me the information about when and where the lecture is being held; I’ll make sure I’m there.” He starts walking into the den, bringing his coffee with him. Charles is staring at the television screen like he’s still actually watching as Erik settles down on the sofa, balancing his cup on one bent knee.

“All right. Let me know about coming over, okay? Mi dorm room es tu dorm room, etcetera. Escape the Christmas madness and have some festivities with me instead.”

“I’ll bring you cold latkes after Chanukah starts,” Erik says, not sure if he really means it. “We’ll feast like kings. Very fat kings, sure, but ….”

“This is all muscle, I’ll have you know,” Frank says, laughing, then rings off, sending through a text seconds later with the lecture information in it. He must have had it already prepared.

Charles is still looking at the TV, but Erik can feel his attention, and so he says, perhaps not as tactfully as he could have, “Do you really hate Braden-Newell? Or do you just hate Frank?”

“I don’t hate Frank,” Charles says almost reflexively, and he finally looks at Erik, a small frown on his face. “I can hardly say I hate someone I’ve never met, even given the whole … situation … yesterday, and I can’t pretend to be thrilled that he’s got such extreme views as well. He hurt you, Erik, you’re wearing his bruises.”

“You make it sound like he beat me,” Erik says, dropping his phone onto the sofa next to his leg; if Charles is going to rely on telepathic information to make determinations about other people’s character, he at least could put in the effort to be accurate about it.

“Well, I don’t like it.” Charles’ mouth twists, and after a moment he continues, “As for Braden-Newell, the man is an ass, and a dangerously misguided one at that. A very unpleasant person. Thank God he’s a sub and didn’t make a pass at me, I’d have punched him if he had.”

“Do you like any separatist thinkers at all, then? Or am I just special?”

Charles rolls his eyes and makes a ‘hmph’ing sound. “There are some separatists out there you can have a civilized debate with, but most of them are not the sort of people I could remotely begin to like. As for you, you’re a work in progress.” He gives Erik a small smile, one then hidden behind the rim of Charles’ teacup.

“Just because we disagree with you doesn’t make us extremists,” Erik says, disapproving. “That’s the kind of rhetoric that gets mutants -- like Braden-Newell -- thrown in jail just for speaking up. If separatism is extremism, that makes it all too easy to say we’re all just like the Hellfire Club, dangerous terrorists that need to be put down for the greater good.”

“There’s a difference between feeling that separatism is the best course of action and agreeing with Braden-Newell that violence is the answer to the issues between mutants and non-mutants,” Charles says, half-turning towards Erik now and putting his tea down on the table in front of them. “I call that an extreme view, because it’s not just a point of argument, it causes direct harm to others, many of whom have nothing to do with the conflict at hand. I haven’t met Frank so I can’t say how sincere he is in that, but I know that you have held that view in the past, and I suspect still hold it now. And that I cannot and never will agree with.”

“All right,” Erik says. “Then in fairness, the integrationist view is equally extreme. Extreme passivity.” His lips turn up at the corners and he leans back against the couch, resting one arm along the backs of the cushions, legs crossed toward Charles. “Now, aren’t we two extremist peas in a pod?”

Charles shakes his head. “I hardly think you can call active campaigning passivity. Just because integrationists disdain violence as a method doesn’t mean they’re not doing things to better the lives of the mutant community. I accept that I’m not going to change your mind overnight, but at least concede that.”

Erik’s brows lift. “Integrationists disdain violence, do they? What do you call the massacre of two separatist leaders _and their families_ by integrationism-aligned groups in that church in Georgia, then? Summer fun?”

“Outright murder, and direct contravention of integrationist beliefs,” Charles says, his expression pulling tight. “Those butchers don’t believe in integrationism, it’s just an excuse to do as they please. They’re as different from true integrationists as can possibly be, and worse than many separatists, too.” 

“No _true_ Scotsman, eh?” 

Charles gives Erik a sour look, and reaches back over for his tea to take a sip, pausing before he says, “Look. I’m not going to tell you not to go to the lecture, or not to spend time with Frank. You’re old enough to make up your own mind. Just think about what Braden-Newell _says_ rather than how well he says it, all right? Like many good public speakers he’s a very persuasive man in person, but when you read the transcripts things tend to be a lot clearer. And … well. That’s it, really.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Erik says, a bit dryly -- does Charles think he doesn’t do that already? -- but he lets the topic drop, finishing off his mug of coffee in silence before he moves his hand down from the back of the sofa to pat the seat cushion next to him. “Come and sit here.”

“I thought you were a separatist,” Charles says, but he shifts over anyway, settling in right next to Erik. “There. Are we done arguing now?”

“You’re the one who started it,” Erik points out, but he curls his arm around Charles’ shoulders and tugs him in against his side all the same, rubbing his hand slowly up and down Charles’ arm, tilting his cheek against the crown of Charles’ head.

“You’d mutter too, if you’d met that old windbag,” Charles says, tucking his feet up onto the couch behind him. A pause. “Frank’s not going to hurt you if you say no to him, is he?” He sounds concerned and tired at the same time, a thread of anxiety in his aura over asking the question that Erik guesses is due to the awkwardness of raising the topic. They’ve avoided talking about it ever since their fight yesterday, but clearly it’s preying on Charles’ mind, given that Erik is seeing Frank again.

“No,” Erik says quickly, not wanting to let Charles ruminate on that idea very long. “Not at all. One of his mutations is enhanced physical performance, including strength. It wasn’t intentional. He’s very ….” Erik struggles to think of a way to describe Frank to Charles. When they first met, Erik assumed Frank was a bit on the slow side, mentally, due to the long drawn-out way he has of speaking and his general amiability; he’s slow to answer questions, slow to pose them, speaking only when he has something to say. It had taken a while for Erik to realize he wasn’t stupid at all -- he’s smart, as smart as Erik and Charles, he just takes his time about it. “He’s placid,” Erik finishes at last. “Very practical. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him upset about anything.” Probably because Frank’s strong enough to know that if anyone _did_ really piss him off, he could tear them apart piece by piece. Shaw had a similar, eerily calm affect, but his was only skin-deep; it never took much to get to the ‘piece by piece’ part.

“Hmm. Okay. I trust you,” Charles says, and leaves it at that, though Erik wonders if he can really be so sanguine about it. Nobody ever is on TV, or in movies, when their partner is spending time with an ex-lover. Of course, people on TV don’t have telepathy, can’t know for sure their partner’s intentions … and one way or another, Erik will find a way to avoid putting himself back in that situation again, even if he has no idea how yet.

*

Erik has the days surrounding Christmas and Chanukah off from school, and Charles has taken off work; for the most part they don't even leave the apartment, and it’s a lot like it used to be when Erik had just moved in, like living in a little bubble world of two people, just now with added sex. Erik transfers the greater majority of his toiletries to Charles' bathroom, and slowly his clothes begin to migrate as well, even though he still thinks of his old room as 'his' room, and this one as 'Charles'.' He comes to learn that Charles snores, very lightly, in his sleep, but he can be knocked out of it if kicked hard enough, and that Charles is nigh-on impossible to wake in the mornings any earlier than five AM at the very earliest -- and that only on the most threadbare sufferance. Even if Erik wakes him promising sex, Charles just tends to fall back asleep right after.

Charles insists upon putting up a Christmas tree, which means they spend Christmas day proper opening presents, Charles taking photos with an ancient Polaroid camera and Erik threatening every fifteen minutes to ruin all the film if Charles takes one more photo of him, curling up on the sofa under a pile of blankets to watch Charles’ favorite Christmas movies, eating leftover latkes and sufganiyot instead of making real food. Erik complains about the pictures and about Charles’ cold feet, but secretly he loves it like this -- just the two of them, wrapped up in each other, no one else to usurp Charles’ attention or affection. 

In the evening they’ll be at Hank’s and Raven’s for dinner, so Erik orders Charles upstairs around five and they fuck in Charles’ huge, luxurious bed, exploring the various uses of the steel dildo Erik bought for Charles. They’re already running a little late by the time Charles finally looks at his phone and informs him that they need to get ready to go to Raven's and Hank's for dinner.

Erik's exhausted already, strung-out feeling, with a deep muscular ache settling in his limbs, but he lets Charles drag them out of bed anyway when Charles really pushes the issue; Charles makes them both take showers to wash off the scent of each other as much as possible, lest Hank's acute sense of smell rat them out. Just in case, Erik pats on a bit of aftershave, as well; if he smells like sex, that's fine, but he can't be smelling like _Charles_ and sex.

"Come on," he says when he's done, coming to stand behind Charles at the sink and trapping him there with his hands on either side of him, blocking him in with his body. "You yourself said we're running late."

“I just want to be sure I have the right face on,” Charles says, his eyes flicking over to meet Erik’s in the mirror. "Raven is like a bloodhound -- she’s very intuitive, and she reads what’s going on behind expressions and body language much more fluently than most people. It’s part of her mutation -- it helps her mimicry. I’m a little concerned that she’ll notice something is off."

“You can stay on top of that,” Erik says, and he taps Charles’ temple with two fingers before he pulls back, straightening up. “Unless you think it’d be better not to go? I can call and make our excuses….”

“No, no, it’s fine,” and Charles twists, extricating himself from between Erik and the sink, giving him a small, awkward smile. “I’m just worrying, it’ll probably be fine. We should leave before Raven calls asking where the hell we are.”

Erik lets Charles lead them downstairs, pulling out his phone to reply to one of Madelyne’s texts from Aspen, one including a photo of her and Petra making faces at the camera on the ski lift. He tries not to let Charles’ paranoia get to him, but he can’t help thinking that if Charles is worried about it, it must be a real concern. He finds himself second-guessing everything: the distance between his body and Charles’, how long he should look Charles in the eye.

"Wait a moment," Erik says while they’re pulling on their coats and scarves -- he reaches out and catches Charles' wrist before he can start pulling his gloves on, says, "I haven't given you your present yet." 

Charles lifts an eyebrow at him and Erik reaches into his coat pocket, finding the glimmer of silver that leaps up into his grasp, the metal slower to please than iron but just as swayed by his power. 

"It's not what it looks like," Erik says wryly, sliding the ring onto Charles' middle finger. It's hammered sterling silver, made from some of what's left of the raw metals Charles gave him for Chanukah two years ago. 

"It's not a ring?" Charles asks, but his eyes are focused on the cool metal settling against his knuckle, and he sounds off-center, caught off guard.

Erik rubs the pad of his thumb against the ring where it's settled at the base of Charles' finger, loving the way he can sense the metal caught between the press of his skin and Charles'. "It is _a_ ring, yes, but not the kind that comes with strings and conditions and a collar attached.” He glances back to Charles’ face, assessing, suddenly not sure if this was a good idea -- if he’s pushed too far too quickly, if he should have chosen something else. “I made it myself. I just want to have something metal on you, and I want you to have something to remind you of me when I'm not there."

Charles still looks rather bemused but he smiles, anyway, leaning in and rising on his tiptoes to press a kiss to Erik's forehead. "Then thank you," he says, sinking back down to his true height. "Even if I do suspect it's also some sort of tracking device."

"I can't possibly comment on that outrageous accusation," Erik says, grinning, and opens the door for them, letting Charles out first into the hall to where he's already brought the elevator up to wait for them. 

It's freezing cold outside, and snowing -- the kind of weather that makes Erik’s nose go numb almost immediately. It's been a particularly cold winter already this year, but Erik likes it that way. Most of the Hellfire safehouses were in cold climates; he's grown up accustomed to the frigid temperatures. He's not sure what he'd do with himself if they'd been arrested in the LA safehouse. He always hated California heat.

They have to take the subway since the car service they normally use is shut down for the holiday, and that means walking to the entrance along the slippery sidewalks, not yet salted for this newest snowfall. It gives them an excuse to link arms, helping each other stay upright as they walk, Charles’ gloved fingers digging into Erik’s forearm.

"Raven is an indifferent chef, so we'd better hope Hank did most of the cooking," Charles says, the bag with the presents hanging from his other arm. "Raven loves Christmas, though. So expect her to have gone all-out again this year."

"Did you ever call her back?" Erik says, glancing sidelong at Charles as they swipe their way through the turnstiles onto the subway platform. "After I asked her to come over that Saturday." She left rather unceremoniously, after all, and without having gotten many answers from Erik to any of her questions. Knowing her, she won’t have let that lie this long.

Charles gives him a surprised look. "I had lunch with her the following Tuesday. Didn't I say?"

"No. Frankly, I just assumed you forgot about it because you were busy with ... other things.” Like fucking Erik, for one. “What did she say?"

"She asked me what was going on, I said we were having some trouble with our dynamic now that you're getting so Dominant," Charles says, stepping up to the line to wait for the train; he never looks for them, he always just knows when they're coming -- probably hears the passengers. "I told her we would handle it, it was just taking some getting used to."

"I'll try to tone it down tonight while she's around," Erik says as the train comes into sight around the corner, forced to raise his voice a little to be heard over the sound of squealing wheels on steel. He has a sudden urge to look around them at the people on the platform, and in the car once they board. What if someone recognizes them on sight, just looks at the two of them, together, and guesses -- 

Knowing it’s paranoid doesn’t make it better, not when being found out would mean the end of their lives as they’ve become accustomed to living them.

They get seats near the door, pressed together between the bulk of other people's bodies and dozens of shopping bags; not that Erik minds. He spreads his legs a little wider, enough that it seems almost accidental how his knee presses against Charles', their shoes touching. He catches Charles' eye and smiles at him, feels something warm catch beneath his breastbone, throbbing there.

Charles seems amused, and he says, silently, _Maybe your hormones are catching up with you._

Erik snorts, but he doesn’t move his leg, either, keeps that solid point of contact between them the whole ride downtown. Charles has taken out his phone and is reading a book on the kindle app; the metal all around them and the soft hum of other people’s voices is enough to lull Erik into a half-doze, tempting him to lean into Charles’ shoulder and close his eyes.

The train pulls into their station after twenty minutes; Charles and Erik filter slowly off the car with everyone else, back up the stairs and out onto the busy street. Now that they’re here, Erik can’t help sharing Charles’ concerns, a slow itch starting beneath his ribs and spreading out toward his limbs, a quiet worry that he’ll misspeak, or misstep, and it’ll all be over.

Outside the door to Raven and Hank's apartment Erik pauses, not quite able to bring himself to knock.

"Just act the way you always have," Charles says quietly -- a little nervously, actually, shit -- squeezing Erik's shoulder with one hand. "I'm the only telepath here. Don't trick yourself into doing what you're trying not to do by trying so hard that you end up coming full circle."

"Right," Erik says, and before he can muster up the nerves to do it Charles reaches out and knocks for both of them.

He hears voices right before the door opens, and Hank peers out at them both, his furry face breaking out into a smile. "Hi," he says, stepping aside to let them in and pushing up his glasses with the tip of one claw. "Come in, come in. Merry Christmas!"

"Merry Christmas, Hank," Charles says warmly, though he doesn't move, and Erik realizes that he's giving Erik precedence -- letting Erik go first, like a proper sub. It would warm Erik inside, if he wasn't so worried that it would be read the wrong way. Read worse, though, if he hesitates -- so he just goes, makes himself open his mouth to say "Merry Christmas," as he goes in.

He meets Raven's yellow gaze almost as soon as he's set foot in the door, like his eyes are drawn by magnetism to her. Or maybe he's just subconsciously desperate to get the worst part over with. "Hello, Raven."

"Hi, Erik, Charles," Raven says, looking at both of them in turn; but a moment later she's coming straight over to wrap her arms around Charles' neck, dangling off him and getting a hug in return. "Merry Christmas! Isn't it great? Snow on Christmas?"

"It's lovely if you're the hostess and don't have to travel," Charles says dryly, and he steps forward with Raven still hanging from his shoulders so he can spin her around without hitting anyone, laughing as her feet lift off the floor and her skirt flaps around her thighs. Charles sounds breathless as he says, "Merry Christmas, Raven! Did you cook?"

"Hell no," Raven says, "that's what Hank's for!" And pecks Charles on the lips, grinning at him.

Hank exchanges a look with Erik -- it's well known that the two of them are the only ones who ever do any decent cooking in their respective households. "I made rugelach," Erik offers, gesturing toward Charles' bag of presents, still hanging off his elbow as he spins Raven. "If it isn't getting shaken to crumbs right about now." 

It's hard not to feel faintly disapproving of Charles showing that kind of ... poor restraint ... around another Domme, even if Erik knows she's his sister, knows it's not his place to approve or disapprove. But considering Charles can't so much as touch Erik's hand right now without it potentially being taken the wrong (right) way, he thinks he has license to be a bit peeved.

 _I'm hardly going to run off with my sister,_ Charles says, though he does slow to a stop, letting Raven down and smiling at her. "We can't have crumbs for dessert," he says, extending his arm towards Erik to let him take the bag.

"Bitteschön," Erik says, and it comes out cooler than he means it to; he smiles to offset it, finding the box of cookies in the bag and carrying them over into the kitchen, loathe though he is to leave Charles -- it's not that he couldn't be apart from him this past week, just that it's different, somehow, when it's not their own territory. Now that he’s caught him again he intends to keep him.

When he comes back Raven has all three of them sat on the couch, looking like she's arguing with Charles; after a moment though they all laugh, and Charles looks over at Erik and beckons him over. "Do you think we should do presents before or after dinner?" he asks. "Raven is making a persuasive case for before, whereas I feel after is probably best, while we're all well-fed and pleased with ourselves, but as the youngest I think you should get the deciding vote."

It’s like being slapped, unexpected and paternalistic; heat flushes Erik’s cheeks automatically, even if he knows it’s just Charles overcompensating. Normal for them doesn’t usually entail Charles talking to Erik like he's still fourteen and fresh out of Hellfire. His arms lift up and cross over his chest, hiding the way his fingers are curling into fists. Erik tries to wear a pleasant expression despite the fact that Charles will almost certainly catch the difference, possibly Raven as well.

"Dinner first, I think," Erik says, and he looks at a spot on the wall above Charles’ head instead of at his face, trying to look less like how he feels -- like he wants to vanish into the carpet. He delves his power into the ring on Charles' middle finger, warmed now by the touch of Charles' skin, but it doesn’t do much to ground him.

 _Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,_ Charles thinks, his mental voice sincere, even if his expression doesn’t reflect the apology -- in fact he shoots Raven a victorious look and says, “See? Erik agrees with me. So you'll just have to wait."

"Traitor," Raven says, and sticks her tongue out at Erik, who just grins at her and tilts his head in the direction of the kitchen, says, "Missed lunch. I'm starving."

"I'll go check on dinner then," Hank gets immediately to his feet; for such a large man he moves quietly, until he reaches the linoleum in the kitchen and his claws click across it and out of sight.

With Hank gone Raven's expression quiets a little, and she looks between the two of them, tilting her head slightly, inquisitive. "So. How are things?" she asks, turning to face Erik. "I've heard from Charles, of course, but you were the one who called me, so."

Erik works hard to keep his expression immutable, locked in the same even, neutral expression he had a moment ago. "They're fine," he says, though since Charles is right here, he's not sure what she'd expect him to say, if they weren't. "Better." His heart is beating quickly in his chest, like the second hand of a clock.

"You guys are still a bit weird, though," she says. Her eyes are moving back and forth again, this time settling on Charles. "Look, maybe it's none of my business, but I just want everything to be good again, since you guys always got along so well before."

"It's really okay, Raven," Charles says, and smiles at her, reaching out to squeeze her arm. "We're sorting it out, don't worry. I'm a trained professional, remember?"

"Professional pain in my ass," Raven says, but she smiles back, and seems relieved -- although it’s hard to tell, with her mutation; she’s as good at hiding as she is at changing her appearance, and Erik doesn’t trust adults whose faces he can’t read.

"You're not the one who has to live with him." Erik is trying to remember how he’d act if everything was exactly how it was this time last year; he meets Charles' gaze across the space between them and lifts an eyebrow, says, "Pain in the ass is putting it mildly."

Charles snorts. "I didn’t realize you two hanging out without me was going to mean you ganging up on me,” he says, in a voice Erik thinks is supposed to sound put-upon, but is instead a little bit strained, Charles trying too hard for levity. “I’m just a poor little old sub, the big bad baby Doms should be nicer to me in my dotage.”

“Oh, grow a pair,” Raven says, lifting one foot and nudging Charles hard in the thigh with her toes. “You’re hardly a helpless little waif, Charles. Fight back like you usually do -- unfairly and with snide remarks nobody can unpack for days until suddenly they realize you insulted their great-grandfather.”

“That was Mother, not me,” Charles says. His words are a little strangled now, not funny at all.

“Charles,” Erik says, and he doesn’t mean it to come out like an order, but the edge is there either way, too late to take it back; Raven's looking at him, her eyes narrowed, “why don’t we go to the kitchen and see if Hank needs help?”

But it’s too late for that, too -- there’s a rustle behind them as Hank comes back into the room, and says, cheerfully, "Everything's ready. Come on, let's eat."

Raven and Hank don't have a dining room, so they're all just going to sit at the kitchen table, informal, rubbing elbows as they reach for the dishes; Charles gets up after a moment to help Hank with fetching and serving, his emotional aura still feeling rather stiff, like a cloud of tension surrounding him. He comes back with a saucepan full of mashed potatoes and stands at Erik's side, spoon in hand. "Tell me when."

Erik lifts two fingers after Charles has ladled a cupful onto his plate, and tries not to look as uncomfortable as he feels, certain it must be visible to everyone the way Charles is projecting his emotions across their bond into Erik’s mind and making him feel taut all over. _Are you all right?_ he pushes gently in Charles’ direction, taking the spoon for the green bean casserole when Hank offers it and serving himself, keeping his eyes on his plate.

 _I’m fine,_ Charles says, moving around to serve Raven next; Erik can see his hands moving in staccato bursts, sharp and short, even out of his peripheral vision. _I don’t like being compared to our mother, is all. Raven knows that._

“That’s plenty, thanks,” Raven says, and when Erik lifts his head he sees her reaching up to squeeze Charles’ elbow with a brief flash of a smile.

Erik helps himself to a slice of bread and tries to be non-obvious about the way he’s tracking Charles’ progress around the table, the ring he made him burning beacon-like in his metal-sense. He tries to keep his surface thoughts all warm, happy things, in case Charles reads him; maybe they’ll rub off, like a contact high.

“Chicken?” he asks, offering Raven the platter of white meat.

“Thank you,” she says, taking it, and smiling at Erik now, cooler than when she smiled at Charles. She quickly forks some over onto her plate, then onto Hank’s. “So, Erik -- how’s school?”

“Fine,” he says, because that’s the only answer adults ever want in response to that question, looking back over at Charles as Charles sits down in the chair opposite him, their gazes meeting across the platter spread before Erik turns his eyes away and pretends to be very interested in cutting up his meat. 

Raven is looking at them. Her brows are slightly drawn, as if she's focusing; and Charles says suddenly, "Raven, how's the new production coming along?"

“Fine,” Raven says, passing Hank the cranberry sauce with a clatter of glass on wood as she sets it on the tabletop. “We’re in prep right now, but we should be going to real rehearsals soon. You should come when it’s open, I’ll get you family tickets again. Which, speaking of … I actually got a card from Kurt this year.”

At that Charles looks up, his expression one of startlement, like he’s been caught in the headlights of an approaching car, and Erik flinches internally, only keeping his expression still through force of will. “What?” Charles asks, a piece of chicken caught on the tines of his fork, halfway between plate and mouth. “How did he have your address?”

“I don’t know, maybe he got it from the lawyers,” Raven says, shrugging. “It didn’t say much, just that it had been too long and he hoped I and my sub Hannah were well. Kurt always was one for the fine details.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met him,” Hank says.

“Good,” Charles says, and he puts down his chicken. “Kurt is a horrible person. You’re better off never being on the same block as him.”

“Charles … ”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, looking down at his plate, and picks up his fork again. “Well, you always were his favorite, after Cain. He didn’t bother sending one to me.”

The tension is thick as molasses here, and Erik can’t tell if it’s his own anxiety or Charles’ projection prickling at the nape of his neck. He snaps the salt and pepper shakers up from the table with his power and catches one from midair, holding it out toward Raven. “Salt?”

“Thanks,” she says, taking it and shaking it briefly over her food. “Anyway. Never mind Kurt. I just thought I’d mention it, since it means he’s taking an interest again -- something to keep an eye out for. How’s work, Charles?”

“Fine,” Charles says, and puts a potato in his mouth.

Erik isn’t that hungry anymore, too focused now on Charles to think about food, but he keeps eating as if on autopilot anyway, cut-chew-swallow-repeat, and steals a glance at Hank to see if he thinks this whole conversation is as awkward as Erik does. Apparently so: Hank is carefully spooning more butter onto his already-loaded potatoes. 

“Charles is volunteering a lot with the Mutant Centers,” Erik decides to say, since apparently no one else will. 

“Oh?” Hank asks, jumping on the new topic of conversation. “I got a lot from my local Center growing up. My advisor helped me apply for colleges.”

“They always need more help,” Charles says, a little warmer; Erik can feel his gratitude like a warm sensation in his mind. “I’m happy to volunteer; I run a youth support group once a week, and do some pro bono work with difficult cases. It’s rewarding.”

“It’s over by the university, right? Attached to the mutant studies building.”

“That’s right,” Charles says, glancing over at Erik with a small smile. “I’ve been trying to get Erik to come along one day and see what we do, but he’s adamant he doesn’t want to hear more of my lecturing when he doesn’t have to.”

“Charles is hell-bent on turning me integrationist by college,” Erik says, more at ease now that they’ve settled into a safe-seeming topic, leaning back against his chair and returning Charles’ smile. “Telling him it’s a lost cause doesn’t seem to make a difference.”

Raven snorts. “No politics at the dinner table,” she says in a voice that’s not her own -- it’s an older woman, posh, commanding, and Erik is startled enough by it but he can see from the corner of his eye the way Charles stiffens again, knuckles turning white around the handles of his cutlery.

“Clearly you have Mother on the brain today,” Charles grinds out, as if it’s paining him to say something civil.

Right, Erik thinks, enough of this. “Charles, will you please get me another glass of water?” he asks. It’s polite enough, but he infuses it with a strong enough order that Charles will find it difficult to disobey, hoping it might do its part in calming Charles down as well as getting him away from the table for a bit.

"Get it yourself," Raven says a little sharply, raising her eyebrows at him. "Charles is still eating, honestly."

“It’s fine, Raven,” Charles says, getting to his feet and reaching for Erik’s glass. “Do you want ice?”

“For fuck’s sake, Charles, sit down, you’re not his sub and this is not Westchester, you’re nobody’s dogsbody,” Raven snaps, and Charles turns and gives her such a glare that Erik can feel the chill of it shivering down his spine.

“Shut up,” Charles says, his voice fierce, “before I make you. For Heaven’s sake, Raven, stop bringing up Mother, and Kurt, and Cain, all the time when we’re trying to have a nice family dinner and you know it upsets me. I’m getting Erik a glass of water, he didn’t ask me to bow and scrape to him and I’m not your sub to order around either.”

Erik takes in a shallow breath, and keeps his sight on Charles -- no matter how long it’s been, he’s never not-uneasy around angry Dominants, even if it’s just someone like Raven, and even if he could out-Dom her if he tried. “With ice,” he says, keeping very still, his voice steady and in-control, as if Raven hadn’t spoken at all. “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem,” Charles says, and goes over to the refrigerator to run the icemaker, then the water cooler, filling the silence with the sound of clinking and splashing.

When he comes back Charles takes his seat first, then hands Erik his water, his face almost too calm. “I’m sorry, Erik, Hank, for this,” he says, looking at both of them in turn. “I know Christmas is traditionally the time for family arguments, but I didn’t mean to shout in front of you. Now, can we please just get along and eat this delicious meal Hank's prepared? Raven, I'm old enough to make up my own mind and while I love you for caring you're being a real bitch today.”

Erik can’t stop himself in time; his brows lift, and he tries to hide the expression by turning his face down, looking at his food and the pudding on his fork. It’s unlike Charles to curse at all, and he doesn’t think he’s heard Charles ever call anyone that word, especially not Raven. He’s still too-aware of Raven’s temperament, the stiffness of her posture out of the corner of his eye, and the horrible part of him that still isn’t sure if he ought to run or kneel. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, rather stiltedly. “I suppose I’ve just had … how things were when we were children … on the brain, lately. Forgive me if I worry about you getting Dominated regularly by a teenager and whether you’re okay. We both know that’s a difficult thing for you.”

“I’m an adult,” Charles says firmly, though his voice is a little softer now, more human. “If it was a problem I would say so. Erik isn’t Cain, Raven, he’s not abusing me. Now can we please pretend we like each other for the rest of Christmas? We can get into fisticuffs tomorrow, it’s Boxing Day after all.”

Erik’s lost his appetite entirely, now -- instead of hungry he just feels nauseated, like he’s been drinking seawater, the implications of what Raven just said rolling over him like a horrible tide. He puts down his fork as quietly as he can, not wanting to cause a scene, and makes himself stay where he is even though he wants nothing more than to get up, go to the bathroom, and put two fingers down his throat.

At least Raven finally looks contrite, and she sighs, putting down her own fork and getting up from her chair to go around to Charles, draping herself over his shoulders and hugging him from behind. “Okay,” she says, propping her chin on his collarbone. “I’m sorry. I just love you a lot and I’m being an asshole about it. Friends?”

“Friends,” Charles says, reaching up to knock his knuckles against her jaw in a mock-punch. “Now come on, let’s be civilized and eat dessert in a friendly manner, okay? We can have a nice conversation and all overstuff ourselves in the traditional mode.” He glances over at Erik, and says, silently, _Are you okay? I’m sorry you had to sit through that. She gets like this sometimes._

Erik doesn’t know how to answer that, so he just forces a thin smile and says, “I’ll take the dishes,” pushing back his chair and going around to collect the empty plates, stacking them together and avoiding looking anyone in the eye, balancing the cutlery atop the ceramic with his power to carry the lot into the kitchen. He can hear the silence he leaves behind him in the dining room like it’s a cacophony, though he wouldn’t say it’s worse than before.

He manages to keep his hands steady as he stacks the plates up in the sink to be washed later on, and then it’s almost easy to just keep moving, robotically, getting the dessert -- his own rugelach, and a chocolate cake made presumably by Hank -- and bringing it out in turn, setting it down on the table with the dessert plates.

“It survived the spinning, then,” Charles says, smiling at Erik, though it’s still a little awkward; there’s a feeling like Charles is reaching out, holding mental hands with Erik, and Erik lets him, even though that’s at odds with the part of him that wants to telepathically wall himself off with all the tricks he learned from Emma, put himself somewhere no one can see.

“Chocolate-cherry-walnut,” Erik says, pointing to one half of the rugelach plate, “and poppy seed,” the other. 

“It all looks great,” Raven says with apparent cheerfulness, leaning forward. “I want some of everything.”

“Here,” Charles says, and starts serving again, handing out cake like nothing ever happened.

The conversation over dessert is almost aggressively bland, Raven talking about the crazy director of her play and Hank about his classes, and it’s an excuse for Erik to let himself sink further back into his own mind, deeper away from whatever might be showing on the paper-mask of his face, even if drawing away makes him feel sicker still. By the time everyone is finished Erik is over-warm, feverish-feeling, but at least Charles seems calm. Outwardly, anyway.

"Let's go do presents now, the washing up can wait until later,” Raven says, already getting out of her seat with a bounce in her step; the joviality of it feels crass and caricatured now to Erik, startlingly vulgar.

“I’m going to use the bathroom first,” Erik says and he gets up from the table, following the narrow hall away from the gathering to where he can close himself up in a tiny room and finally take in a deep, shaky breath, like the first gasp of air after diving to the ocean floor. 

It’s not that he hadn’t thought of it, on some level -- whether he would be embracing something he doesn’t want to be by calling himself a Dom, whether the apple has fallen near to the tree. He just hadn’t thought Raven (or anyone) would put it quite so candidly. Cain may not have raped Charles, but Erik knows enough about what happened with him and Charles to think the details don’t make that much difference. Is that how he seems to outsiders? Like he’s using his Will to force Charles into something he doesn’t want to do? That isn’t … Erik is doing this _for_ Charles, because this is what Charles wants, it has nothing to do with Erik’s desires at all --

He gets down on the floor, giving in at least to one urge, even if it just makes him hate himself more, until he isn’t sure what’s worse: being too Dominant, or too submissive.

But he can’t stay locked away in the bathroom forever; he lifts the lid of the toilet and gets it over with, vomiting up dinner into the basin. He feels less nauseated with each heave and strangely ... _better_ after, like he’s purged up the thick, tarry nastiness Shaw left inside him -- only he knows that’s a ruse, that it’s still there, rotting inside him, and the longer he keeps pretending it isn’t the worse it’s going to get.

He rinses his mouth out in the sink and rubs some of Raven’s toothpaste on his gums for good measure, flicking water off his fingers and going back out to the festivities, and paradoxically he’s steadier now that he’s been emptied and hollowed-out inside.

They’re all sitting in the living room, Raven talking on about something Erik doesn’t care about; Charles is sitting in the middle of the couch, and there’s an empty space beside him, on the other side from Raven and Hank, who’s sitting on the floor at her feet. Charles looks around at him and gestures for Erik to come and sit beside him, patting the couch once with his hand.

“Thanks,” Erik says, sitting down and carefully keeping himself from giving into what has somehow become reflex: the urge to reach over and squeeze Charles’ thigh midway between knee and hip. “What did I miss?”

“Not much,” Charles says. “Just the whining of someone who is apparently not grown-up enough to wait to fetch the presents.”

“What can I say,” Raven says. “I like gifts. So sue me. But now Erik is here … ” She grins and gets to her feet, then pads quickly over to the tree to dig through the bag of presents Erik and Charles brought to sort them into the appropriate piles.

"Raven used to upset the housekeeper terribly by always insisting on disarranging the gifts," Charles says. "She'd always have them arranged by wrapping paper color to be the most attractive, and Raven insisted on putting them by person."

"How else are you going to know how many presents you got?" Raven asks, pulling out a couple more packages from under the the boughs.

It's descriptive of a world completely foreign to Erik, who never celebrated the human holidays before coming to live with Charles; presents were received only in response to very, very good behavior, like pulling off a particularly difficult mission, or surviving an especially brutal beating. And the books Azazel brought him, of course; Erik tried to figure out the pattern behind those, but never could. Sometimes, like now, he still feels a sense of the surreal, half-expecting to wake up and find it all has been a dream, that he's imagined some whole other world completely unlike his reality.

"Here," Raven says, finally finished, and starts handing out piles, handing each over in turn before going back to her own and starting on the wrapping paper.

Hank and Raven have given Erik a surprisingly complicated metal puzzle, one that he's still idly working on with his power when Hank suggests watching a movie, something Charles and Raven both agree to a little too quickly -- perhaps wanting to avoid more awkward conversations.

Hank turns down the lights and they all sit together looking at the screen in the dark, Charles’ side warm against Erik’s, leaning into him a little, and it’s hard not to want to give into that and tilt onto his side to rest his head in Charles’ lap like he used to. Hard not to slide his arm around Charles’ waist, pressed between his body and the back of the couch, warm and secure. He keeps his hands to himself, though, clasped safely together in his lap.

Eventually though it’s time to go, and Raven and Hank hover awkwardly as Charles and Erik pull back on their coats and scarves, bundling up to return to the frigid winter outdoors. 

"Thank you for dinner," Erik says to Hank when they shake hands, Hank's furry grip a little too strong. "It was delicious."

Hank smiles, and Raven ... Erik's not sure about Raven, because she's smiling too, but there's something about her posture that says she's acting. No big surprise, really.

"I'll see you for lunch sometime this week," Charles says, though, leaning in and kissing Raven's cheek.

"Later," Erik says, and they go back out into the hall, heading past the other apartments toward the elevator; Erik doesn't truly relax until he feels the apartment door swing shut behind them, the metal latch moving as Hank locks it back in place. "Well," he says to Charles once they're safely in the elevator. "That could have gone better."

Charles winces, and shrugs, his scarf already tugged up high around his chin. "I’m sorry," he says, turning to Erik with a pained expression. “That was pretty awful. It’s not normally like that.”

Erik makes a sharp noise. "She acted like she thinks I'm beating you and keeping you locked up in a dungeon somewhere,” he says, and tries not to wince -- or let that nausea come creeping back up the back of his throat again, thin and bilious.

"She was overreacting to something she’s been brooding about," Charles says, stepping out into the lobby ahead of Erik when the elevator reaches the ground floor. "But things like asking me to fetch things for you in her house, when we're clearly not practicing, aren't family Dom/sub things. They're couple things. That's what really put her back up, though it’s no excuse at all for how rude she was. She thinks you don't know where those lines are."

"Well, clearly I don't," Erik points out, looping his scarf around his neck and following Charles across the marble floor toward the door to the street. "There's never been much of a difference for us, has there?"

"Not really," Charles admits, and the cold bites as soon as they get outside, Charles immediately burying the lower half of his face in the wool. "But Erik, really, how are you -- are you okay? I know you were pretty upset earlier, I felt you being sick." He sounds worried, reaching over with one hand to squeeze Erik’s.

“Maybe I’m not cut out for this,” Erik says. “Dominance.”

“Don’t be silly, you’re doing great,” Charles says, looking at Erik and squeezing harder. “Don’t let Raven worry you, you’re already doing far better than I ever thought you would when you came to live with me. It’s not something to fret about unless you feel bad doing it.”

That isn’t really what Erik had meant, but Charles has touched on something else Erik had been worrying about, as well -- whether he is even managing to give Charles what Charles wants properly, or if he just …. Erik doesn’t know how to tell, with submissives. He doesn’t have the same experience.

“All right,” he says, and shifts their grasps so he can lock his fingers together with Charles’, their hand-hold feeling thick and awkward with both them wearing gloves. He lets it drop from there, or maybe Charles is the one letting it drop -- either way, Erik’s relieved when they shift topics to something else, something mundane that lets Erik focus again on the heat of Charles’ skin against his ring and the way Charles’ temples crinkle up when he smiles, tiny comforts that carry them all the way home.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: references to past child abuse, emetophobia (brief)


	21. Twenty-One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw are in note at the end of the chapter.

_Erik_

Braden-Newell is speaking on the Barnard College campus, so Erik catches a cab out on Park and takes it uptown to meet Frank on the sidewalk outside the lecture hall. He spots Frank before he even gets out of the car; it’s hard to miss him, considering he stands a good head or two above the rest of the crowd. It must give Frank a good vantage, too, because he sees Erik almost immediately -- or maybe, Erik thinks, Frank senses him with that radar-like power of his.

“Hey,” Frank says, half-shouting, when Erik gets close enough. “Busy night, huh? Lots of people have come, great turnout!”

“I can see that,” Erik says, glancing around them. The group gathered here is obviously mostly -- if not entirely -- mutant, many with vibrant physical mutations, each more fascinating than the last, and he can feel the tinny buzz in his mind that he recognises a moment later as low-level telepathy, multiple other minds flicking against his along with everyone else’s. He goes to stand up on the steps near Frank, both their exhales frosting in clouds in the air between them. “See anyone you know?”

“A few,” Frank says casually, waving to a group of Dommes clustered together by the doors. “A lot of the MLA members are here tonight, and I know some of ‘em from protests and marches. I want to get good seats though, save the chinwagging for after so we don’t up sitting in the nosebleeds.”

Erik can feel it when people start recognizing him, too, as they walk towards the building, glances that linger long enough to become outright stares, the way conversation has a tendency to go silent as people walk past him then start up again as thick whispers as soon as they’re past. He pretends not to notice, for Frank’s sake.

“After you,” Erik says, catching one of the doors after a couple of mutants with tails and holding it open for Frank to go in first. They find seats near the middle of the auditorium, not ideal, but once Braden-Newell comes to the podium Erik is too captivated by his words to care. 

Professor Eli Braden-Newell is in his late thirties, possibly forties, although it’s hard to tell; his skin is scaled, deep green, and builds to reptilian ridges on his cheekbones and crown. There’s no debating about whether or not he’d ever pass for human in prison -- and that’s what Braden-Newell spends the evening discussing: the fate of mutants who end up in the criminal justice system, either as defendants and inmates as Braden-Newell himself had been, or as witnesses. He draws on statistics provided by the US Department of Justice to make his points, no arguing sources there, and leads the audience through the narrative of mutant-identity-as-evidence, the rising tensions between mutant citizens and the humans who enforce the law, how easy it is -- once a mutant is caught in the system -- for that mutant to be destroyed by it. 

He presents the findings of a number of empirical studies done in his lab to demonstrate the trickle-down effect of anti-mutant prejudice on everything from jury composition to sentencing to life in prison, and when he’s finally left the stage after a brief Q&A and Erik and Frank trail the rest of the crowd out onto the street. Erik finds the anxious buzz in the atmosphere around them is contagious; it’s like Braden-Newell has lit coals in the chests of every mutant here. Erik hasn’t seen one man single-handedly inspire so many people toward mutant separatist activism since … since Shaw, and even Shaw didn’t have Braden-Newell’s range of influence.

“Well, I think I know why Charles hates him,” Erik tells Frank as they step out into the frigid night air. “Charles hates anyone who manages to be more persuasive than he is, especially if they don’t get to cheat using telepathy.”

Frank grins and nudges Erik with his elbow. “Well, what’s the damn point of being a telepath if you don’t get to use it? Hell, I’d use it to get out of trouble and into good graces all the time if I was a telepath.”

“I’m sure you would,” Erik says, and Frank’s expression draws a small smirk out of Erik as well -- Erik has no delusions about how he’d use his power if he had access to omega-class telepathy, and he very much doubts Charles would approve. 

A blue-haired man stops beside them, staring at Erik, then after a moment says, “Thanks man, you keep fighting the power,” awkward, self-conscious, before vanishing into the crowd. Erik stares after him before remembering Frank and glancing sidelong up at him; Frank is chuckling, and he outright laughs when a tall, skinny black woman comes up to Erik with a deliberate stride and says, “You don’t know me, but I’m glad to see you here. A lot of us had decided you’d taken the easy way out of the cause, moving in with Dr Xavier and going so low-key. You should come to more events, we’re doing a sit-in next week at the courthouse,” and she hands Erik a leaflet, printed on cheap paper, with the details for a protest and demanding that mutants throw off their shackles of lethargy and join the cause.

She’s still standing there, looking at Erik for a response, so he says, “Thanks,” and folds the leaflet over twice, slipping it into his back pocket. “Maybe we should …” Erik gestures toward the corner of the building, glancing up at Frank once the woman is gone. “Before we get stuck here on the front steps. Do you think Braden-Newell’s left yet?” Erik was hoping to have a few words with him, if possible -- he doubts he’ll have another chance like this anytime soon.

“Maybe not,” Frank says, twisting to look over in that direction. “We should see if we can catch him. You never know, he might remember me enough to get you a hello. You can mooch off my fame and notoriety.”

Erik grins, and grasps at Frank’s muscled arm, tugging him toward the ramp that leads down away from the building, the both of them vaulting over the steel railing down at the end -- Erik using more of his magnetism than his upper-body strength -- to land in the grass on the other side. It’s impossible to really predict how keynote speakers will leave large functions like these, but Hellfire had it down to as much of a science as it would ever get. Erik and Frank are strolling down the sidewalk toward the east side of the building, near the faculty offices, when the door opens on the ground floor and Braden-Newell plus entourage (which includes, Erik notes almost immediately -- reflex -- four security guards with a total of three tasers, one gun). He elbows Frank to get his attention, says, wryly, “Try not to look too much like a terrorist as we approach. Don’t want to spook them.”

“Between the two of us? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred people peg me either as a bouncer or a hitman,” Frank says, gesturing at himself, “and you’re the spokesperson for mutant extremism, you’re just going to have to bounce the bullets.” He keeps walking, though, and even as the guards tense up Frank calls, loud and calm, “Professor Braden-Newell, sir!”

The professor pauses in his conversation with a short sub beside him and looks over at Frank, one scaly brow rising. “Yes?” Then his expression changes, subtly, something that Erik doesn’t know how to read on so different a face. “Ah -- Caleb, isn’t it?”

“It’s Frank, sir. It’s good to meet you again; I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me.” Frank sounds more deferential than Erik has ever heard him, his twang died right down. “I apologize for interrupting. My friend Erik here wanted a chance to meet you.”

“Erik Lehnsherr,” Erik says, stepping forward and holding out his hand toward Braden-Newell, holding his slanted copper gaze. “I very much enjoyed your talk.”

“Mr Lehnsherr, is it,” Braden-Newell says, taking Erik’s hand, and this time both his brows rise, his eyes widening just a little. “Well then, I’m very pleased to make the acquaintance of so well-known a victim of just what I was talking about. Well, well, well.” It’s barely a moment before he says, abruptly, “Do you have time for a brief chat? I would love to discuss your experiences as such a high-profile case, you’d be doing me a favor really. We can go get some coffee, on me, of course.”

Erik nods and says, “It would be an honor, sir.” He swallows down the sudden, bizarre urge to tell Braden-Newell he owns all three of his books; that’s the kind of embarrassing verbal diarrhea Erik sees other people have with celebrities that he’s keen to personally avoid. He glances out toward the nearest street, 110th, to figure out just where they are in comparison to everything else, and says, “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the area, but there are a few cafés along Morningside Park. And being New York, of course, there’s a Starbucks every block.”

“Which is the most mutant-friendly?” Braden-Newell asks. “I make a point of never just going by convenience. That way lies apathy, and the reinforcement of pre-existing social codes.”

“Oh,” Erik says, a little taken aback; he has to think about it for a second, this being more Frank’s territory than Erik’s own. “Café Amrita, probably. It’s a few blocks that way.” He points past Frank in the general direction of Central Park. 

“They host a mutant arts night once a month,” Frank adds, and Braden-Newell nods, his mouth parting into a smile. “Then let’s go. Sunita, let the driver know I will be a little late.”

They start walking toward the café, trailed by one of the security guards -- the one with the gun, Erik can’t help noticing, just as he can’t help noticing the way passerby openly stare at Braden-Newell with fascination and disgust, as if he were an exhibit at the local zoo. If Braden-Newell notices, he doesn’t show it; or perhaps he’s just used to it, after so long. 

After they reach the café and order their drinks they settle down at a small table near the window. It’s cramped, especially since Erik has to sit next to Frank, who is broad-shouldered enough that it’s impossible not to end up pressed alongside him, the heat of his body palpable through Erik’s sweater, an unavoidable reminder that he still hasn’t figured out how he’ll get out of it, if Frank ever --

“So, Mr Lehnsherr,” Braden-Newell says, that strong, strident voice of his crisp on the pronunciation of Erik’s surname, the German inflection textbook perfect. “What did you think of my talk tonight? I always welcome feedback.”

"It was excellent," Erik says honestly and immediately, carefully restraining himself from shifting forward too obviously. He keeps his hands clutched around his coffee mug instead, pressing the tip of his thumb against the ceramic. "You predicted the typical integrationist rebuttals and dismissed them before they could -- and then backed your claims with empirical data and their own statistics. I particularly enjoyed what you said about how sentencing diverges for mutants vs humans, and what that can represent in practice. How can they justify 'cruel and unusual punishment' against mutant convicts as being necessary to restrain their mutations? We know the impact of solitary confinement on the mind -- it only makes things worse, and leads to greater rates of recidivism. Prison and institutionalization become a revolving door."

“I think it’s very important to note that there are many humans, including those in power, who would much rather mutants with the most ‘dangerous’ mutations were in permanent incarceration,” Braden-Newell says, taking a sip of his coffee. “It’s an easy solution to an issue they won’t admit exists, that they would rather lock all of us away -- except those of us they can parade around like show ponies and poster boys, with powers that are useful to them. It’s very much in their best interests to continue the cycle so they have an excuse to do it legally.”

“I know police look at me differently because of my size,” Frank says, leaning forward on his elbows; the table judders for a moment, then stabilizes. “That’s bad enough, but if I give myself away as a mutant too then they’re most likely to follow me rather than let me go, no matter if I’ve done anything or not.”

“Exactly. You’re a potential danger no matter whether or not you use your power. Better to lock you up before you can do the damage rather than after, that’s the view in the halls of power. It’s very pragmatic, I’ll give them that.”

It's a pattern Erik has been well aware of his entire life, one Hellfire actively fought against, even if their methods left something to be desired. "If I hadn't been better use as witness and dancing monkey, I would have been in prison with the rest of my colleagues," Erik says grimly. "Never mind that I was just thirteen years old. The privileged can't stand seeing the oppressed given too much power."

Braden-Newell nods. “It’s a method of control used on other groups as well. Battered subs get longer sentences for killing abusive partners than abusive Doms get for killing their subs for any reason. African-Americans are shot by police officers for minor infractions because they are considered more ‘dangerous’ than Whites who commit identical crimes. And with mutants that’s heightened due to the fear factor. It’s why we have to talk about it and make more people aware of the injustice, and fight back against it -- sitting quietly and asking nicely has never solved any civil rights issue. Of course, that leads to efforts to silence our voices. But that only means that we have to shout louder.”

It’s so validating, to be able to talk about this with people who understand, who listen to what Erik has to say about his own experiences and don’t try to talk over him, or belittle what his experiences have made him believe, the way Charles does. It makes him feel … satisfied, in a warm and deep way, and Erik feels his lips curve up into a smile. 

“That’s why the movement needs people like you,” Erik tells Braden-Newell. “Your degrees and position give you legitimacy, and you have the perfect platform from which to tell people how it really is -- and have them actually _listen_ to you.” It’s something Erik’s deeply envious of; as much as the media might love to comment on everything Erik does, anything he says about mutants would likely be taken as evidence of brainwashing, not of his own careful thought, not opinions he’s refined over the years since leaving Hellfire. Of course, Charles won’t let him speak to the media at all, says he’s a minor and refuses to give his permission as Erik’s guardian.

“Some of the people,” Braden-Newell says, with a wry twist of his mouth. “Those who find the taste of my rhetoric too bitter listen to your foster father and people like him instead, feeding from the sweeter fountain. How is Dr Xavier? It’s been a long time since we last argued.”

“He’s well,” Erik says, and he leans back in his seat, crossing his legs under the table. It means his foot brushes Frank’s calf, and he shifts again, but there’s not much room to maneuver away without being rude. “He doesn’t seem to like you very much. Why is that?”

“Well, we don’t exactly see eye to eye.”

Frank snorts. “You could say that. Don’t get me wrong, I respect Dr Xavier, he’s a smart guy, but you’re like apples and giraffes. You’re realistic, and he’s, well, idealistic I guess. Delusional probably. It’s all very well saying we should all be friends but I subscribe to a more active activism.”

A pause, then, “Yes,” Braden-Newell says, and lizard-like inner membranous eyelids flicker down, then up again over his irises. “You do rather. I’m assuming you both, hmm, sing from the same hymn sheet?”

Erik is about to say yes, of course, when Frank answers, “Nah, Erik and I share views but he’s not in the MLA. He has enough on his plate with high school. There’s time to bring him into the fold later once he’s out from under the thumb.”

Erik glances sidelong at Frank, setting his coffee down on the table. “Charles can’t stop me participating in the MLA,” he says. “I’d like to get more involved. What you’re doing is far more important than anything they give me at Trinity.”

Frank just shrugs and then suddenly grins, nudging Erik with his elbow. “Aww, don’t you need to get _Charles_ to sign your permission slip? He can bring some cupcakes for the bake sale.”

“You’re an asshole,” Erik says, trying to sound light, but he can feel heat rising up in his cheeks all the same and he looks away before Frank can get the wrong -- or the right -- impression. Professor Braden-Newell sets his empty coffee cup down on the table, and it’s impossible to tell if he’s amused or irritated, his face entirely neutral.

“I know I said I have questions for you, but I’m scheduled to fly back tonight, so I most likely have to leave if I’m to catch my flight,” he says, reaching into his breast pocket and bringing out a card, which he extends across the table to Erik. “Damnably short turnaround after these things, I always think I have more time than I do. My email address is on there -- send me an email, I’d like to ask you about your experiences for my research, if that’s all right with you.”

“Of course,” Erik says, “anything I can do to help,” and he takes the card, putting on a smile to cover up the way his stomach has dropped; he’s remembered, abruptly, that there’s another trial session coming up in a few months. Another day facing Shaw, and having his life exposed to the entire world. There will certainly be plenty of material for Braden-Newell to work with. “Thank you for meeting with us.”

“Think nothing of it, it was my pleasure,” Braden-Newell says, getting to his feet; his entourage follows suit in a cacophony of chairs pushing back across tile, like the end of class. “It was good to meet you, Erik, and Frank, nice to see you again. Please give my respects to your respective mentors.”

“Of course, Professor,” Frank says, and he looks almost as if he wants to tug his forelock, nodding a little instead. “Safe trip.”

“Thank you,” and then he’s gone, the entire group of them swept out of the coffee shop on the wave of Braden-Newell’s energy, seemingly bottomless, leaving the shop feeling almost drained.

“Well,” Erik says into the resulting silence, and then finds there are no further words waiting on the tip of his tongue, like Braden-Newell stole them all. He looks at Frank, and lifts his coffee, taking a sip to cover his muteness, then finally says: “So, who’s this mentor of yours?”

Frank grins at Erik, and shrugs. “Just MLA people in general I guess. He’s certainly something, isn’t he?” He settles back into his own seat without shuffling over, so that he’s still sat just as close to Erik as before, casual and comfortable in his own skin. “I want to be him when I grow up.”

“Should have gone to Berkeley,” Erik says, smiling again. “Why didn’t you? If you’re into mutant activism, that’s really the place to be.”

Frank shrugs. “Maybe I wanted to see snow once in a blue moon. Anyway, everyone knows New York has the biggest mutant population in the US, I wanted to be part of that, to feel more normal -- everyone’s normal in New York, even Braden-Newell. Or at least more normal than he’d be in Dallas.”

Erik nods, and looks away for a moment; he hadn’t spent much thought on Frank’s past, what it might have been like for him growing up mutant in such a red city. But Frank didn’t go home for the holidays, even though Erik knows for a fact he’s Protestant. He obviously comes from money, Madelyne and the others would never have accepted him into their group if he didn’t, but that’s the extent of what Frank’s told him, and Erik knows better than to ask. 

“I should probably get home,” Erik says, pulling out his phone to check the time. “I have a doctor’s appointment early tomorrow.”

“With _Charles_?” Frank asks, emphasizing Charles’ name again and waggling his eyebrows. “Do you have to bend over and cough?”

“With my psychiatrist,” Erik says flatly, which he figures is stigmatizing enough to put an end to that line of conversation. He sets his coffee down on the table and says, “I’m not fucking Charles, you know. He’s old.” Only not that old, not really, and anyone who’s known Erik for very long knows that’s never bothered Erik before, but Erik’s banking on Frank not being _so_ very tied up in the high school gossip grapevine.

Frank rolls his eyes. “Okay, okay. I was just kidding. He’s hot, though. I would, if he wasn’t a sub.”

“You’d probably fuck anything that stood still long enough and wouldn’t let you boss it around,” Erik says with a tiny smirk and nudges Frank in the arm with his elbow -- rather more like nudging a rock than a person.

“That wall is looking mighty fine,” Frank agrees, and finishes up his coffee, setting his mug back down on the table. “Okay. Let’s go. You sure you’re not coming back to mine for a bit? It’s not that far.”

Erik takes in a shallow breath and thinks, _I can’t,_ but what comes out of his mouth is, “If you want,” and immediately he feels something inside him shrivel up and die, embarrassed with himself. It would be rude not to, though, especially considering Frank bought Erik’s ticket to the lecture and arranged for him to meet Braden-Newell. Even if Erik has to turn him down later tonight, the very least he can do is walk him back to his dorm room. There’s no harm in that, is there?

Erik turns his back to Frank to get his coat, shrugging it up over his shoulders and using it as an excuse to try to get his facial expression under control, wiping it blank and neutral. When he turns around again Frank is zipping up his body warmer, snugging it tightly to the underside of his chin.

“Let’s go then,” he says, and heads for the door. Erik trails after him, fighting internally with himself, trying to figure out in advance exactly what words he’ll say, but everything he comes up with sounds alternately too cold or too … truthful. Could he pull off pretending he’s in a fake secret relationship with some college sub? Would Frank believe him? Would Frank be likely to tell Petra, who would tell Madelyne, who would be furious with Erik for keeping it from her? It’s too risky to work.

Outside, Frank stops a few steps ahead once he’s realized Erik isn’t just next to him, waiting for Erik to catch up so they’re walking alongside each other, shoulders brushing as they navigate the post-Christmas crowds. 

“Want a smoke?” he offers, fishing a box out of his pocket along with a lighter; he turns the open end towards Erik, the butts of the cigarettes knocking around inside it, half gone.

“No,” Erik says, glancing up from the box to Frank’s face and pushing his hands into his pockets, curling his fingers into fists out of sight. “Thank you.”

Frank shrugs and puts one between his lips, raising the lighter inside a cupped hand, the flame flickers, casting weird shadows across his face in the few seconds before the cigarette catches. Erik can smell the smoke almost immediately, its sharp, stale scent flooding his lungs and making his stomach feel reflexively queasy. Shaw was already on his mind, but now memories of him are inescapable, creeping up Erik’s spine and pressing into him like cold fingers at the nape of his neck.

He moves to Frank’s other side, away from where the wind is blowing Frank’s smoke, and takes in another breath of thankfully fresher air, locking everything else up somewhere he can deal with it later on, in the privacy of his own home. “When does your semester start?” he asks Frank as they turn onto the street that leads to Frank’s residence hall.

“January 22nd,” Frank says, exhaling a whole cloud. “Ages yet. I’ll be free to frolic and play with you younguns for most of the month.” He grins at Erik. “Why, you trying to get rid of me?”

“Just trying to remember how much longer I have before I add three extra classes back onto my usual schedule,” Erik says. “I’m not looking forward to the work; it’s like all my professors are in collusion with each other, assigning identical due dates for absolutely everything.” He still feels uncomfortable, though; to offset it, he makes himself smile and reach to link his arm with Frank’s, reaching that hand up to squeeze Frank’s upper arm. The easy congeniality of it is reassuring in its way, and Erik needs that right now.

“Poor kid,” Frank says, but he just bumps his shoulder into Erik’s again and keeps walking like that, his body giving off heat like a furnace. He seems very content right now, satisfied in a way Erik wishes he could emulate but that he suspects is a function of Frank’s comfort with his own Dominance. He grew up with it, unlike Erik, and never had to suppress it or be ashamed of it. He’s only 2D, but he isn’t the one who can never quite tell if he’s doing it right, pushing too hard or not enough.

They separate in the elevator, Frank leaning back against the wall and Erik standing near the doors, face tilted up to watch the floor numbers light up as they ascend, dipping his power down deep into the cables and machinery that make the lift function, enough that he almost doesn’t notice when they reach Frank’s floor.

He lingers next to Frank while Frank unlocks his door, not bothering to use his power to make it quicker, instead pulling his phone back out and looking down at the blank screen. He keeps half-expecting to see an alert with a message from Charles, telling him to come home immediately, but there’s nothing. Not so much as a new email.

“Drink? I have soda, water and more soda,” Frank says, opening the door and gesturing for Erik to precede him through, following closely after. “No coffee, they don’t let us have burners in here.”

“Water’s fine,” Erik says, and as soon as he says it he wonders if he shouldn’t have taken that chance to say he can’t stay long. Instead he ends up standing there waiting while Frank grabs two bottles from the mini-fridge under his desk and cracks the lids, handing one over to Erik before taking a seat on the bed, leaning back against the wall.

“Sit,” he says, gesturing towards the bed beside him, and Erik takes a step toward him, then pauses -- but only ends up reaching for the buttons on his coat, pushing them through their wooly holes one after the other. He drapes the coat over the back of Frank’s desk chair and sits down like he was told, at the head of the bed, making himself relax back against the doubled-up pillows at the backboard. 

“I can’t stay long,” Erik tells him, finally.

“All right,” Frank says, taking a long draft of his water, but his eyes stay on Erik, considering, relaxed but aware. When he lowers the bottle he says, “We don’t have to fuck if you don’t want to, you know. I’m not going to kick off about it.”

“I know,” Erik says, both his brows going up, faintly surprised; he hadn’t at all thought he was being obvious about it. The strangeness of it all is making him uncomfortable, a sickness pulling at him inside and twisting him up tighter and tighter. He feels useless sitting here like this, apparently visibly unwilling, not-himself. “It’s fine,” he says, and this time the smile comes naturally; when he breathes in he can still smell the cigarette smoke.

He shouldn’t, he should just … he’s locked into old habits, muscle memory, that’s all, he should say no, only -- Frank’s looking at him, dark eyes tracking Erik’s facial expression in a pattern Erik knows well by now, and something sharp -- adrenaline -- lances through his system. There aren’t other options. He can’t just leave, he has to … he _has_ to, because he can’t bear thinking about what will happen if he doesn’t. It’s fine, just like he said. It’s fine.

He pushes himself forward, not breaking Frank’s gaze, and curls a hand around the back of Frank’s neck as he moves to straddle his lap, leaning in and kissing him on the mouth, slow and firm. Frank makes a humming sort of noise, like he’s considering, but that doesn’t keep him from kissing back; his hands come to rest on Erik’s hips, tugging him in closer so that their groins are pressed together, Erik’s thighs splayed wide around Frank’s torso. Erik tastes tobacco on Frank’s tongue and he rolls down against Frank’s lap, sinuously suggestive, tugging at his lower lip with his teeth.

Frank tugs Erik in closer as he works his lip loose and bites Erik back, then slides his tongue into Erik’s mouth, licking his way inside; Erik can feel him getting hard, his erection pressing up against the underside of Erik’s thigh, and he grinds his hips down harder, tangling a hand in Frank’s hair.

Frank’s fingers tighten on Erik’s hips, and he makes a deep, guttural noise in his chest before his hands start to slide down towards Erik’s ass; he takes a palmful of each of Erik’s buttocks, and that’s when Erik thinks -- _no_ \-- and leans back, just enough to break the kiss and open his eyes, meeting Frank’s brown gaze.

“You’re right,” Erik says, and clenches his stomach to stop it quivering, his left hand still trapped between them, halfway to reaching for Frank’s fly. “I can’t. I mean -- not tonight. I’m sorry.”

“I have to say, you’re blowing a bit hot and cold,” Frank says, but he lets go of Erik’s ass, holding his hands up where Erik can see them. “It’s fine, but you’re confusing a guy’s dick here.”

Erik looks down, not quite able to keep looking Frank in the eye considering … he’s right, of course, and Erik feels deeply, horribly ashamed of himself in a way that’s too reminiscent of his time with Hellfire, that aching, cringing feeling in his chest that means he ought to be down on his knees, head bowed, begging for forgiveness. Frank is being perfectly nice about it, but that isn’t the problem. The fault, as usual, lies solely with Erik.

“Sorry,” he says, again, and slips off of Frank’s lap, settling on the bed next to him instead. His cheeks are still hot so he reaches for his water bottle, uses that as an excuse not to talk or look at Frank for a while longer as he tries to dig up whatever Dominance he’s got left. He swallows, crosses his arms over his bent knees, and finally turns back to Frank, his heart feeling like it’s up in his throat, and he forces one corner of his mouth to turn up in what he hopes passes for a self-deprecating grin. 

“It’s this -- thing Charles is making me do,” he explains, and he’s awkward enough already that it’s not hard to make the half-lie seem real for Frank. “In therapy. It’s total bullshit, probably, but he’s the one with the advanced degree.” In Erik’s experience, bringing up anything even slightly referential to Hellfire’s sexual crimes tends to make people change the subject at lightning speed, no matter how persistent they’d been before. He can’t tell, though, if Frank’s the sort to be nervous Erik’s brought it up.

“He’s making you act like a cocktease?” Frank asks, but he sounds amused now, one hand coming up to scratch idly at his chest. “Man, I want to go to therapy with him. It sounds fun.”

“I can diagnose you right now if that’s all you need: pathological narcissism. There, saved you a forty dollar copay,” Erik says. He screws the cap back onto his water bottle and drops it down between his legs. His heart beat is starting to slow at last, not the horrible racing thing it’d been before, and the contrast is such a relief it makes him feel exhausted, strung-out and limp inside. 

Frank pats him on the thigh companionably. “It’s fine. Harder on you than on me, I guess.”

Erik isn’t sure he knows what Frank means, but he’s not about to admit that out loud. “I’ll survive,” he says instead, and pushes himself off Frank’s bed, reaching for his coat. “I really do need to get going, though. I wasn’t lying about that appointment.”

“All right,” Frank says, watching Erik as he pulls on his coat, but he seems just as relaxed as before, not offended or angry -- it’s almost distressing that he’s not upset, because Erik keeps bracing himself for a reaction that never comes. Frank continues, folding his arms behind his head, “Still friends? Without benefits.”

“Of course.” Erik’s fingers only falter for a second doing up the buttons of his coat, but he doesn’t think Frank notices at all. He looks Frank in the eye again and gives him a small smile, slipping his hands into his pockets and pressing one palm against the back of his phone. “I’ll text you tomorrow and we can make plans for the weekend. If you aren’t doing anything, that is.”

“Sounds good,” Frank says, and Erik leaves, taking the empty elevator down to the ground floor. 

It’s too late for most people to be in the Park; it’s almost completely empty, the streetlights casting little pools of light every twenty feet or so, illuminating the bums sleeping on benches and a few unsavory characters trading money for substance in the shadows. Erik’s never had any problems out here at night, though; the only people who have tried have ended up with bent knives and melted bullets. It’s cold enough he starts to regret not wearing gloves, though, fisting frigid hands inside his pockets and walking as quickly as he can without slipping on the patches of ice.

When he gets home, he finds Charles in his office working, sitting with his patient notes spread out around him, tapping his pen against the edge of the desk.

“Hey,” Charles says, turning to look at Erik standing in the doorway and trying to smile, but it looks more like a grimace. “How was the talk?”

“It was good,” Erik says, going and sitting down in one of the empty chairs, pressing the sole of one shoe against the nearest desk leg. “Frank had met Braden-Newell before, so he introduced me after the lecture and we went for coffee. He -- Braden-Newell -- gave me his email address. He wants to use some of my experiences in his research.” Erik can’t help grinning a little, at that, the warm satisfaction of the memory rising up easily in his mind.

Charles makes a face, but what he says is, “I’m sure it’ll be an interesting read,” twirling his pen between his fingers. “What’s he working on at the moment?”

“He’s writing a book about the experiences of mutants in the criminal justice system. Not just inmates, but witnesses, lawyers, guards -- the entire structure, and how anti-mutant sentiment pervades it all.” Erik had taken a look at some of the scholarly articles Braden-Newell had published on the subject before going to the lecture, using his Columbia student JSTOR account, and so he’d had a sense of the bare bones of the project before he even went to the talk.

“That actually does sound interesting,” Charles says, with raised eyebrows. “Well. I suppose even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Just be careful how much you tell him, you don’t want to get in trouble with your probation officer.”

“What do you mean? I thought this country made a big thing out of ‘free speech.’” 

“We also make a big thing out of citizens’ right to privacy, but that doesn’t keep the NSA from spying on us all,” Charles says, fixing Erik with a wry look. “I know you think I’ve got my head in the clouds, but even I admit there are a lot of very wrong acts committed in this country every day by people who are supposed to know better. I’m just saying to be careful, that’s all.”

Erik shifts in the chair, tilting his hips up to reach back and draw out the folded-up flyer the woman had given him after Braden-Newell’s talk, passing it over to Charles. “I suppose you think my probation officer would have a problem with this, too,” he says, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest, waiting. It’s not that he doesn’t understand the risks, that even peaceful protests can turn violent, but if ‘right to assembly’ is forbidden as well, then … Erik will have quite a few human rights violations to write to Braden-Newell about, won’t he?

“Erik … ” Charles trails off, reading the flyer. “You have to know this would be against the terms of your probation. If it were up to me then I wouldn’t stop you, you know that, but it’s not just the potential ramifications for your freedom. You’d be endangering the other protesters. Humans First target these events anyway, think how much more enticing it would be if they knew you were there. And they would, it would make the news right away. It’s just not safe.”

Erik shakes his head, his lips tightening, and he says, “I have never been convicted of a crime, and yet I’m on probation. I’ve never been tried by a jury of my peers, and yet I’m at risk of being locked up for life if I violate certain terms. Can you tell me they’d do this to a human -- that it isn’t just because I have an omega-class ability and I know how to use it?”

He knows Charles is on his side, but sometimes … sometimes it feels like Charles represents everything that is wrong about this country, with his integrationist views and his allegiance to the CIA and Department of Homeland Security. He might love Erik, but he’s also the one who reports back Erik’s behavior, good or otherwise, so the government can decide if Erik’s still fit to be out in the world.

“The only reason,” Charles says, “that you haven’t been convicted of a crime is because they agreed that if you adhered to these rules then you could avoid prison and go into rehabilitation with me. You’re right that they wouldn’t do this to a human, but then a human boy wouldn’t have been able to do the things you did, at Shaw’s order or otherwise. Erik … you _are_ a threat, and what’s more, one that has killed before. You’re not Schrödinger’s cat, there’s no question of whether you would do these things in some circumstances. The only way I can keep you free and safe and relatively unmolested by the government is to follow their rules. I’m sorry if that upsets you.” His lips are tight, and Erik can feel Charles’ remorse as well as his firmness, like prickles on his skin.

“It’s fine,” Erik says. “I just wanted to make sure I’m absolutely clear on the terms of my release.” He takes the flyer back from Charles, plucking it easily from his grasp and folding it back up along the same creases as before. “For research purposes.”

“Ugh,” Charles says, making a face again, and puts his pen down on top of his papers. “I hope you two make beautiful music together.”

Erik grins at him and gets up, tucking his phone along with the flyer back into his pocket as he does. “Jealousy’s not a good look on you,” he says. “Are you staying down here much longer? I’m wanting to go to bed soon.”

Charles smiles, just a little, and says, “I’ll be up in a minute. And, Erik -- ” his face very sincere all of a sudden, “ -- thank you for not sleeping with Frank. I know it must have been difficult to stop when he asked.” 

Erik pauses in the doorway, one hand resting on the frame, looking back at Charles’ steady blue gaze. It takes a moment for him to find his voice and say, “No problem,” and he goes before it can turn into any more of a discussion than that.

*

_Charles_

Charles hasn’t been able to stop thinking about what Erik said that morning in the bathroom. It’s been preying on his mind, coming back at the oddest moments, when he’s making tea or out for a walk, like an echo he can’t shake. _I like everything about having sex with you. You used to be ... untouchable, but I can pull you apart so easily, now._

It’s … it’s not surprising, but nonetheless it makes Charles wince, just thinking about it, having it driven home that as much as Charles likes to pretend otherwise, on Erik's side none of the reasons they're together now are about Charles, or about their relationship. Charles' attraction to Erik may have been the instigator, but this new relationship between them is all about Erik pleasing Charles and feeling more secure in the home, that emotional reliance on Charles’ happiness only exacerbated by the sexual side of their lives together. 

As if that weren’t enough, Charles knows that it makes Erik feel subconsciously safer finally being able to control Charles the way he has every other authority figure, using sex to get around punishments and manipulate behaviors, to know that if he needs to he can use sex to control his environment. If Erik finds the sex more pleasurable than he ever has before -- well. He's never had an authority figure who he felt safe with before, either, one who is a submissive, nor one he has to _work_ to please, instead of taking his punishment and moving on. It’s not a commentary on Charles’ skill as a lover.

When Erik kisses him, touches him, it's easy to forget. But Charles keeps reminding himself of it, catching himself at it, and it's wearing him down.

So he ends up working a lot later than he means to after Erik has gone to bed, trying not to dwell on the way Erik felt so bright and excited about meeting Eli Braden-Newell, that prick, and his feet are heavy as he climbs the stairs, like lifting concrete blocks with every step, making his tread heavier than it would usually be. He only realizes once he's reached the top that he's left his watch and ring off on the desk downstairs -- he’d taken them off when he’d realized he was going to be there for a while, all the better to help Erik sleep, if they were still. He'll grab them in the morning.

Slipping into the dark space of his bedroom Charles can only just see Erik's shape under the covers, a long lump laying on his side, a hand curled under his head; he tries to be quiet as he goes to his chair to start stripping down, but he stubs his toe and curses under his breath, then bites his lip, trying to hold it in. He glances at Erik, but Erik just shifts under the bedclothes, knees bending up toward his chest, then goes still.

As softly as he can, Charles moves over to the side of the bed and draws back the covers to slide underneath, laying down on his back and closing his eyes, all too ready to go to sleep. It's not comfortable, though, so after a moment, he turns onto his side instead, and in the process his foot clumsily kicks Erik in the shin where Erik's gangly limbs have spread out to take up half the bed.

"Shit," Charles whispers, and his sense of Erik's mind in the dark room goes suddenly sharp, ringing with alarm as Erik snaps abruptly awake, rearing back from Charles and getting tangled up in the sheets in a violent effort to push himself away.

"Who's there?" Erik says, half-snap, half-quaver, and he's pushed himself upright almost immediately, the black shape of him tense and straight-backed. It's a long moment before Erik speaks again. "... Jesus Christ, Charles," he says, and he might be trying to sound irritated, but it doesn't entirely cover up the way his voice is shaking. "Don't do that."

"Sorry," Charles says, still startled by the strength of Erik's response. Erik feels ... _scared_ , like he was expecting ... someone else. God. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's fine," Erik says, and slowly he settles back down again, even if his mind is still a roiling mess of fear and anticipation that knowing-better hasn't yet subdued. His hand catches Charles' wrist, tugging it across the space between them to lace their fingers together near Erik's chest. "You aren't wearing your ring, that’s all. I didn't feel you coming."

"Is that all," Charles murmurs, though he feels heartsick inside, now, knowing that without those markers Erik still expects an abuser to step through that door -- that even now, Erik is still waiting for Shaw and the Hellfire Club to come and hurt him some more, even if only when he's asleep. And perhaps he's not entirely wrong. "I'm still sorry. Are you okay?"

"It's not a big deal, Charles," Erik says, and he tilts his head down, his lips pressing warm against the backs of Charles' fingers. "You just startled me. Go to sleep."

Charles closes his eyes, but he doesn't sleep. He feels Erik drift off not long after, but he rolls onto his back as soon as Erik is deeply under and spends the next few hours staring at the ceiling. He falls asleep sometime around two.

The dream he falls into seems innocuous at first, but as Charles falls more deeply asleep he feels the sense of dread building inside him, until he feels nauseous, fearful and shrinking all over; he tries to break loose and change the dream, but it must be one of those nights where he’s lucid but unable to control it, so he has to watch as Erik curls into a tighter ball on the couch of some bland, featureless living room, hands clutching at his own knees and trying not to exist. Erik is wearing his collar, the one he wore when he was first rescued from Hellfire, thick black leather, and it’s shocking, horrifying to see all over again -- Charles stares, trying to understand what’s happening.

The information slides into his mind the moment he asks for it, and in the way of dreams Charles feels the narrative as if it’s his own despite the way Erik doesn’t so much as look at him to acknowledge his presence -- Mr Shaw has been in a mood all day. He's been prowling around the safehouse, never really settling in any one place; his eyes, too, are dark and very slightly narrowed, which though the rest of his face is pleasant tells Erik, and Charles-as-Erik, that something has put Shaw on edge. Trying to suss out what that might be, though, is like trying to read a difficult book, in the dark, from across the room, that's written in Arabic. It's impossible.

It’s clearly Erik’s dream, but when Charles tries to shake him his hand just passes through Erik like smoke, and he has to listen to Erik trying to go back over the day in his memory, to figure out what must have happened to make Shaw upset. Erik woke up at six -- Mr Wyngarde came in to choose his clothes for him, Mr Shaw came in after and tugged his pants down enough to inspect him -- Erik had expected to be fucked, but Mr Shaw had stalked off again after doing no more than sticking an exploratory finger into Erik's asshole. So he'd been angry since yesterday, then, Erik thinks, and Charles thinks, _what kind of a life is it that Erik_ not _getting fucked makes him more scared than getting fucked does?_

He tries again to stop the dream, but then there’s a noise from the other side of him and Charles loses his concentration. 

Sebastian Shaw is sat at a table on the other side of the room, smoking, his body tense and shoulders tight. There’s a sudden surge of adrenaline and loathing that surges up in Charles’ stomach, just looking at the man -- Charles wishes he could touch things like this, that Erik could see him, because that way he could get up and attack Shaw here, head on, where Erik needs it -- here in his head, where Shaw has done the most damage of all.

But Shaw gets up from the table unmolested, putting out his cigarette and heading back out into the corridor, and after a moment Erik slips off the sofa, following him. Charles gets up too and walks after Erik as if he’s been drawn on a string. He’d rather stay where he is, rather not see what he suspects is going to happen, but he can’t. The dream is collapsing on that room as Erik’s mind dismisses it, and Charles tries again to take control, straining his mind against the edges but to no avail. He’s trailing Erik along a narrow corridor, and ahead of them both he can see Shaw’s back as he turns and disappears into a room.

Erik is scared, his fear like spiders crawling up and down Charles’ spine. He’s thinking -- “No,” Charles says, but goes unheard -- Erik is thinking that the only way to make it go away is to prove to himself that he doesn't have anything to be afraid of. That Shaw is angry, but not with Erik. That Shaw cares about him. And the way he does that is --

"Are you busy?" Erik asks, coming to a halt just outside the room; his voice is soft, and he’s tilted his head down, peeking up at Shaw through his eyelashes. He catches his wrist in his opposite hand, clasping it in front of him, and when Charles catches up to where Erik is standing he can see that it’s -- oh God -- a bedroom, and Shaw is digging around in one of the drawers of his dresser. His mind is a total blank, like watching a zombie going through the motions. It’s grotesque, and Charles feels even more sick than before, stepping back until he’s stood with his back against the wall opposite the door.

"Surely you can tell if I'm busy or not," Shaw says without looking up, his voice utterly calm.

Even Charles can tell that it's a trap. Either Erik is disturbing him, in which case he should be punished, or he's implying that Shaw has nothing useful to do with his time, in which case he deserves whatever he gets. In front of Charles Erik shifts his weight a little, nervousness rising off him like heat waves.

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir," he says, and he dares to step inside Shaw's room, only by the slightest degree, then stops again, as if waiting to be told he's allowed. Shaw turns to face him now, his arms folding loosely over his chest.

"Come in, Erik, you've nothing to fear in here," Shaw says, with a small snort as if to say Erik is being silly. "Now. What did you need?"

Erik goes in, at last, walking on silent feet to where Shaw waits and stopping when he's close enough that Shaw could reach for him, touch him, if he wanted to, and Charles -- Charles feels increasingly trapped, staring and unable to pull away from the dream -- the memory, more like -- of Erik thinking about how much he hates himself for doing this, for always proving that Shaw is right about Erik.

“Don’t,” Charles says, but Erik lifts his hands to the collar of his shirt and starts unbuttoning, his elbows lifted on either side of his body where Charles can see them shifting, then drops his hands to his sides like he's embarrassed, bowing his head. It's not entirely an act; Erik feels humiliated, a red cloud of feeling surrounding his mind, and Charles is torn between dashing forward and flinging himself between them -- useless, pointless -- and running as far as he can away. The worst, though, is when he hears Erik say,

"You haven't come to me since last night," quietly, then, “I need your cock.”

And Charles thinks -- no. This is -- he knows what this is, can see Erik’s mind turning over the calculations -- if he does this then surely Shaw will be happy and won’t hurt him later, will be placated. Erik can defuse the bomb before it goes off. Erik can make Shaw love him. Only it won’t work, it never works, surely Erik must know that….

There's a moment of pause, and then Shaw's smile widens, showing teeth. "Poor boy," he says, lifting one hand to touch Erik’s face. "Have you been feeling neglected today?" His fingers slide down the side of Erik's face, his throat, to rest for a moment on his collar before they must slip through the metal loop on the front and tug, hard enough to make Erik stumble forward. "Very well," Shaw says. "Get on the bed. Face down. And spread your legs."

He hasn't told Erik to undress, but Erik obeys anyway, still fully-clothed, and arches his back a little when he does, tilting his hips up like he's putting his ass on display. Like he's desperate for it.

Charles can’t look any more. He steps to the side, trying to head back down the hall but -- the corridor is shrinking too as Erik forgets about it, and Charles is forced into the bedroom, his back to the goings on on the bed, until all he can hear is the rustle of fabric as Erik’s pants are tugged down and Shaw saying, "Oh, my boy," in a tone of high amusement. "You have grown up into the most exquisite little slut. Coming in here begging for what you want and thoroughly distracting me. You certainly know how to make men want you, don't you?"

Erik makes a soft, pained noise, and Charles flinches, knows without looking that Shaw is biting him, tries to cover his ears, his eyes, but he can’t block it out.

"You do know," Shaw says, "that I would never do any of this to you if you didn't make me want to so very badly, my lovely little cockwhore."

Charles can’t listen to any more of this or he’ll -- he’s not sure what he’ll do, but he can’t just -- he starts fighting against the fabric of the dream as a wet sound starts up behind him, and he strains and tries to force his way free until he can feel his nose bleeding and hear Erik’s breath hitching behind him and then --

\-- the dream pops.

“Fuck,” Charles says as his eyes fly open, staring at his own dark ceiling, and he can feel Erik jerk awake beside him, gasping for breath and shivering, shaking the bedclothes where they’re wrapped too tightly around him.

Charles turns to look at Erik, and he reaches out, touches his arm gingerly, uncertain of his welcome; Erik flinches and Charles draws his hand back immediately. “Darling, it’s all right, you’re awake, it was just a dream,” he says, in the moment before he feels wetness on his face and realizes his nose is bleeding in real life, too, a droplet of blood running down from his nose to catch in the corner of his mouth.

“I’m fine,” Erik lies. Charles can’t see his face; he’s turned over onto his knees, braced against the pillow, and it takes a second for Charles to recognize the lurch of his shoulders as Erik swallowing a dry gag.

Charles feels so -- helpless.

"You're safe now,” he says, in a voice that sounds foreign, not like his own; he lifts a hand to his face and wipes away the blood before Erik can see it, then closes his hand around it, not wanting to reach for a tissue and rock the bed when Erik is already so unsettled. “You're here with me, and none of that will ever happen to you again. Do you believe me?"

Erik doesn’t say anything, his head tilting down again toward the pillow, and after a moment his pale hand emerges from beneath the sheets to drag his fingers back through his hair, shaking -- twice, three times. He looks fragile like this, his mind a tumultuous dark place that Charles can’t touch, not when it’s so clear Erik’s still thinking about the dream-memory and all the other memories like it, a blur of faces and hands and voices. 

“I’m going to get a glass of water,” Erik says at long last, shifting to get out of bed; Charles jerks to take hold of his arm before he can stop himself, only realizing it’s the bloody hand once he’s already grasped Erik’s bicep.

“No. I’ll go -- I’ll make you some tea,” he says, perhaps a little too quickly, feeling that he has to do something, anything, to make Erik feel better. “You just stay here and rest, I’ll be back.” He gets up before Erik can protest, and heads downstairs, cursing himself for not fighting the dream harder sooner -- not sparing Erik the anguish of reliving it. He detours to his office for his watch and ring, then to the kitchen to boil the kettle and make the tea, trying to use the familiar ritual to calm down, but it doesn’t really help.

When he comes back upstairs with the cup of tea Erik is in the bathroom, splashing water on his face over the sink. Outwardly he seems still, more controlled, but even that Dominant façade can’t hide much from telepathy. “Were you bleeding?” Erik asks him when he lifts his head up, drying it off with one of their hand towels. 

“It was just a nosebleed,” Charles says, hovering in the doorway and wishing it didn’t feel quite so much like déjà vu, all too reminiscent of the dream. “Erik, are you okay?”

“Here, take this,” Erik says, pulling a tissue out of the box on the sink counter and holding it out toward Charles, his green gaze absolutely blank when their eyes meet. “Do you get those often? Maybe we should make you an appointment tomorrow, take you to see the doctor.”

Charles takes the tissue, even though he has no use for it now, and he shakes his head no. “I’m fine, really. Take this, it’s hot and sweet and it’ll help.”

He offers the cup in his hand to Erik and at last Erik accepts, reaching for it as he passes by Charles on his way back into the darkened bedroom. He sets it down on the nightstand as he gets back into bed, sitting on the edge and watching the steam rise up from the surface of the tea toward the single lit lamplight.

Charles turns, not quite wanting to follow, to feel like they’re still trapped in that nightmare, him on a string following Erik through his own version of hell. “Erik, I’m sorry I didn’t wake you up sooner,” he says, guilt running through him at the thought; he folds his arms across his chest, holding onto his own elbows as he struggles with what he wants to say. “I’m sorry you had to live through that again.”

“It happens,” Erik says. His voice is firm, dismissive. He reaches for the tea and lifts it up toward his lips, blowing across the liquid surface. “There’s nothing new about any of this.”

“Still,” Charles says awkwardly, and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “I’ll go sleep in the other room for the rest of the night, it might help stave off another nightmare.” Weird thought, to leave Erik in Charles’ bedroom and himself sleep in the guest room, but the thought of struggling through another of those is … it’s selfish because he knows Erik has enough of them himself, has no choice, but Charles can’t, he just can’t.

“I don’t need to be handled with kid gloves, you know,” Erik tells him after he’s taken a sip of the tea. “I have nightmares often enough, you just aren’t usually in the same room when it happens.” He sets the tea down and the bathroom light flicks itself off behind Charles, casting the room into darkness lit only by the light at Erik’s bedside, dim and amber. “I’m fine, Charles. I’m going back to sleep.”

It’s so hard to know what the right thing is to do, to say. Charles suspects, though, that if he pushes or leaves then Erik will either be angry or hurt or both -- and so he does the only thing he can think of, finally walks forward and climbs back up onto the bed, sliding under the covers and laying down on his side, within reaching distance but not touching Erik, letting him have his space.

“I love you very much,” he says into the quiet between them as the bedside lamp clicks off, leaving them in darkness once more. “I just -- wish there was more I could do.”

There’s silence for a while. Charles feels Erik rolling over, either onto his back or toward Charles, but it’s still too dark to tell which. The clock across the room ticks the seconds past, too-loud like this, when even Erik’s thoughts are quiet and withdrawn. Charles stays still, closes his eyes, but he’s not even close to sleeping -- can’t, not when he is still so horrified and pained by what he witnessed, by the way it had felt in his head as though nothing would ever be right again, and how he hadn’t been sure if that was Erik -- or himself.

“It was my fault, you see,” Erik’s voice comes softly through the darkness, barely more than a whisper, and if Charles had been more than a few feet away he might not have heard it at all. “I made it happen.”

Charles opens his eyes, but of course he can’t see anything. “That’s not true at all,” he whispers back, and he’s not sure why they’re whispering other than that it feels right, like making confessions requires low voices and invisibility. “It was never your fault. You were in an impossible situation. You can’t blame yourself.”

Erik doesn’t believe him, though; there’s that reflexive pushback against Charles’ words in his mind, the sort of defense that accompanies one’s sacred beliefs, dogma too deeply-held to be let go. “You heard what he said.”

“I heard,” Charles agrees. “But the fact you sometimes initiated abuse does not negate the fact that it was abuse, and learned as self-defense in a house full of violent rapists.” He takes a breath, then continues, his voice getting a little stronger in the quiet, until it’s hard to keep it at a whisper, “Shaw is a manipulative, psychotically disturbed pedophilic piece of human excrement, and you did what you had to do to survive. There's no shame in that."

“It wasn’t just him. It was almost everyone, it _is_ almost everyone. It’s not possible that they’re all like Shaw. I’m the common denominator, here.” Erik sounds angry, but not with Charles, his voice tightening; he shifts again under the blankets, but doesn’t move further away.

Almost everyone. And that includes Charles, he thinks, feeling a bit sick.

He reaches out at last, fumbling across the space between them in the dark until he finds what he thinks is Erik’s shoulder, and he squeezes it there, trying not to think of it like that -- it’s different, has to be different, he _loves_ Erik -- and says, “Shaw was the common denominator in the Hellfire Club, you already told me that he all but forced the others to abuse you so he had something on them, and he created the culture there. As for afterwards … if you offer something to enough people then some of those people will take you up on that offer. It’s not because there is something wrong with you. Okay?” Erik’s shoulder is firm under his hand, and warm, body heat soaking through the cotton of his t-shirt. “You just … made a lot of offers.”

“I’m easy, you mean,” Erik says dryly, and Charles winces, moves his hand down Erik’s arm to find his hand instead and brings it up to rest on the bed where Charles can hold it more easily.

“I mean that there’s nothing wrong with having a lot of sex, there’s no inherent shame in it,” Charles says, wishing it was easier to shift across and embrace Erik, that it would be less charged. “All these analogies about pencils and pencil sharpeners are just bullshit, meant to humiliate people, but you don’t have to feel ashamed of who you are and what was done to you and who that’s made you. Okay? You learned to survive. That’s what you did. You’re a survivor. I did just the same, living with Cain -- I learnt to pacify him to save myself some bruises, and that meant playing into his games. I’m not ashamed of that, and nor should you be.”

Erik squeezes his hand once, and Charles hears him let out a slow breath from his own side of the bed. “All right,” Erik says, even though he still doesn’t believe him; it’s a shallow concession, a draw rather than a surrender. He lets Charles keep holding his hand, fingers still in Charles’ grasp. “Good night, Charles.”

Oh, damn it. "Come here," Charles murmurs, and he tugs Erik closer, until they're curled up together, Erik's head tucked under Charles' chin, his ear resting on Charles' chest. "You're safe now," Charles says, the warmth of Erik being so close soothing some of his anxiety, being able to hold him and know that he’s okay, physically at least, the reassurance of touch so basic and yet so powerful. "Nobody will ever hurt you like that again, not while I'm alive."

*

_Erik_

Erik doesn’t see the utility of focusing on things long past, but it’s obvious Charles disagrees; Erik can tell he’s thinking about the nightmare, still. He must have written to Erik’s psychiatrist about it early that morning because by the time Erik gets to his appointment it’s all the woman wants to talk about, trying to foist more medicine on him to blot the memories out. Sedatives. As if Erik’s own life were something that needed forgetting. He brings it up in therapy with Charles later, angry, but Charles doesn’t sympathize -- just tells Erik if he doesn’t want to take the medicine, that’s fine, but the dreams still bear discussing. 

It’s interminably frustrating, how everyone’s priorities are always so fundamentally misaligned with Erik’s when it comes to Erik’s own care.

Erik decides he needs a break from people who are being paid to talk to him. 

“How’s Aspen?” Erik asks Madelyne over Skype later that afternoon. He’s shut himself away in his old bedroom to give them some privacy and it’s weird to be here now, surrounded by all the trappings of his own life and none of Charles’, metal strewn everywhere from that time he went through a phase of building motherboards, old designs he drew for Stark tacked up onto the walls with pins. It feels like it belongs to a different person, even if it wasn’t that long ago that he spent most of the evenings in here while Charles was gone drinking his guilt away in bars. 

It’s in stark contrast to the simplicity of the room he can see behind Madelyne on her screen, her room in Aspen all expensive faux-rustic, like she’s living inside a pricy version of the winter season Anthropologie catalogue. 

“It’s all snow and hot chocolate and skiing and alcoholics,” she says with a shrug that looks weird when she’s laying on her stomach on her bed, the laptop presumably perched on her pillow. “The usual desperate married subs trying to find a ski instructor to get off with, constant risk of an avalanche combo. Pretty standard really.”

Erik debates whether or not to tell Madelyne that he can see down her shirt at this angle and decides against it; she’s pickier about modesty than he is, and he wouldn’t want to embarrass her. 

“Sounds fun,” he says, shifting his legs so they’re folded up tailor-style, his laptop balanced on his thighs. “You don’t seem to have been eaten by moose yet, so I take it it’s going well.”

She shrugs again, her hands busy with fabric and pins and some kind of ball that she tells him is going to be a bauble. “I guess. Mom keeps dragging me out to fancy gatherings where everyone has clearly spent too much time in thin oxygen, but sometimes I manage to get away to the cool parties. I met this Dom the other night, he was pretty awesome up until he got a bit too pushy.”

“What do you mean, pushy?” Erik asks.

“Ugh,” Madelyne says, the image breaking up for a moment before reforming. “He was all, do you wanna go to the other room with me, I hear there’s a great view, then when we got there it was his bedroom and he tried to grab my boob. And when I said no he tried to Dom me into it. It was pretty gross. I’m just lucky he was a 1D. What a creep.”

“It doesn’t speak well of him, no,” Erik agrees, leaning back against the headboard of his bed; it’s uncomfortable, the wood too hard against his shoulder blades, and he sets the laptop down to stack the pillows up behind him instead and give it some cushion. “Did you leave?”

“I couldn’t. My ride wasn’t coming for another two hours, so I ended up butting into these other girls’ conversation and hiding with them until the car came for me. And all the time that guy was giving me the eyes. It was hella creepy.” She pauses, looking up from her bauble at the screen. “Now you’re a Dom, you’ve got to promise me you won’t be that guy. Otherwise I will kick your ass to kingdom come, got it?”

“I won’t be that guy,” Erik promises, though he does wonder what she would make of what happened with him and Charles, considering Erik did use Dominance to put Charles down the first time. It was different than what she’s describing, of course, because Charles said himself he was glad Erik did it, because Charles gave Erik no other choice. “So,” he says, casually as he can, “some subs kind of … act out on purpose, because they want you to force them down. How can you tell the difference between actual resistance and this kind of,” he gestures vaguely with one hand, not really sure he’s describing it properly, “flirtation-via-resistance?”

Madelyne gives Erik a Look, gesturing towards him with what he assumes is a pin between her fingers. “You ask first, Erik, you get a safeword so if they don’t want you to do it then you know for sure. It’s not rocket science. Anyway, who are _you_ playing Dom/sub games with? I didn’t think you did submissives.”

“I do submissives sometimes,” he argues, even if ‘sometimes’ really just means Charles. He catches himself about to fold his arms over his chest, defensive, and makes him keep his arms where they are, lax and uncomfortable now at his sides. He takes a breath, hesitates, then says, carefully, “Do … Dominants get safewords, too?”

“I guess, if they want them?” Madelyne sounds genuinely surprised. “Mostly it’s subs, but some Doms do them too in case things get too intense on their side. Why, are you doing a sub that’s making you uncomfortable?” She pauses, biting her lower lip, and her fingers come up to toy with her hair the way they usually do when she’s nervous, though Erik has no idea why she’d be nervous now. “Who is it, anyway? I … how long have you been sleeping with subs?”

It’s a lot of questions, none of which Erik can really give a straight answer to. He shakes his head and says, “It was a one-time thing,” as firmly as he can, decides -- maybe he ought to turn this conversation in a different direction, before she starts getting too close to the truth. “I slept with Petra’s friend, Frank.” Though he doubts that’ll come as a surprise.

Madelyne frowns. “Erik, Frank’s a Dom. He’s not a sub.”

“I know that. I was just trying to…” To change the goddamn topic of conversation, that’s what. “Never mind,” he says with a slight sigh, tipping his head back against the headboard. A thousand miles away, he hears Madelyne’s laptop fan start up, a crescendo’d hum.

“Anyway,” Madelyne goes on, oblivious to the white noise, “how can you sometimes sleep with subs one time? That doesn’t make any sense. Either it’s one time or sometimes. I mean, it’s cool either way but you can’t do both.”

“You have never been so invested in my sex life,” Erik tells the ceiling.

“I’m not invested in your sex life,” she says, a little too quickly maybe. “I’m invested in whether or not you can count. Like, if you’re failing basic math then I’m not sure we can be friends.”

Erik rolls his eyes where she can’t see it and then brings his head back down to its normal position, meeting her gaze on-screen again. “Sometimes, all right? _Sometimes_. And only since a few weeks ago. Are you happy?”

“Do I know them?” she asks, and even in the slightly blurred webcam image her lower lip is clearly flushed red from being bitten. She pushes higher on her elbows, the position squishing her chest together until it looks like someone drew a thick black line down between her breasts with a marker pen. “This is a big deal for you, Erik, I’ve only ever known you to go with Doms and you’re never shy about naming names. Is it serious, then?”

She’s always so damn _persistent_. Feeling a little desperate, Erik fakes a saucy grin and presses the side of his forefinger to his mouth, like he’s shushing her, flirtatious. “I’m sworn to secrecy.”

Her mouth tightens, and she huffs, sounding frustrated. “At least have the decency to just say you’re not going to say, instead of playing around pretending it’s all sexy and exciting,” she says. “I know you, Erik, you’re not like this about sex stuff. Are you worried about having to Dom someone? Because it would be okay if you are.”

It’s another question he doesn’t really want to answer, and he looks down for a moment, stealing the chance to tab over to his browser and check his email and reddit homepage for new messages, but there’s nothing there he can use as an excuse to end the conversation. Even that makes him feel a little guilty, that he’s looking for excuses not to talk to Madelyne about things again, after he promised her so long ago that he wouldn’t keep secrets -- but if it’s between her and Charles, he knows which one he’ll choose, every time. 

“I just,” he starts, and then his throat feels tight, hard to speak or breathe through. He clears it with a slight cough and tries again, using the same tactic he tried on Frank yesterday. “I just, well, I don’t want to end up like …” He glances up at her, very briefly, but she’s still watching him, waiting for a reply, and he looks away again almost immediately. “You know.”

His cheeks feel red-hot, even if he knows for a fact he never blushes too badly; he still worries she can tell, like she’s borrowed Charles’ telepathy and could read it off him like words off a page, that it’s not there out of chagrin.

“As if that would ever happen,” she says, and like magic the suspicion drops off her face, replaced immediately with empathy. “For one thing, you’re not that kind of a raging psycho. For another, as if Dr Xavier or I would ever let that happen. Dr Xavier would brainwipe you first like a boss, and then I’d have to fight him to try and get you back, and we’d compromise on editing you to not be a raging psycho. So that will never ever ever happen. You just need to be careful, is all, that you don’t Dom people by mistake or whatever. It can happen with strong Doms sometimes.”

“Yeah, I know,” Erik admits, letting out a breath and hoping she can’t see that he’s shaking very slightly, still too tense from before. “I’ve had it happen. It doesn’t even have to be an order; sometimes it just comes out.” He presses his hands to his knees out of her view, wiping the perspiration from his palms. “I’m just not very used to this yet. I know how to have sex with Doms, I know I’m good at it, but subs are a different story.”

Madelyne hums, then rolls onto her back, not really looking at him any more, so he can see more of the top of her head than her face. “I’m not the one to ask about that,” she says quietly, her hands coming up to rest somewhere on her stomach out of sight. “Just be nice, I guess. And ask questions about what they like and what they want. If they don’t like being asked how you can make them happy then they’re an asshole anyway. Any sub would be lucky to have you, Erik, you’re a good guy.”

She can’t see him, which means she can’t see it when he grimaces. She might think he’s a good person, but that’s only because she doesn’t know any better. “If you say so,” he says, assuming she’ll probably take it as false modesty. “When are you coming back?”

“On the third of January. So just in time for school.”

“You should come have dinner with Charles and I that night, then,” Erik says. “I’ll make your favorite.” 

“See? And you cook,” she says to the ceiling, then tips her head back to look at him upside down. “Sure, sounds good. Let me know when and I’ll come ogle your not-Dad.”

Erik snorts. “You should send him secret admirer roses. I’d love to see that fall-out.” He really would, actually. He hasn’t the faintest idea how Charles would react.

“Still never going to happen, but I can look,” Madelyne says. “Okay. I’d better go make sure Mom hasn’t had too much bourbon in her cocoa. Call me if you freak out about being a Dom.”

“Sure. And you text me if that guy comes back. I’m not above flying out to Colorado with the Army in tow and doing a little domestic terrorism for the greater good.”

Madelyne smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling. “Okay. Thanks, Erik. I’ll talk to you soon.”

He quits Skype and closes his laptop, carrying it with him downstairs and dropping it onto the sofa. Charles isn’t in here, for once, watching his terrible shows; Erik has to actually use his power to track his ring all the way to the library, where Charles is pottering about between the shelves, clearly looking for something.

“Have you seen my copy of _Howl_?” he asks, without turning around. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

“No.” Charles is wearing one of those rumpled old sweaters of his, his hair tousled, and from behind it looks like he just got out of bed, never mind that it’s four in the afternoon. Erik walks up to stand at his side, looking at Charles in profile. “Charles,” he says, and Charles doesn’t turn to look at him, is still reading the titles on the spines of the books, but Erik forges on all the same before he can lose his nerve. “Am I a pushy Dom?”

“Hmm?” It takes a moment, but then Charles blinks and looks at Erik at last, a frown on his face. “In what way?” he asks, and Erik can feel his presence in his head, reading the intent directly from Erik’s thoughts. “Oh. No, not like that. If I didn’t want to do something now that we’ve talked it all out I would say so.”

“All right,” Erik says, and he crosses his arms around his middle, twisting the fingers of one hand into the fabric of his shirt. “I just … wanted to make sure.”

“It’s okay,” Charles says, and he smiles at Erik then, just a small one, almost sad. “You haven’t pushed me into anything. Everything that’s happened has been of my own doing, when it comes down to it.” He turns his gaze back to the bookshelves, though Erik doesn’t think Charles is really looking for his book any more.

On impulse, Erik steps closer and unfolds his arms from around himself, slipping them instead about Charles’ waist and tugging him into a sidelong embrace, pressing a brief kiss to the part of his hair. Charles leans into him after a moment, resting his weight briefly against Erik’s chest. “I’m going to go get started on dinner,” Erik says when he lets go. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“I will,” Charles says, giving him a long look, and touches his hand to Erik’s side for a moment before going back to what he was doing.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: nightmare memory of Shaw; child sexual abuse with implied child rape.


	22. Twenty-Two

_Charles_

They’re on the couch, ostensibly watching _2001: A Space Odyssey_ , but for the last twenty minutes or so they’ve just been kissing instead, the action -- if you can call it that -- passing on the screen while Charles tugs on Erik’s lower lip with his teeth, licking into his mouth and then conceding in the same way, slow and intense, laying half on top of Erik on the couch, just enough give in the cushions to make it really comfortable and the blanket draped over the back half falling off onto Charles’ legs, warming his feet the same way Erik’s body is warming Charles’ hands, his blood pumping a little fast, making him tingle all over. It’s good in a way Charles hasn’t felt in days, Erik’s genuine pleasure in kissing him as good as a drug to calm his worries, roaming hands all but innocent and focused entirely on making out.

It’s been … uncomfortable between them, not in a big way but in the sort of small, not-quite-right way of a badly-fitted shoe, wearable but imperfect; Charles has been feeling more and more as though he’s caught in some invisible web, unable to move back or to move forward, all too aware of the strange mood between them and yet unwilling to confront it. He knows, with a bone-deep, aching feeling, that the moment he does things will change, and he will fall off this knife-edge that he’s been balancing on where everything is okay, and this is good. If he can just keep his eyes on the horizon it’ll be fine, but he keeps having to remind himself not to look down.

Erik shifts under him, bringing one leg up to plant his foot solidly on the couch cushion; it opens up the space between his thighs, and Charles thinks -- it’s not so much a fully-formed thought as an idea, wanting to do something for Erik, something to prove to himself that this is good, that their relationship is as close to normal as it can be given their circumstances -- and so as the music peaks behind them and HAL starts systematically killing off the astronauts Charles slides his hand down Erik’s chest to cup him between his legs, massaging Erik there through the fabric of his pants.

Erik makes a soft noise against his mouth, surprise rather than arousal, but he doesn’t push Charles’ hand away. After a second he just reaches up to slip his fingers into Charles’ hair and keeps kissing him. Charles keeps working his hand, sucking on Erik’s tongue, before he finally breaks away and looks down at where Erik has barely stiffened in his grip.

Of course, Charles thinks, making himself steady, Erik needs more stimulation to get hard. Charles smiles at him and starts shifting down the couch, fingers moving to Erik’s fly to start on his zipper. There’s a brief flutter of irritation in Erik’s mind, quickly brushed away, and Erik mimics Charles’ facial expression, says, “Here, let me,” his hand slipping down past Charles’ to undo Charles’ fly with expert ease.

No. That was not in the plan. Charles was, he was going to ...

“Hey,” Charles says, a little taken aback; he takes hold of Erik’s hand, stilling it against his own thigh, and trying to meet Erik’s gaze. “I’m fine, I just … I wanted to do you.” It’s not that Charles isn’t turned on, and it sounds stupid when he says it aloud, but … he wanted to get Erik off, to prove that he wasn’t even thinking of himself. To prove to himself if nobody else that it’s not just … not just Charles taking advantage.

Erik arches an eyebrow at him and glances down at Charles’ lap, where his erection is obviously straining the fabric of his dress trousers and says, “Fine, are you?” in a light, teasing tone. He leans in, close, and his lips brush against Charles’ neck, pressing a trail of kisses down toward the open collar of his shirt. 

“I just … ” Charles pauses, makes a face, squirming a little, the awkward, sordid feeling growing inside him somewhere that he can’t suppress it. “I wanted to make you feel good. That would make me feel good,” he tries.

Erik doesn’t even seem to have noticed that Charles is getting distressed; he just nips at the skin near his collarbone and then draws back, settling his head against the sofa cushions once more. “All right,” he says, tugging his hand out of Charles’ grip and settling it on his back instead, shifting his thighs to give Charles better access. There’s nothing about the way his body arches up toward Charles’ hand, or the licentious little grin Erik gives him before kissing him again, that suggests Erik doesn’t want this -- except he doesn’t, and it’s clearly written across all but his most surface thoughts, a tangled knot of resignation, a sense of wishing they could just go back to watching the movie, or even kissing, but that first Erik must endure what it is Charles wants from him.

Charles feels sick. He feels -- like everything has gone dark, the energy sucked out of him like a juiced fruit, just the husk of himself left, tattered and gross. Oh, God. Erik doesn’t -- he doesn’t even want this, and it hits Charles all at once, all the things he’s been trying to ignore, because for Erik it is, was, and always will be something that he does _for_ Charles, not _with_ Charles. It’s not even that this is so different from the times before, it’s just that Charles is _admitting_ it to himself, finally seeing beyond his rose-tinted blindfold.

Perhaps, he thinks, he should have taken the hint when he saw Erik’s nightmare, and saw Erik bending over backwards to please Shaw, to play the coquette and pretend he wanted it, to make Shaw happy. Perhaps Charles should have admitted to himself then that he -- that he’s merely taken over Shaw’s part in the second run of the production, stepping into the spotlight as the new lead actor.

“Never mind,” he says, withdrawing his hand jerkily and sitting up; the nauseous sensation intensifies in his throat until he’s not entirely sure that he won’t actually throw up. Stupid, stupid, stupid -- Charles is the stupidest, most disgusting person on Earth, and now he knows it for sure. His voice when he hears himself speak is disturbingly normal, like somebody else is piloting his body, pretending to be him. “I’ll go get us some popcorn. Can you pause the DVD?”

Erik frowns at him, confusion rising up as the dominant emotion in his mind, blotting out all the others. “Did I do something wrong?” he says, pushing himself up, as ever, only concerned with whether or not he’s made Charles happy. One of his hands is still on Charles’ leg, Erik slowly sliding it up his thigh, toward his hip; Charles puts his own hand over it to stop its progress and squeezes, shaking his head.

“No, you’re fine,” he says, with a weak smile. “I’ll be right back.”

Probably Charles should say, _you don’t have to do anything you don’t feel like_ , or, _did you think I wouldn’t be able to tell you’re not into this?_ or any of a myriad of different, reasonable things to explain to Erik why Charles is withdrawing. But he feels so … dirty, sordid, and he can’t bear to get any more of that on Erik, to sully him with it any longer. Charles …

Charles is the worst person he knows.

He gets up awkwardly and goes into the kitchen to fetch the popcorn, putting it into a bowl and into the microwave where he can watch it spin around and around, slowly bursting into puffs of all-but-air. He senses Erik’s decision to follow him before Erik is aware himself he’s decided it, and then Erik gets off the sofa and pads into the kitchen after him, his fingertips touching the small of Charles’ back and trailing across it. 

“Maybe we should forget about the DVD,” Erik suggests, and his hand slides up Charles’ spine slowly, a long hot track cutting upward until Erik’s fingers are dragging through his hair, caressing the back of his skull. “What do you think?” His lips are warm on the curve of Charles’ ear. “Shall we go upstairs?”

Charles swallows, hard, focusing on the microwave. “It’s okay,” he says with careful inflection, because he knows that … he knows that Erik is thinking that he wants to watch the movie but he can just come back down later, watch the rest of it after Charles falls asleep. “ _2001_ is a classic. We should finish it.”

“Mmm. And what if I don’t want that?” Erik murmurs, his hand keeping up that criminally-arousing movement near the nape of Charles’ neck. “What if I want _you?_ ”

It’s enough to make him want to cry. “You’d rather watch the movie,” Charles says quietly, as the microwave beeps and he reaches forward to open the door, taking out the inflated bag. “Telepath, remember? Let’s do what you really want to do, not what you think I want you to want to do.”

Erik’s fingers still, and a moment later Erik draws back, his hands falling away. “You’re one step ahead, as usual,” Erik says, but he doesn’t sound upset by it; a little bemused, maybe, that this is the first time Charles has decided to draw that line, but mostly relieved. He’s smiling when Charles looks around at him, reaching to take the bag and tear it open in a puff of steam. “Later tonight, then.”

“Later,” Charles echoes, though when it comes to later he claims a headache and lays down to spend an unquiet night trying not to drown himself in his own despair.

*

Charles meets Raven for coffee a couple of days later in a sweet little place near her and Hank’s apartment, one where she is clearly well-known and well-liked by the barista given the speed with which they’re served. It’s a small, narrow shopfront with green-and-gold painted windowframes and a counter that seems to double as a chalkboard, with the menu written on it in neat hand-printed letters; the furniture is all aged-looking wood, the walls exposed brick. It’s very Raven, and Charles follows her inside as if he were walking a tightrope, trying to keep his emotional balance so she won’t pick up on how turmoiled his inner thoughts have been, still are, since the other night.

It’s a little awkward anyway, given the way they’d argued last time they saw each other, but once they’ve ordered and taken their seats at a table in the back of the shop Raven just looks at Charles and says, bluntly, “I’m sorry I was such a bitch at Christmas.”

“It’s okay,” Charles says, but she interrupts him.

“No, it’s not okay,” she says, stirring her coffee with overzealous vigor until it’s almost slopping over the sides, black swishing against the white china like a turbulent sea. Her mouth tightens. “I’m not saying I was wrong in anything I said or my concerns, but it was the wrong time to bring it up and I’m sorry I ruined Christmas. Will you forgive me?”

This, too, like the shop, is very Raven. Charles reaches across the table to still Raven’s stirrer, clasping her hand in his own. “Thank you for apologizing. I appreciate it and I’m sure Erik will too.”

“I shouldn’t have brought up Mother.”

“That’s probably true.”

Raven winces, her face screwing up in a grimace. “Yeah, that was a misstep. I don’t -- Charles, I don’t think you’re like Mother, okay? I’m just really worried about you and Erik and the whole Domination thing, and it reminded me of what things were like when we were kids, and -- ”

“Stop,” Charles says, and when Raven goes to continue he squeezes her hand tighter, giving it a little shake. “ _Stop_. I told you the other day, it’s not something you need to worry about.” The very thought of Raven digging deeper into Charles and Erik’s relationship makes Charles feel sick, his own distress at the uneasiness of their relationship magnified just imagining what Raven would say. 

“Charles,” Raven says, frowning. “We both know you don’t have a great relationship with Domination. I’m happy for you that you’ve found out you can be Dommed if the Dom is strong enough, but I’m not sure it’s healthy that that person is Erik.”

Charles shakes his head, trying to put on a normal expression, one of the ones he wears for difficult therapy sessions, to look solid and in control. “He’s just stretching his muscles a little bit and I’m the best one for him to practice with,” he says, swallowing down bile. “Who else is going to be able to put a stop to things if Erik goes too far? What am I supposed to do, let him practice on other teenagers? Erik doesn’t know his own strength and he has none of the sense of normal restraint that most Dominants grow up learning. At least I can fight back if I have to.”

Raven makes a face and picks up her coffee with her free hand, taking a sip. “Still,” she says, lips pursed, “Charles, you’re pretty fucked up. Erik is pretty fucked up. Fucked up plus fucked up does not cancel out, it just _multiplies_ by like a factor of a thousand. What happened to you with Cain doesn’t just go away now because it’s Erik and you love him, okay? And Erik is not mature enough and stable enough to work you through all the crazy shit that I’m sure is bottled up in your head. You need a grown-up Dominant who can help you with that, not a kid who’s more screwed up than you are.”

And doesn’t Charles just know it.

He looks down at his tea, and when Raven doesn’t continue he reaches for the milk jug and adds it slowly, watching the color lighten from a deep dark brown to a pale taupe, washed out and weaker than before, cool enough to drink. “I know,” he says finally, lifting it to his lips and drinking. The cup clinks against the saucer when he puts it back down. “Raven, I didn’t want to take Erik’s case in the first place but Moira tricked me into it, and now I’m here and I can’t take that back. Erik needs me, and I’m helping him. If you’re not happy with that then I understand, but I can’t let Cain run the rest of my life for me. He did enough damage when we were kids.”

“Charles … ”

“Erik is a good person trapped in a shitty life,” Charles says to his tea, reaching for his pastry and starting to tear it into small pieces. “It’s my job … it’s supposed to be my job to not make that any worse.” A job he’s been failing at, a job he’s dropped and stomped all over until he’s ground it into the dirt. “That’s what a parent does, or so I’ve been led to understand.”

Raven is quiet for a moment, and thankfully -- ha! -- Charles can hear her thoughts turning away from Erik and back to their childhood, an equally upsetting but less immediately painful topic of conversation. “I haven’t heard from Kurt again. Have you?”

Charles shakes his head, picking up a piece of croissant. “No. But it’s only been a few days. Give it time, I’m sure he’ll come crawling out from under his rock. My guess is he’s broke and wants to get back into the family accounts. Under no circumstances is he to have any of our money, do you understand?”

“Duh,” Raven says. “I mean, it’s not as if I liked him either. It’s just weird to hear from him again. I thought all of that life was gone now, what with Mother dead and Cain probably dead and Kurt having left to do whatever the hell he’s been doing these past ten years. It really freaked me out to see his signature on that card.”

“Yeah,” Charles says, and puts the croissant in his mouth so he can escape having to respond.

Things are quiet between them for another minute, just the sounds of china clinking and liquid sloshing, until finally Raven says, “What is up with you today? You’re being so weird.

Charles flinches, just a tiny motion of his face, but he knows she’s seen it. “What do you mean?” he asks, looking up and trying to look innocent.

“You know,” she says, and she’s frowning, her scales catching the light and shining iridescent on her brow. “Charles, you’re so … down. You’ve been weird for ages but this is worse again -- did you and Erik have another fight?”

“No.” Charles wishes that were the problem; if he could air this and clear it up that would be a blessing. But he’s growing to understand that the only options he has are all bad ones, and that malaise has been hanging over him for days, dragging him down. No wonder Raven’s picked up on it, she always knows when he’s lost his energy.

“Well, something is wrong.” She’s still frowning, almost squinting at him, trying to read his face; Charles waves a hand at her, trying to distract her, but she just takes his hand and presses it down to the tabletop, mouth twisting. “Charles, tell me what’s wrong. Are you fighting with Erik?”

“I said no,” Charles says a little too sharply, and tugs his hand free, scowling at Raven. “I know that you’re worried about me being Dominated, but frankly it’s rich coming from you given that you’ve spent years telling me I needed it to now turn around and tell me that you’re worried and you think it’s dangerous and heaven knows what else. Erik is not Cain, he doesn’t beat me or make me punish myself or force me to sleep outside or any of that sort of thing, and if there was a problem I would sort it out myself. I didn’t get my Domme sister’s help then, and I don’t need it now!”

Raven rears back, stung, and Charles closes his mouth tightly, clamping his teeth shut to keep himself from following up. After a few seconds he says, “That was unfair. I apologize.”

“No, you don’t get to take back the truth,” Raven says, crossing her arms across her chest defensively. “There’s no returns on that.”

“Still, you were younger than me and a third Cain’s size. You couldn’t have done anything,” Charles says, looking down into his tea again. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Raven shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I just -- I suppose seeing you being Dominated freaks me out, even now. But I really do think that you need to find an _adult_ who can Dom you in a romantic relationship. It being your kid is just wrong.”

This whole conversation feels like standing in traffic and hoping not to get sideswiped by someone’s wing-mirror, and Charles takes a breath, lets it out, makes himself relax and says, “I know that. Let’s talk about something else.”

“Like what?”

“Anything else,” Charles says, and it’s a long time before either of them really relaxes enough to enjoy having coffee together, and a longer time still before Charles can get Raven’s voice out of his head.

*

_Erik_

School resumes, and Erik has practice the very first day classes start back up again, so it's six by the time he's finished running, showered, changed back into street clothes and made it home. He's humming along to one of Grieg's Peer Gynt suites when he lets himself into the apartment, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out his phone and switch the music app off before he toes off his boots and sets them, along with the coat and his scarf, out to dry on the newsprint he laid out this morning on the floor to catch snowmelt. He slips his headphones into his satchel and heads for the den, calling out Charles' name.

"In here," Charles says, and when Erik enters the room he finds Charles sat in his armchair still dressed in the suit he left for work in today, as formal as Erik's ever seen him at home.

"Hey," Erik says, smiling at him and setting his satchel down on the floor near the sofa, easy to grab again when he needs to do homework. "What's the occasion? You're still all dressed up." He crosses to where Charles is sitting and leans over to drape his arms around his neck in a half-embrace, patting him on the chest with one hand. 

Slowly, Charles reaches up and takes hold of Erik's wrist, lifting his hand away. His eyes are very serious, his mouth a flat line where normally there would be even the hint of a smile, something to soften the severity of the rest of him. When he speaks his voice, too, is serious, so neutral it's painful. "Erik ... sit down. We need to talk."

"All right," Erik says, trying to tamp down the sudden uncertainty that itches against the inside of his sternum. He tugs his wrist out of Charles' grasp and sits, obediently, on the nearest cushion of the sofa. Has something happened? Has someone died? His mind is flipping too quickly through all the possibilities, each one more horrible than the last, but it's impossible to guess. He's never seen Charles like this before. "What is it?"

"I want you to know," Charles starts, and as his gaze meets Erik's Erik can feel Charles’ uneasiness, a crushed kind of distress that shows in the line of his mouth if nowhere else, "that I've thought long and hard about this. It's not my anxiety talking, or groundless concerns. I won't be swayed; my decision is final.” A breath in, then out, then Charles continues, “Erik, we can’t have a sexual relationship any longer. It's not healthy for you or for me, and we need to put an end to it before things go any further."

Erik stares at him for a long moment, not sure he's heard correctly -- not willing to accept the way it feels like the bottom has dropped out of his stomach, leaving him cold and sick. "What?" he says. It just … he hadn’t seen this coming, not at all. They’ve been happy, haven’t they? They both get what they want: Erik sleeps with Charles, and Charles stays. It’s what they _agreed._ “No. We talked about this. We’ve already had this conversation.” 

"I know this is hard," Charles says, and it’s -- he's still human, he swallows, mimicking Erik's motion, but the rest of him is almost robotic, rigid, from the knot of his tie snugged up tight to his throat to the ninety degree angle of his knees, picture perfect from head to toe. "But I was wrong to let this begin in the first place, and more wrong to let it continue despite my own concerns. I care for you very deeply, Erik, but I've let my judgment be clouded into letting me ignore things I knew would lead here, in the hopes they would go away if I didn't look straight at them. We can't have a sexual relationship any longer. We never should have to begin with, and that's my fault. I'm sorry."

“What did I do wrong?” Erik says, dazed; it doesn't sound like his own voice. He sounds like a child, sounds worried, desperate, like someone he doesn't recognize. “Charles, what happened?” He should have pushed harder yesterday when it seemed like Charles didn’t want him, he shouldn’t have just let it go. Somewhere along the line he messed up, he must have, and now he’s ruined it for both of them.

Charles' mouth changes, a sorrowful, pained smile curving its shape and hooding his eyes. "Nothing, I just love you, very much," he says, folding his hands in his lap. "And I was right, when I said you were re-enacting your abuses with me; I was right when I said that I was abusing you by having sex with you, and I refuse to keep on hurting you, even if you don't see the knife in my hand or feel the cuts. Pretending you want it -- you can’t fool me, the way you fool everyone else. I fooled myself, for a while. But you don’t want this, and I won’t press it on you just because I can. You don't need to have sex with me for me to love you, Erik. You never have."

“That’s a lie,” Erik says abruptly, and he’s on his feet without realizing he stood up, the room tilting dangerously before his very eyes. “That’s a lie, and you know it -- because we _tried_ it the other way, and you couldn’t even stand to look at me. I give this to you, things go back to how they were. That’s what we agreed. That’s what _worked._ You don’t get to develop a conscience now!” 

Erik can’t go back to living like that, when it felt like the whole world had become Charles’ shadow, the omnipresence of his absence. What is Charles saying … that he’s sending Erik away? Or that he’s thought it through, and cutting himself out of Erik’s life from the root is the best decision after all, that whatever Erik thinks, he doesn’t know his own happiness, that it’s somehow more important not to fuck him than it is to love him.

“I’ll be better,” Charles says, his mouth tightening and curling downward before he can straighten it out, hide that away again. “Erik -- I hate it, I hate knowing that you don’t want me, that I’m making you -- you believe that there is something wrong in you that makes people want you, that makes people into pedophiles and rapists? What does that say about me, if I'm just the latest addition to that category? I can’t keep allowing myself to be that person. I can’t keep just -- taking advantage of that. I’m no better than Shaw, no better than Cain. I just … I didn’t even have to be cruel to get what I wanted, I tricked myself into thinking I was being kind."

“I don’t believe you,” Erik says. “You won’t be better. You hate yourself too much to be better. You’ll try, and it won’t work, and then you’ll send me away, because you’d rather be a martyr than be with me.” Erik's face is burning, with anger and embarrassment both, the sheer humiliation of it all only making him more infuriated, the two emotions playing off each other, sick, twisted. "Why do you need to say you’re the same as him all the time? You think it absolves you of anything, if you can convince yourself I think that of you? _Fuck you_ , Charles. You dug your grave, and now you have to lie in it."

"If I thought it would do any good," Charles says, "I would turn myself into the police. I am guilty -- I am far more guilty than Shaw, or any of the Hellfire Club, because I knew what I was doing was wrong, felt bad about it, and did it anyway despite my conscience. But all imprisoning myself would do is leave you with someone else who might not stop themselves." His face is so neutral, so painfully, carefully blank, that Erik wants to break it -- to obliterate it, to tear off the mask and see what feelings Charles is really hiding under there.

Erik’s whole body feels like Charles has strung a live wire through him, electricity sparking -- maybe that explains why the lights are flickering, a buzzing sound growing in Erik's ears, the picture frames rattling on the walls. "Is this a game for you?" he says. "Like poker, where you can never show your hand until you're _destroying -- everything?_ " He isn’t breathing, not properly, his lungs choking on the air. "You let me think we were okay, and we weren't. You let me -- _Fick dich selbst, schweinepriester_. If this is a game, you’re the one who made the rules. You don’t get to change them now."

"Be that as it may," Charles says, still sitting, looking up at Erik, "I'm not going to change my mind. This is the right thing to do, whether you like it or not. I'm sorry, Erik. I never meant to hurt you, but better to rip the bandaid off now."

"If you didn't want to hurt me," Erik says, cruelly, wanting to cut Charles as deeply as he himself has been cut, "then you shouldn't have fucked me to begin with."

At this Charles does wince, and he gets slowly to his feet. "If you'll recall," he says, very quietly, "I wasn't going to, until you put me into subspace. It wasn't intentional." He's let some of the mask drop, now, and Erik can see the pain in his eyes, the whiteness of his clenched knuckles. "Now if you'll excuse me."

"No," Erik says, and he catches Charles' arm, gripping too tightly -- he won’t let Charles simply walk away like this. Erik wants to drag it out, all of it, make Charles _experience_ it the way he's making Erik. Make him realize what he's doing. Make him _stay._

Charles doesn’t get to exonerate himself this easily. If he’s so desperate to play the martyr -- well, let him. Let him take a good, long look at what he’s done.

"You listen to me, now," Erik says harshly, evenly. "If you really thought it was so horrible, then you would have stopped it the very next morning. You would have told me it would never happen again. Better yet, you would have contacted Gabrielle, or Raven, or my case worker, and told them what we did. But you didn't. You know why that is? It's because you wanted it to keep happening! It's because it was easier to convince yourself you weren't _raping a child_ if I put you down into subspace first. So if that's what you really think you did," Erik says the words slowly, poisonously, "then please, Charles. Don't be so easy on yourself."

But Charles ... Charles flinches, a soft sound coming from him like the sound of a man being stabbed, but then he _nods_ , and takes a deep, shaking breath before he says, "You're right, of course. I'm a coward and a pervert. I acknowledge my faults, Erik. I didn't stop things when I should have because I was enjoying myself too much to do the right thing.” God, Charles’ face is wet -- he’s got _tears_ running down his face as he says, voice strained, “If I'm perfectly honest I would really rather cease to exist, but I'm not brave enough to hurt myself enough for that, so I will simply have to try and live with myself." He steps to the side, around Erik, and heads towards the gallery, his head ducked like he can’t bear for Erik to see his face, or like he himself can’t bear to see Erik.

Erik nearly orders him back. He could put Charles all the way down into subspace with a single command if he wanted to, he knows he could, and the only thing that stops him doing it is the knowledge that if Charles stays ... if they keep on like this for much longer, Erik doesn't know what he'll do. And he doesn't trust himself not to bring this entire building crashing down around their heads.

What hurts worst is not what Charles thinks Erik wants from him, but what Charles thinks of himself. That Charles hates himself so much that he'd rather die than keep living with what he's done, that the only thing keeping him from tying a convenient knot in a convenient rope is the same cowardice that locked them together in that cycle for so long. A part of Erik, a cruel part, thinks -- _Good. He deserves it._ The greater part of Erik would do anything to make that go away, and both parts are completely drowned out by his own sense of betrayal. Loss, like a heavy weight sinking into his stomach and anchoring him to the bottom of the ocean. 

"If you're not home by eleven PM," Erik says at Charles' retreating back, his own words echoing in his ears, "I will call the police myself. Do you understand?"

Charles pauses and turns back around, giving Erik a tight, sad smile, just the corner of his mouth quirking. "Don't worry," he says. "I'm not going to go and get myself killed. I just need to walk for a while. You can keep track of me with this, if you want." He raises his hand and the ring Erik made him flashes on his finger as he slips it off, then drops it into his breast pocket, on the inside of his jacket. "I'll be back later."

Erik nods, and hates the way it feels like he's giving permission when he isn't, not at all. But what else is there to do? His power is still seething through his veins like a wild, uncontrollable thing, and he can't keep listening to Charles spew this bullshit, not without wanting to rip a wide seam through the very heart of New York's steel city. "By eleven," he says again. "If you give a fuck about me at all, you'll do this for me."

"Don't be an idiot," Charles says, and he turns away again, heading for the front door. "I love you more than anyone else in the world. You should know that by now."

Erik stands there in the living room, right where Charles left him with his feet rooted to the floor, until the front door opens and then shuts again, and Charles is horribly, finally, gone.

*


	23. Twenty-Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw in notes at the end of the chapter.

_Charles_

Charles walks, and walks, and walks. He walks until his feet hurt and his legs ache, bundling himself up in his coat as if it's enough to keep the cold out after this long outdoors -- it isn't. The cold is deep down in his bones, now, settled there, burning him from the marrow outwards. His shoes are covered in a fine layer of snow and soaked through with the melt of earlier dustings, until his feet feel as though they’ve shrunk down to skin and bone, frigid and frozen solid.

He knows he's done the right thing -- for Erik, for himself, morally and practically; there's no way they could hide something like that forever even if it was a healthy relationship, but it wasn't. It was damaging him, creating an unequal, awful dynamic between them where Charles took what he wanted and never mind what Erik wanted himself, just letting Erik feed Charles’ sick urges to try and win more love from him. And yet his heart still hurts, the deep slashing cuts of Erik's pain and anger and confusion like salt in the wound.

Charles pauses on a corner and waits for the light, drawing his shoulders up around his ears as though they can provide some small protection from the bitter wind. The worst of it is knowing that he knew better, and let himself be persuaded anyway by the voice in his head that said it would be better this way, that Erik was capable of making the choice freely for himself -- lies, all lies. Charles just did what every pervert does -- let himself believe he wasn’t doing any real harm.

He knows he made the right choice. It's just that it was also the hard one, the one that meant looking himself in the eye.

Sometime around nine he finds himself in the Village, and with a sigh Charles makes his way the two blocks to Raven and Hank's apartment, kicking through the slush and ignoring the wet trickles of meltwater running down the back of his neck.

When he reaches the door of their building he doesn't bother ringing the buzzer; instead he just looks in his mind for Raven where he can feel her up on the sixth floor and says, silently, _Hey, it's me. I'm downstairs. Can I come up?_

There's a moment of surprise, Raven's mind pausing while it processes the outside thought, then she thinks, _Sure, God, Charles, what are you doing out there? Come in, it's freezing out,_ and he feels her get up from the couch to go press the entry button and open the door.

Charles takes the elevator up, shivering now as he starts to slowly warm up.

"Shit, Charles, you look like a ghost," Raven says as soon as the elevator doors open. She's been waiting for him on the other side in her flannel pyjamas and one of Hank’s college sweaters; she grabs him by the arm and almost drags him along to the apartment, her grip implacable. "What the hell happened? You never just show up -- what's going on?"

The apartment feels too warm after the chill of outside, casually and domestically messy, and Hank is sat at his desk, watching them as they come in; his hands have stilled on whatever it is he's tinkering with, and he feels worried, too, his brow creasing as he looks at Charles. "I'll make you a hot drink," he says, getting to his feet. "Raven, we should probably get him a blanket -- could you do that while I make coffee?"

"Sit here," Raven orders Charles, depositing him on the couch and bustling off to fetch the blanket.

Charles sits, still shivering, and starts to tug off his gloves, one finger at a time. It's difficult when his fingers feel like sausages he's manipulating with strings, not like his own digits at all. Raven comes back and tsks at him, sitting down beside him and taking over.

"Here," she says, dropping his gloves to the floor and starting on his coat. "Charles, what's happened? Tell me."

"I fucked up," Charles says honestly, letting his arms fall limply to his sides as Raven finishes with the buttons of his coat, lets her push it back over his shoulders and down his arms, and doesn't resist when she drags the tails out from under his seat and wraps the blanket around him, closing it in front. "I fucked up, Raven. That's what happened."

"With Erik?" she asks as Hank comes back into the room; he hands Charles a mug of coffee directly, but it's too hot to hold now with his chilled fingers, and Charles puts it down on the coffee table immediately, hissing at the heat. Raven starts on his shoes, plucking at the soaked laces. "I knew something was up -- you denied it so hard your nose grew by four feet and practically took my eye out. I’m not an idiot."

Charles glances sidelong at Hank, who is hovering beside them, lost without an immediate action to take; he doesn't want to be rude, but he's not sure he can tell Raven what happened, let alone Hank. Raven picks up on the hesitation, and her mouth twists for a moment before she turns and says, "Hank, could you work in the bedroom for a while? Or we can go, if you need the desk."

"It's fine," Hank says; he's curious but not insulted as he gathers up some papers, looking again at Charles, worry singing through his mind. "Call me if you need me." He leaves the room, and Charles waits until he can feel Hank settled at the far end of the apartment before he lets himself sag forward and rest his forehead against Raven's shoulder, shaking now not entirely from the cold.

"What did you do, Charles?" Raven asks, letting her arms rest around his back, enfolding him. "You can tell me. I promise not to tell a soul. On pain of pain."

Charles can't make himself lift his head. He doesn't want to see Raven's face when he says it, but at the same time he can’t not say it, can’t keep it inside any longer, pretending to be a good man. "I ... " he starts, then stops, having to force the words out. "I got involved. Sexually. With Erik."

He feels Raven's body stiffen, every muscle in her tensing as her mind explodes with -- every emotion, disgust, worry, vindication at being right, horror at being right, every kind of sick feeling that makes Charles cringe more, wait for her hands to come away from his back. But they stay put, at least for now, though they're no longer pressing him closer -- they're just _there_ , hot against his frozen spine.

"What do you mean?" Raven asks slowly, deliberately, like she's testing out the words. "What do you mean exactly, Charles -- what are we talking about here?"

"I mean we were having sex," Charles says to her collarbone. "For ... the past two weeks, or so. It started right after his birthday. I'd been ... attracted, for a while. Erik noticed."

Raven's mind is whirling between too many things for Charles to know what she truly thinks. No sooner does she settle on one thing than she's off to another, fragments of thoughts, images, memories and feelings. "Charles, you have to know that this is not something a sister wants to hear her brother admit to," she says finally, her hands finally moving -- forming into fists against his shoulder blades. "I don't know what to say. Was it ... is it still ...?"

"No," Charles says hastily, shaking his head rapidly. "No, I broke it off -- today, I broke it off today. I told Erik we had to stop." It's imperative that Raven knows that, that Charles knows she knows. "I ... you have to believe me, Raven, it's not something I was going to do. I fought so hard, and I failed, and I know that's no excuse but I ... I know it was wrong. And I hate myself for it."

"Not something you were going to do," she says. He feels her next question before she asks it, flinches even as she says, "Charles -- do you mean Erik ... _made_ you?" The word 'raped' hangs in the air, unsaid, but they both hear it nonetheless.

"I ... no, no," Charles says, and at last he sits back, looking at Raven with what he knows is a stricken expression. "I -- the first time he put me into subspace to calm me down, we were fighting, I was out of control. It wasn't anything I didn't want to do, he knew I wanted it, I was just -- "

"Incapable of true consent," Raven says, with a sickly green tinge to her face. "I didn't know Erik could do that to you -- you never told me he could put you under! Charles, you know as well as I do that -- "

"He didn't force me into doing anything I didn't want to do," Charles interrupts, his whole belly lurching. He's still shaking, his blue fingers curling in his lap, clutching at the blanket. "It was -- after that I was, it was me, Raven. It wasn’t him. We talked about it and we agreed to keep going, but really that meant me deciding it was, that we should. And I was … it was … oh, God. I just, I’m not the sort of … "

"Well apparently you _are_ the sort of man who fucks teenagers," Raven finishes for him. "Jesus Christ, Charles -- Jesus Christ."

She gets up from the couch and turns her back on him, pacing across the floor all the way to the wall before turning back to meet his eyes, her own wide and pained. "I don't know what to do with this," she says, almost begs, the uncertainty in her voice painful to hear. "I can't pretend I'm not -- that this isn't really disturbing, that I'm not wondering who you are, because my brother would never -- _why_ , Charles?"

"Because ... " Charles curls in on himself, covering his face with one hand. "Erik is ... magnetic. Figuratively as well as literally. He's just ... I think ... he's so Dominant, Raven, and nobody else could ever ... "

"Put you down," she says, her voice almost a murmur now, softer amidst all the shock and shame she's feeling, as she comes back over to the couch and sits down again, though nowhere near touching him -- her skin is still crawling, Charles can feel it even as she says, "Charles ... you didn't _make_ him, did you? Put you down? I know how badly you've needed it, I just ... "

"No!" Charles rears back, a sick feeling of betrayal rising in his throat -- that Raven could _think_ \-- but he deserves it, of course she had to wonder -- he can hear her trying to make excuses for him, trying to use his inability to submit to anyone else as a reason, but it’s not true, and he can’t … he won’t let her believe better of him than he deserves. His voice comes out choked. "No, of course not. There was no subspace after the first couple of times, or not without him, uh, asking me, and it was ... as far as possible in that situation it was mutual. He … he offered, he said he wanted, that it was better with me. That he wanted me to be happy and I hadn’t been for a long time. Not that that makes it okay."

Raven’s nausea is infectious. "There's no such thing as mutual with an underage teenager," she says, her hands fisted on her thighs. “Is this why Erik asked for my advice? You -- oh, Jesus fuck, Charles, he wanted to know how to get you back because you’d withdrawn and I told him -- he went away and decided he had to fuck you to make you love him again. Fuck. Fuck!”

“It’s … ” Charles wants to say _it wasn’t like that_ , but the problem is that it _was_ , it was exactly like that and he knows it, it would be a lie to say otherwise.

Raven is glaring at him now, the fine bones of her hands practically creaking. “You set up a fucking _ultimatum_ for this kid, Charles, you basically made it so he had to fuck you or lose you, what the hell did you expect him to do? You realize of course that you're admitting to statutory rape. _Rape_ , Charles!"

Charles can’t bear to admit to her that Erik … that Erik didn’t even really _want_ him. That the deepest pain of them all is knowing … knowing that he made this happen, that Erik would never have touched him otherwise.

"I know!" Charles says, and he’s the one to get up this time, jumping shakily to his feet and reeling from the headrush, clutching the blanket more tightly around himself as he stands and shivers, unsure what he meant to do once he was on his feet. "Don't you think I know that? Why do you think I'm so -- I walked for four hours tonight, Raven, I wish I could just -- I hate myself, all right? I should never have touched him, I should have sent him away the moment I first -- "

"Sit down," Raven says, pointing at the couch, and Charles sits. "I don't know what to say. I'm so pissed at you right now -- God, Charles, it sounds like the perfect fucking storm of fucked up. You ... you really screwed up, Charles. I can’t fucking believe you would do this. I don’t even know you right now."

"Do you hate me?" Charles asks, but Raven shakes her head.

"No. Right now I'm not capable of deciding _how_ I feel, but don’t interpret that as anything approaching sympathy for you. I'm too busy being freaked out."

Charles says, stiffly, "I understand if you don't want me around." It feels like tearing off one of his own limbs, but this, too, he knows he deserves.

"I don't know what I think," Raven says, with a heaving sigh, and she leans back into the couch, staring up at the ceiling, breathing softly through her mouth, like she's struggling to get enough oxygen. "You should drink your coffee. You're still shivering."

"All right," Charles says quietly, and he leans forward to pick it up, stares into the black depths of his mug and tries not to break down again while waiting for Raven's verdict.

“You should stay here tonight whatever I decide,” Raven says finally, still staring upwards, her face blank of emotion. “You promise me it’s over with?”

“I promise,” Charles says, with as much sincerity as he has ever packed into two words, heartsick and bruised all over inside, like a squeezed peach. “But I can’t. Erik made me promise to come home and prove I was still alive and not dead and floating in the Hudson.”

“Wonderful,” Raven says. “He’s still acting like he has the right to order you around. Are you sure he knows you’ve broken up?”

“Yes,” Charles says, with a touch of bitter irony. “He definitely knows.”

*

_Erik_

Frank grunts and rolls off to the side, his cock dragging out of Erik's ass and drawing a slimy line across his buttock. "There," he says, smacking Erik's ass with a cupped palm. "That what you wanted?"

It's hard to identify a part of his body that doesn't hurt, from the slow-forming bruises on his skin to the bite marks on his shoulder, his ass. It feels like Frank has torn him in two, his bones hollowed out and leaving him feeling paper-thin, like a dead thing, _slut_ and _whore_ still ringing in his ears. It feels old and new all at the same time, like slipping into one’s own bed, but after the sheets have gone cold.

"Yes," Erik manages to say, his throat dry and raw, still aching from having Frank's cock shoved down it an hour earlier. His head's spinning a little, dizzy, vertiginous. Slowly, he pushes himself over, moving to lie on his back with his head next to Frank's on the single pillow, heart beating hummingbird-quick beneath his ribs. He tilts his head to one side, enough to glimpse Frank's face out of his peripheral vision. "You like it like that?" he asks.

"Sometimes," Frank says, scratching at his chest with blunt fingers. "You all right? Endorphins are gonna wear off sooner or later, and your body won't be happy when that happens. What gives, anyway? I mean, I'm happy to oblige, but you seem kind of amped up today."

"Rough week," Erik says, and he wants to laugh with how painfully inaccurate that seems, like saying a stroke is just a mild headache. He's barely spoken to Charles since it happened. The next night, Charles had somehow, without Erik noticing, already transferred Erik's clothes, his toiletries, back into Erik's bedroom, leaving him no excuse to go after them. No reason to catch Charles unsuspecting, alone, in an environment already laden heavy with implication for both of them. Erik hates the way he feels when he's alone, now, hates having to sit with the hurt and pain and loss, so he finds ways to not have to feel it. Finds ways to just be angry. It's easier.

"Fair enough," Frank says, and the mattress shakes with one of his mountainous shrugs, shoulders shifting. "You need any aftercare? I can take a look at your ass, if you want me to check for damage."

Erik's never needed aftercare in his life, not unless he was in the hospital and surgery counts as ‘aftercare’. He isn't about to start now. "No, thanks," he says, and turns his face back up toward the ceiling. "I know how it feels when something's torn. I'm fine."

Frank just makes a sound of agreement, and kicks at the blankets where they're bundled at his feet, hooks the edge with his toes and drags it up until he can reach it with his hands, draping it over his thighs. "Did you email Braden-Newell?" he asks next. "You hadn’t mentioned."

"Yeah," Erik says, a little bit thrown by the change in subject, even if he's grateful for it in a way. He snags the corner of Frank's blanket and tugs it over himself as well, even though it does nothing to dampen the chill that's set into his bones. "I did. A while ago, actually. I haven’t heard back."

“Eh, he’s a busy man I guess,” Frank says. “Plus Christmas. He probably has to play the Grinch in his local kindergarten production of Dr Seuss.”

Erik fakes a smile and, beneath the sheets, runs his fingertips down his chest, his stomach, feeling the twinge of bruises when he touches too hard, the hot crescents where Frank’s short nails dug in, his own skin, hot and shivering a little. “Is that what’s passing as mutant inclusion these days,” he murmurs. “‘We need someone to play the Grinch. How about that freaky green man?’”

Frank shrugs. "Mutants aren't oppressed any more," he says. "Didn't you hear? We're liberated. Free to be cast as every weirdo and monster without it being just because we’re mutants, but because we were ‘right for the part.’" He reaches across to the nightstand and picks up a packet of cigarettes, flicking one out and placing it between his lips, a moment later and he's got a lighter in hand, too, setting the flame to the tip. "Do you mind?" he asks, but only after he's already lit up.

When Frank exhales, the smoke clouds up above their faces, and the sickly sweet tobacco smell floods Erik's nostrils and makes him feel light-headed. He blinks, and for a moment he's lying on a different bed, in a different time. _Makes you stronger._

"Only if you aren't sharing," Erik says, and he pushes himself up slowly, ignoring the way his ribs protest in pain, his abdomen clenching up as if to protect itself. It's a relief when he can collapse back against the headboard, even if his muscles keep twitching long afterward, sending sharp shockwaves shivering up and down his spine.

Frank offers him the box, lid already open to show another dozen cigarettes waiting to be lit. "Didn't think you smoked. You always stand upwind."

"I quit," Erik says, and reaches for a cigarette anyway, tugging the narrow white cylinder out from between its fellows and bringing it up to his mouth, taking the lighter from Frank with his power. When he breathes in his vision goes dark around the edges, and for a moment he's worried he won't be able to stay here, in this reality, with Frank, that when he opens his eyes again the man next to him in the bed will be Sebastian Shaw. But then it clears, and he's still awake. Lucid, or at least for now. "Thanks."

"Just don't tell your dad on me, okay? I like my brain the way it is."

Erik snorts and blows out smoke, watching it spin and curl up toward the ceiling. "He doesn't care. He won't make me stop telepathically, and what else is he going to do? Order me down?" Erik smirks, if bitterly. If he flinches when Frank calls Charles his dad, well, maybe Frank will just think it's the chill.

Frank gives Erik a sidelong look. "Pretty sure you've always talked about him like his heart bleeds on the floor everywhere he goes. Something happen?" He taps ashes into a dirty glass on the nightstand.

"Yes," Erik says, because he isn't going to lie -- not to Frank, anyway, his mutant brother, the only person right now that Erik feels like he can trust at all. "But I have it under control." 

Time for a new topic, he thinks. "How are classes? I'm thinking of applying to Columbia. Have to, pretty much. Not sure the humans are going to let me leave the city just for college."

"It's okay," Frank says. "Same old same old. Learning, work, seminar, etcetera. Forcing information into a brain that's already full of other information."

"Not too different from high school, then," Erik says. Well. He isn't sure about public schools, but at least at Trinity, everyone is stretched as thinly as possible trying to cram as many APs and internships as possible into their junior year to look competitive for their Ivy applications. He takes another drag on his cigarette and nods in the direction of the still-empty bed on the other side of the room. "Your roommate still out of town?"

Frank shrugs. "Not sure he's coming back, to be honest. He didn't really settle first semester. Probably got home to his mama and couldn't bear to leave her. We'll see." He drops the rest of his cigarette into the glass. "What are you doing for the rest of the day? I've got class in an hour or so, can't skip it."

Erik almost grimaces. The thought of going home right now, to an apartment that, despite Charles' presence, feels impossibly empty, is ... no. Being there makes him feel like he's slowly being buried under a thousand tons of snow. He doesn't want to face it until he absolutely has to.

"Nothing, really," he says. "As long as it isn't some bullshit course like Welsh Poetry or Gender and Submission Studies, I think I'd like to check out your class, if you don't mind. Add some variety to my education."

"Nah, it's Mech E," Frank says. "You can come if you want, professor won't even notice." He sits up at last, swinging his legs out of bed. "Shower's down the hall, if you want one. You can borrow Kumal’s towel, I'll wash it before he comes back."

"Thanks," Erik says, and gingerly moves toward the edge of the bed, trying to ignore the way pain is building up in his body with the motion. Frank was right; the endorphins have worn off, now, and Erik's never been the type to enjoy being in agony. He's lucky Frank knows his own strength -- for the most part, anyway. Erik's pretty sure one of his ribs is cracked from the pressure of Frank's thumb; every time he takes a breath it sends pain lancing through him and sets his stomach to throbbing. He feels a surge of renewed appreciation for Frank's strength-enhancing mutation.

He grabs the towel Frank offers him, wrapping it around his hips, and wincing as he bends to retrieve his clothes from where they're scattered across the dorm room floor. "Back in five," he says, glancing back at Frank, who has picked up his cell phone from the dresser and is tapping out a text with one finger.

Frank just waves his hand, distracted. "Yeah, okay," and Erik goes, walking down the hall to the bathroom and trying to focus on the way every step hurts. It's the best way to keep himself occupied, distracted, so he doesn't think about anything else. So his mind is too strung-out and dizzy to remember Charles exists at all.

*

Erik barely manages to pay attention in his classes. When he isn't thinking about how much his body still hurts, he's thinking about Charles. The way a teacher phrases something that reminds him of him. How peaceful Charles looked in the early morning, lips parted against the pillow, hair fallen into his face. How Charles used to cling to Erik with both hands like he never wanted him to go away.

What a fucking joke, Erik thinks angrily, digging the tip of his pen into his notebook until the paper breaks. Charles is the one who left, in the end. And of course he would be. Of course Erik should have known this would never last.

It's not that he doesn't understand why Charles did it. Everything he reads online talks about statutory rape, molestation, incest -- and somehow Charles has internalized all that despite Erik's attempts to reassure him. He's so very fucking _moral_ that he can't see a good thing when it's right in front of his face. He didn't realize that Erik was _happy_ to give him what he wanted. And even if Erik was just loaning Charles his body, his Dominance, to fix things between them -- well, so what? It worked, didn't it?

He can tell Madelyne knows something is up; she passes him a dozen notes, texts him twenty times, trying to get him to tell her what's wrong, and she doesn't believe him when he says he just hasn't been sleeping well. There's no telling her the truth. She might be his friend, and he might have promised, once, to tell her these sorts of things, but he's not an idiot. He knows what she'd think. She'd call the police, and they'd take Charles away, make Erik stand on trial as witness against Charles the same way they made him witness against Shaw. But they’re not the same. And Erik promised he'd never tell.

She catches up to him all the same when their last class lets out, thankfully trailed by Petra and Evan, who are sharing a bag of potato chips between them.

"You're being really cagey today," she says, no preamble, coming to walk alongside Erik, her shorter legs having to scramble to keep up. "What's happened? I know something's wrong, so don't lie to me."

"Bad night," Erik says at last, deciding telling one story is better than telling the other. "Broken rib. I thought you didn't want me telling you all the dirty details of my sex life, remember?" He fixes her with a look, and she flushes, clutching her book closer to her chest.

"I don't," she says, though her voice isn't as firm as before. Interesting. "Are you okay? Do you need to get it looked at? I'm betting you didn't go to the doctor."

"I'm fine," he says, and he tries to soften his tone a little, although he's not entirely sure he succeeds. He gives her a small smile and rests his hand briefly on her back, between her shoulder blades. "That's what I get for fucking someone who weighs a hundred pounds more than I do."

"Oh yeah," Evan moans through a mouthful of potato chip. "Crush me harder."

"You're disgusting," Petra says, and punches him in the arm. "Erik, like, have you ever thought about some kind of screening process?"

"What do you mean?"

Petra rolls her eyes. "Like, will they crush me to death, yes or no, if the answer is yes then I won't fuck them."

"Even built guys have to get laid sometime," Erik says, and decides to keep it to himself that the person in question is Frank, considering he and Petra are friends. He's not entirely sure how they know each other, and since Frank's gay, that may well end up being sensitive information. 

"Personally I prefer to be able to breathe," Petra says, and Evan makes an indeterminate noise, his mouth full.

"You should really get it checked out," Madelyne says, poking Erik in the arm. "Don't puncture a lung being macho, okay? I only just got you adequately trained."

Erik forces a grin, then looks away, pulling his phone out of his pocket so he has something he can pretend to be doing as they head outside, down the front steps of the school. Every time he looks, he half-expects to see a text from Charles. He's always simultaneously relieved and disappointed when there's nothing there. There's something from Frank, though, asking if he wants to go to the screening of some movie at the Mutant Film Festival on campus next weekend; Erik types back an affirmative response.

"Are you texting the giant?" Evan asks, trying to peer at Erik's phone, and then Erik hears someone say,

"Hey, Erik."

He looks up and is astonished to see Raven standing at the school gate, leaning against the wall -- she's blonde and thus less conspicuous than normal, but he's seen this shape before, her usual disguise when she wants to play human. She raises an eyebrow, and his stomach clenches tight.

"I have to go," Erik mutters to the others, slipping his phone back into his coat pocket and trying to fight the way his shoulders want to hunch up around his ears. Already he can tell his cheeks are flushing red; Raven's been trying to get up with him for the past several days. Missed phone calls, emails he hasn’t read. He's managed to avoid her thus far, but if she's tracked him here, that means only one thing. Charles talked. 

"Don't look so guilty," she says when he gets close enough. "It makes people wonder what we're talking about, and I don't think we want that to happen. You’re not in trouble, I just want to chat."

"I'm not talking about any of this with you," Erik tells her, even as he falls in step. She's walking more quickly than he'd like, and it makes his ribs throb, pulsing in time with the sick churning in the pit of his stomach, worse now that Raven's here. He fixes his gaze on the horizon and stuffs his hands into his pockets, where she won't see that they're curled into fists.

"Oh? You seem to be talking about it to me right now," she says, without slowing, even when her eyes dart across his face, then down, looking for the pain; so she noticed. "Look, don't be a dick. You know why I want to talk to you about it. It's not rocket science."

Charles made him _swear_ never to tell, and now here he's gone and told Raven himself. Without even asking what Erik thought about it, as if it were only Charles' secret to share. It's snowing a little, the flakes getting caught in his hair, wet on the tip of his cold nose and a frosty glitter in his peripheral vision where they've landed on his lashes. Erik covers his mouth with one hand and breathes in his own air, hot and damp, oxygen-poor. 

"I'm sure Charles already told you everything you need to know," Erik says once he’s lowered his hand. It comes out hard and cold. He forces himself to say it as evenly as possible, even though the words make something twist hard in his chest, angry and betrayed-feeling. 

"Look," Raven says, and she comes to a halt, stepping into a doorway and out of the main passage of foot traffic. "i just … I need to know what you say happened so I know if I ought to be more horrified than I already am, okay? I can't believe Charles would do this." Her brow is furrowed, her arms folded across her chest, but she looks uneasy rather than angry, as if she wishes just as badly that she wasn’t here as Erik does. "Did he force you? Or coerce you?" she asks bluntly, looking at Erik with a downward twist to her mouth.

" _No,_ " Erik snaps, and he doesn't move out of the sidewalk quickly enough; someone bumps into him and he hisses as an agonizing heat jolts through his entire body, making him lurch forward, wrapping his arm around his stomach protectively. He manages to get himself out of the way, next to Raven, and keeps speaking before she can ask any questions, fighting the wave of dizziness that crashes over him. "Is that what he told you?" 

Erik knows what Charles thinks about their arrangement now, but the fact remains that he knew -- or should have known -- Erik didn’t want him that way back when they first discussed things. That doesn’t mean Erik was _coerced._ He just … agreed. It was perfectly civil on both sides.

"No," Raven says, "but I had to ask. I barely believe he had sex with you in the first place, so clearly I don't know him as well as I thought I did. What happened to your ribs?"

"Terrorism," Erik says acidly, glaring at her; if his sex life isn't Madelyne's business, then it certainly isn't Raven's. "Are you finished? I have things to do."

"Charles is my brother," she says. “I love him, but this … look, Erik, if you need to get away from the apartment you can come to mine and Hank’s place. We’ll put you up and if you need for Charles to not be allowed in I’ll do that too. Don’t just … this is fucked up and you have the right to be upset about it, okay? I don’t know what to do about Charles but I do know that I can help you in a way I never helped him when we were kids. Do you want to come stay with us for a while?”

Erik tilts his face up toward the falling snow so he doesn’t have to see her, blinking against the flakes that catch on his lashes and says, more quietly than he’d have liked, “I can’t just ... leave him.”

Raven softens further, and she reaches out, puts a hand on Erik’s arm, squeezing gently. “You do what you need to do for you,” she says, sounding so … sincere, and friendly, it’s shocking after how mad she got at Christmas. “Charles is a big boy, he’s made his own bed. If you need to get out of it then get out of it. Don’t make your decisions based on what you think Charles needs. Be a bit selfish.”

It’s nearly the same advice Charles gave him back when Erik was fourteen-really-thirteen and had just come to live with him, back when he was still so afraid of everything that he couldn’t make his own decisions. He thinks if he were a better Dom, maybe this would be easier. He could figure out what he wanted and then just take it. But then again, if he were a better Dom, maybe Charles never would have pushed him away again.

“I’ll think about it,” Erik says at last, and thankfully his voice is steadier now, even if he still feels uncertain and seasick inside.

Raven gives him a wry, watered-down sort of smile. “Okay,” she says, her hand loosening so it can stroke up and down his arm. “I know it’s difficult, especially … I know why, Erik, it didn’t take a genius. But fucking Charles to keep him was a really bad plan. Did you even enjoy it? Do you, generally?”

Erik tries to laugh, to show a little self-deprecation, but all that comes out is a strange, complicated sound, like someone choking. "Sometimes," he says, and he regrets looking back at her so he turns his gaze away and stares out at the people walking past them, all of them oblivious to Erik and Raven standing here, lost in their own lives. "More with him than with anyone else. I didn’t -- it wasn’t some great _hardship_ for me, all right? It isn’t like he hurt me. I told him I didn't care, that he could do it if he wanted." He steals a quick glance at Raven, who is still watching him, gold eyes narrowed. "And I don't care, by the way." He swallows, but his heart is stuck in his throat, pulsing there erratically. He makes himself say it, forces the words out hard just to make his point: "I could get off on it, if it was with Charles. Is that what you wanted to know?"

"Erik," Raven says, examining his face. "That’s no good. That's a real come-on; 'you can fuck me if you want to', real passionate. For serious, don’t go around doing shit you don’t want to do, only do things you want to do or you have to do, and this is not a have-to-do, okay? Sex is not something you should be tolerant of, you should -- you’re supposed to enjoy it or not do it at all. Charles is a good person, usually, and he's screwed up this time, bigstyle, and he's half killing himself over it and frankly he deserves it because as much as I love him -- I mean, Jesus."

“You make it sound like he was some kind of rapist,” Erik says, too harshly, but he won’t stand for anyone telling him which of his experiences do and don’t count as consensual -- particularly not when it involves Charles. “That’s not what happened. Not at all.”

“Charles basically told you you had to have sex with him or he’d never be around you again for fear of being attracted to you,” Raven says bluntly, letting go of Erik’s arm to fold hers over her chest again, her chin setting with unhappy stubbornness. “It wasn’t exactly a free and unencumbered choice. Quite aside from the fact he’s a lot older than you. It’s illegal for a reason.”

“So’s jaywalking,” Erik says.

“Well, if you want to go walking out into traffic,” Raven says, a bit of her usual bite in her tone; then she winces, and says, “Fine, whatever, I could argue with you about this all day but that wouldn’t get us much of anywhere. Are you okay and are you coming to stay. Two questions, separate answers please.”

“I’m fine,” Erik says sharply, and he hugs his arms around his middle, feeling very -- targeted. Observed. The second question is much harder to answer. As much as he hates being at home now, with the shadow of what once was hanging over them, the heavy weight of it all pressing down on all sides, he can’t help but think … maybe he can fix this. He can convince Charles this is a stupid idea, can bring him back. He manages to shrug one shoulder, an awkward, robotic-feeling motion. “I don’t know. I don’t -- I can’t decide that right now. All right?”

“Okay,” Raven says. “If you change your mind at any time you let me know, okay? Some time apart might do the pair of you some good -- Charles fucking knew better and he did it anyway, but he turned up at my doorstep night before last having been walking outside in the freezing cold for four hours, and he only came to me because he happened to be nearby when he had a clear moment. He obviously needs to sort his head out, because this is all crazy and not like him, but honestly I don’t know what to do with all this. I feel like I should probably call the police."

“ _No_ ,” Erik says instantly, an electric shock jolting through his entire body, sizzling down to his core. He forces down the sudden nausea that surges up within him, his heart battering against his ribcage, his pulse impossibly fast. “No, you can’t do that.” He doesn’t remember grabbing her arms, and yet here he is, gripping too hard and fighting the instinctive urge to use Dominance to _make_ her back down, order her into silence. He makes himself release her and tries to be calm, in-control, never mind the panic clawing at the back of his mind. “Promise me you won’t.”

“Erik … ” Her mouth twists, but then she exhales and says, “You promise me it’s all over with now? He’s my brother, I don’t want to hurt him but if it’s still going on … man, this is going to haunt me, isn’t it.”

“Don’t worry,” Erik says bitterly. “He isn’t even speaking to me right now.”

Raven makes a face, clearly wanting to say something negative but deciding against it. “Just … okay, look, I’m not going to report him now but if I get a whiff of anything else fucked up going on then I reserve the right to. Does that sound fair?”

Erik nods, even though he knows that were that ever to happen, he’d do everything in his power to protect Charles. Never mind how angry he is with him, he won’t allow anyone else to ruin this. Him. He feels sick down to his bones, hot and shriveled-up inside. “I have to go,” he tells her. “Homework.” 

He can’t stop thinking about Charles wandering around New York at night in the snow for those four hours, alone and hating himself. It’s his fault, he knows it is. If he weren’t like this, Charles never would have wanted him. And none of this would have happened.

“All right,” Raven says, and pats Erik’s shoulder. “All right. Well. I’ll call you tomorrow to check in, and no dodging my call or I’ll come over to find you again. Understand?”

"Good talk," he says instead of giving her a real response, and steps out from under the doorway and out of her reach, back onto the sidewalk where he can turn to go and not have to look at her anymore. "I'll see you later, Raven."

Thankfully, she doesn't follow him, and when he looks back over his shoulder she's long gone, disappeared into the crowd or taken on another form, one he doesn't recognize. 

The streets seem emptier somehow, now, even though they're still teeming with people. The pain in Erik's side gets to be too much halfway across Central Park and he ends up puking his guts out on the side of the path, spewing color onto the bright white snow. Each heave sends another sharp stabbing sensation through his stomach and makes him retch all over again, until all he has is bile and air. 

"Dude, are you okay?" some gangly teenager asks, then stares at him with wide eyes when Erik straightens, brows rising. "Oh, hey! You're that guy!"

"I think you have me confused with someone else," Erik says, wiping his mouth with the heel of his palm and tilting his head down, as if that will keep the kid from seeing his face properly. 

"Uh-uh," the kid says, then offers Erik his water bottle. "You don't have to pretend dude. I'm not gonna pap you. You're Lensher, right?"

"Lehnsherr."

"What?"

"It's pronounced 'Lehnsherr.'" Erik takes the bottle and swigs the water, washing the taste out of his mouth, face twisting a bit when he swallows. "Thanks," he says, gesturing with the bottle. For the water, and for not taking a cell phone picture of him vomiting at four in the afternoon and posting it to reddit in /r/mutants or wherever the fuck people have been putting all the candids of him that have been showing up lately. "I appreciate it. But I have to go."

"Keep the water," the kid says. "Backwash, y'know?"

Erik nods and does, finishing it off on the rest of his walk home and tossing it in a recycling canister near their building. He can tell Charles is home before he even reaches their floor, can sense the watch on his wrist and the ring Erik made him, still tucked into his trouser pocket, not on his finger. There's no point trying to sneak in, so Erik doesn't try to be quiet about it as he opens the front door, taking off his coat one-handed to preserve his injured rib. 

"We should wrap that," Charles' voice says; Erik looks up and finds him hovering in the doorway between the gallery and the den -- must have sensed Erik coming -- his arms crossed, not quite meeting Erik's gaze. "Pressure bandage will help."

"Yeah, but you'll have to see me shirtless to do that," Erik says, "and if that happens, who knows if you could restrain yourself?" 

It's an asshole thing to say, and he regrets it as soon as it's out of his mouth. Erik turns his face away, cheeks heated, trying to keep his thoughts blank so Charles won't peer further and see how Erik had been crying on the walk home after talking to Raven. It's humiliating enough just to have done it. "I didn't mean that," he says, fixing his gaze at a spot on the floor. 

"You did mean it," Charles says, his tone mild, "but that's okay. I deserve it. Go sit down in the kitchen and I'll fetch the bandage." He comes out into the gallery, and Erik can see that Charles is dressed the way he always does at home, in his comfortable pajama pants and an old sweater, as if nothing’s changed; his face is so calm, and he just walks past Erik to head for the stairs, doesn't even pause. It's like he's set himself a goal, and now he intends to complete it, as if he can only focus on one thing at a time. It’s weird and unsettling.

Erik heads for the kitchen, like he was told, and sits himself down in one of the rickety wooden chairs at the table to wait. He doesn't quite feel like himself anymore, with the way him and Charles are dancing around each other like this, more like a caricature of himself, an actor playing a role. It feels like a sick satire of what his life is supposed to be. Like any moment now he'll wake up, and Charles will be asleep next to him in bed, dreaming peacefully about something beautiful. Whatever this is, now ... it's fucked, and Erik can't stand it. 

Charles comes back and draws up another chair in front of Erik's, setting the bandage down on the table, squaring the packet against the edge of the wood. His face is still so bland, carefully composed, like a mask he’s wearing. "Do you need help with your shirt?" he asks.

"Yes," Erik says, and looks at Charles' face, willing him to meet his eyes. Charles doesn't. 

"All right." Without so much as pausing, Charles reaches for Erik's shirt buttons and unfastens them, one by one, peels the fabric away like he's undressing a child, not someone he's seen naked. "There. Can you lift your arms for me?"

Erik complies, setting the elbow of his injured side on the table and trying not to breathe too deeply. "Charles," he says, and waits, then, for Charles to look at him, for their eyes to meet before he goes on. Charles' eyes are very, very blue. "Please don't act like nothing ever happened. That makes it worse." It makes Erik wonder if he imagined it all, and being treated like he's just Charles' ward again, after everything, is just another layer on top of the sense of abandonment and betrayal Erik already feels, one that cuts him still deeper.

It takes a moment, but then Charles makes a soft sound in the back of his throat, and his mouth shifts, almost making a small, tight smile. "How would you like me to act?" he asks, placing the end of the bandage against Erik's ribs and pinning it there with his left hand while the right begins to move the bandage around Erik's chest, wrapping him up. "There are only so many ways I can wrap up a broken rib, especially one obtained in such a silly way. You really do need to be more careful with strength-enhanced mutants -- it wouldn't take much for Frank to really hurt you without meaning to." He drops his gaze back to his hands, tugging the bandages tighter, until it hurts.

"What," Erik says, "like how I was careful with the last few strength-enhanced mutants I fucked? Like how I was careful with Victor Creed? And with Shaw?" He grits his teeth and looks away, staring at the table, and his hand, curled into a fist atop it. "I was happier when it was you and me, Charles. And so were you. You can't say you feel better now, even after assuaging your conscience, than you felt before."

"Being happy is not the same thing as being right," Charles says, hands winding, winding, covering Erik over, hiding him under layers of cotton. "It's not my prime directive."

"And we all know how you feel about martyring yourself," Erik says coldly. 

Charles just shrugs, and doesn't say anything to that. He reaches over to the table for the scissors and cuts off the end of the bandage, then sticks it down with tape, holding it in place. "There. How does that feel?"

"Fine," Erik lies, because it hurts, worse now that there's pressure on the bruised skin. He lowers his elbow from where it's resting on the table and takes his shirt back from where it was draped over Charles' thigh, intentionally letting his fingertips skim Charles' leg, trailing down past his knee before Erik finally draws hand and shirt both into his own lap.

"Take some ibuprofen," Charles says, picking up a blister pack from the first aid kit and offering it to Erik. "I'll get you some water." He gets up from his chair and goes to the sink, fetching down a glass and filling it.

Erik glares at his back, both so Charles can't see it and knowing that he will, anyway, if only in Erik's mind. "Does it bother you?" he says, eyes trained on the nape of Charles' neck. "Knowing you aren't the last person to have touched me, now?" It's mean, but Erik can't stand the way Charles is able to act like nothing ever existed between them, like he can wipe the slate clean and start over. Erik won't allow it.

Charles says nothing, just turns back around to place the glass beside Erik's elbow, carefully precise. His breathing is too regular, almost robotic in its evenness, his face too neutral. It's fake, it's all fake, and Erik knows there's more under there but Charles is _keeping_ it from him.

"Do you still even want me?" Erik says, and he gets up slowly from his chair; they're standing too close, then, and Charles takes a half-step back only for Erik to move forward, blocking him against the edge of the kitchen table with one arm on either side, pinning him there so Charles _has_ to look at him. "Or have you just -- flipped a switch, turned it off?" He is so close to him now, close enough he could count the freckles on Charles' cheeks, the little flecks of gold in his blue eyes. 

"Which way would you prefer me to answer?" Charles asks, and he draws himself up to his full height, his mouth setting firmly, like he's bracing himself; his eyes are a bit hotter now, though what emotion that is Erik can’t quite read, anger or upset or passion, or something else entirely. Charles continues, "If I say yes, you'll have to sit there knowing that I've decided not to do anything about it and that only my will is denying you what you're demanding from me, and you still can't have it. If I say no, you'll feel rejected and bad about yourself, and you'll agonize over it, trying to work out what made me change my mind about you." He lifts a hand and presses his fingertips to the center of Erik's chest, pushes him back, five pressure points of force rocking Erik away from Charles, even if it's not enough to move his feet. "I'm trying my damnedest here," Charles says, "not to do either."

"I'm a big boy," Erik says, and he stays where he is, even if one hand releases the table, rising up to cup the side of Charles' face, fingers slipping back into his hair, almost loving, and were things different right now Erik would have kissed him. He's so close he can breathe in each of Charles' own exhales. Charles' cheek is warm against the side of his thumb, his hair soft, getting caught and tangled between Erik's fingers. God. He remembers how it felt to twist that hair around his knuckles while he held Charles down on the bed, fucked him, Charles' legs wrapped around his waist and trying to pull him in deeper, harder. How Charles pleaded for him. It's hard to reconcile that man, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, desperate, wanting, with the one who stands before him right now. "Tell me the truth, Charles," Erik says, and he makes it an order. "Do you still want me?"

Charles' mouth purses like he's bitten into a lemon, twists, and then he says, like it's been squeezed out of him, "Yes, you stubborn, stupid boy," his eyes furious for the moment before he just -- vanishes, gone from in front of Erik, like he's popped out of existence.

Erik whirls around, heart pounding, fully expecting to smell sulfur and see another tell-tale burst of black-and-red smoke -- but nothing's there, no one, not Azazel. Not Charles, either. Just the empty kitchen, Charles' first aid kit still sitting open on the table and his chair vacant. He's vanished. A telepathic trick -- nothing Emma Frost or Nathaniel Essex had ever been capable of, not to this degree. There's no telling if Charles is still in the room at all, or if he froze Erik long enough to make his escape, made Erik think no time had passed.

Furious and frustrated, Erik kicks Charles' empty chair, hard enough that it goes scraping across the floor and bumps into the table, knocking the Neosporin tube from where it'd been balanced on top of the first aid kit, sending it rolling off the surface and onto the floor. Erik doesn't go after it. 

"You can't hide from me forever, Charles!" he yells to the apparently-empty apartment, and this he does know Charles will hear. Even if he's a hundred miles away, he doesn't leave Erik's mind. Not really. "You can't hide from yourself, either."

Erik waits a long time for a response, but nothing comes.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: discussion of statutory rape between all-y'all-know-who, passing references to past child sexual abuse and rape, emetophobia (brief)


	24. Twenty-Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content warnings this chapter! Also, things start to improve not this chapter but next chapter, so bear with us a little while longer. ;)

_Charles_

> **eastofeden:**  
>  It's funny but I guess until I started reading your blog I always assumed that telepaths could just fix interpersonal problems when they came up, just like that. In my head that perfect understanding translated into knowing exactly what to say. It figures though that just knowing what someone is thinking doesn't mean you know what to do about it. If you're not willing to compromise on whatever it is you fought about then you're kind of stuck unless the other person changes their mind and meets you in the middle. Sorry that's not very helpful.

Charles sighs as he reads yet another well-meaning response to his last post; it's not that he doesn't appreciate the good wishes, and it's not even that he's expecting a helpful answer from anyone, but ... still, there's a part of him that wants someone to offer some kernel of an idea, a magic fix, something to help him normalize things between him and Erik again. He props his head on his hand, slumping a little over the table. Never mind that there is nothing normal about their relationship, or that he hasn't given enough specific information for anyone to give him relevant advice; never mind, either, that if he did someone would certainly call the police, and Charles would be no better off than he is now. There’s nothing he can do, and he hates feeling so helpless.

The worst part of all of this is knowing that he fucked things up for himself, and there's no way to fix it. He had something wonderful, his relationship with Erik, and then he went and ruined it by bringing sex into the mix. There's nobody to blame but Charles himself, and this state of affairs -- where he pretends that everything is back as it was, and Erik hates him for it -- is all Charles’ own doing, too. Charles feels as though he’s being ground down by a pestle of his own mistakes, worn into a fine dust that will blow away the next time Erik begrudgingly comes to speak to him.

Still. It’s polite to reply.

> **cerebro:**  
>  Thanks -- I think I'm just going to have to deal with the fallout, unfortunately, but I appreciate the input. Neither of us is willing to budge, so without telepathic tampering, which is of course not an option, I don't think this is something I can fix. You're quite right that knowing what someone is thinking doesn't make it easier to repair a rift -- sometimes quite the opposite, when there's no space to be charitable, because you know all the things they think about you when they're most frustrated.

The comments asking whether it's Beanstalk -- Erik -- that he's fallen out with Charles just leaves, which is probably as damning as naming him in the first place, but at least this way he can pretend neither to have confirmed nor denied.

He pushes the laptop away across the table and for a moment he allows himself to rest his head down on his folded arms, bowed, face hidden from the world; but then he makes himself sit up and drag the laptop back over to answer more comments, at least some of which are debating the merits and drawbacks of knowing your opponent's argument before they can make it and not the finer details of Charles' personal relationships. He's not sure how long he spends at it, but he becomes aware of a mind focused on his around the time he's starting to get hungry -- he glances at the clock, and it's way past the time Erik would normally be home. He's probably with Frank.

Dismissing the way his stupid heart flinches at that thought Charles turns his attention to the girl in the elevator. It's Madelyne, Erik's friend, and she's worried, is thinking so loudly Charles might even have been woken up by it in the middle of the night, her mind all but shouting at him.

What on earth is she doing here? He gets up from the table and makes his way towards the front door, not so close that it will disturb her, knowing he heard her coming; best, probably, to let her knock. True enough, the bell rings a moment later, held down just a second too long. When he opens the door Madelyne is standing primly on the other side, her eyes politely downcast, the very image of a high society sub.

From everything Erik's ever said about her Madelyne is a nice girl, a little more prone to getting drunk at parties than Charles would prefer, but then he's hardly one to talk.

"Hello," he says, with a small, polite smile.

"Hello," she says back, only now lifting her head to look him in the eye, her etiquette flawless. "I'm so sorry to disturb you at this hour, Dr Xavier -- I’m Madelyne, Erik’s friend from school."

"Come in," Charles says, bemused by the courtesy -- he's clearly become a little too used to Erik's rough-and-tumble familiarity. "Erik's not here right now, but you're welcome to wait."

"Oh," she says, and she steps inside, letting him close the door behind her. "Erik won't be back for a while, I don't think -- I'm actually not here for him. Um." She pauses, gaze flitting away from him, around the gallery, like she's looking for something in particular, even though he knows Erik has brought her here before, that none of this is new. "I was wondering if we could talk. About Erik."

Charles' first thought is, _oh God Erik told her_ , followed shortly by _of course he didn't, I'd know if he had_. It's a struggle to keep a neutral expression, stepping back into the gallery proper. "Of course," he says, mind already whirring, trying to work out what to say to her -- she's thinking loudly enough for him to already know what she wants to discuss, but it would be rude to say so, even if she does know about his telepathy. She’s very worried about Erik, enough that she’s braved going behind his back to talk to Charles, and the worst of it is how many of the things she’s thinking about are news to him, how much clearly he hasn't gleaned from Erik's mind himself. It suggests Erik’s been going out of his way to hide them, which is a very bad sign. "Shall we go and sit down?" he asks a little hoarsely, gesturing with one hand. "The den is this way."

She follows, and when he offers her a seat on the sofa Madelyne sits down carefully on the very edge, arranging her skirt about her knees and clasping her hands together in her lap. It's all very formal, and it almost entirely hides her nerves, which are jumbled up and frazzled behind her calm, placid expression.

"Can I get you something to drink?" Charles asks. "We have juice, water, soda ... tea or coffee too, if you'd prefer."

"No, thank you," she says. She waits for him to sit down in his armchair before she speaks again. Charles picked Erik up from her house once, when Erik was too drunk to walk; it’s been a long time since he last saw her, but she's grown up to be quite beautiful. She strongly reminds him, in a way, of an older Jean Grey.

"I'm worried about Erik," Madelyne says at last, and it almost bursts out of her, like something she'd been holding in for too long but now that she's started talking about it it all pours out at once, uncontrolled. "I know -- I know he has issues, okay, but something's seriously wrong with him this time. It started in March. You know, when he decided he was going to be a Dom? You'd be trying to have a conversation with him and he'd just, like, _zone out_ in the middle of a sentence, and then five minutes later he'd snap to and be like, 'where am I?'" She's on a roll, now, talking faster, too quickly to be interrupted. "But you know, I thought, he's weird, right? That's just who he is. But now -- for like, _two weeks_ he's just been ... totally out of it. He fell asleep in class _four times_ this week. Erik's _top of our class._ He doesn't _do_ that! And then there's -- " she clamps up, all of the sudden, looking worried, and Charles can tell she's suddenly second-guessing herself, not sure if she has the right to be saying all this to Charles, who she sees as Erik's father, about Erik.

It's ... Charles takes a deep breath, the vividness of her memories like being slapped in the face with another of his failures, another consequence of his own inadequacy as a guardian. "You can tell me," he says gently, with a careful nod of his head. "There's not much I don't know, given my mutation, but I do value your insight. Erik ... hasn't been talking to me much lately, about any of this."

Madelyne's cheeks have flushed a light pink color, but she nods anyway, twisting her hands together in her lap. "He hasn't been talking to me about it, either," she says, and she's clearly hurt by that, her brows drawing quickly together. "The past two weeks he's been going out at lunch, and when he comes back he's ... well, he's _drunk._ That's on days he comes to Trinity for afternoon class, anyway. I don't know what he does at Columbia. He covers it up well enough, but you can smell it, you know? And some of the things he's been saying ... they just don't sound like him. I think something -- I think something might have happened to him, Mr Xavier." She meets his gaze, her eyes distraught. "Like. Do you think someone might have ... found him? What I mean is ... he's worse than he was when I met him, only difference is, he has gold pins now." She flicks her fingers at the silver-beaded pin hanging from her satchel.

Charles’ heart feels like it’s being clamped in a vise, slowly tightening and crushing the life from it.

What to even say to her -- this earnest, caring teenage girl, who clearly has a bit of a crush on Erik and knows more about what's happening with him than Charles does right now? Forming words feels impossible, forming thoughts even more so, and Charles swallows down the lump in his throat, because he's supposed to be the adult here, he's the one she has come to to solve this problem -- Madelyne is _sixteen_ , still little more than a child, and Charles is the one sitting here speechless and uncertain, trying not to wring his hands.

 _It's all my fault, it was me,_ sits on the tip of his tongue, but doesn't quite make itself heard.

"I don't think the Hellfire Club have found him again, no," Charles says, as calmly and empathetically as he can and giving Madelyne a sad look, hoping it covers up his own self-loathing and the rising fear in his chest that he has truly broken Erik, that he's damaged him beyond repair. "Erik ... you're right to say he has issues, Madelyne, and as hard as those of us who love him might try, there is only so much we can do to help him with his demons. Lately I think he's been struggling more with his PTSD, as he starts to come to terms with what happened to him growing up. And as we both know, Erik doesn't have the healthiest of coping mechanisms."

He sighs, letting the air out of his lungs in a rush, trying not to look as deflated, defeated, as he feels. "I'll speak to him about it and see what I can do to help. Thank you for telling me -- I really do appreciate it. You're a good friend."

Madelyne's cheeks go scarlet, and she ducks her head quickly, smiling down at her lap, trying to hide it. The expression only lasts a few seconds, though, before it falters, eaten up by something else. "There's one other thing," she says, shifting in her seat a little, crossing her legs, uncrossing them again. "You must know someone's been hurting him. One of his -- you know. One of his Doms. He won't talk to me about it." She glances up at Charles from beneath her lashes. "Can you at least tell me ... can you _please_ tell me what's happening? It's driving me crazy, and I have to know! I just need to know he's okay. Please?"

There's real worry there, but there's an undertone of jealousy, too, that Charles can't ignore -- one that strikes a similar match in his own chest, a flame that licks at his crushed heart, burning sullenly among the ruins and scorching him from the inside. But all he says is, "Erik has a very complicated past, as you know, I think. To say 'this is happening' or 'that is happening' would be to undermine everything else that makes him the person he is -- it's just not as simple as that, Madelyne. I'm sorry. I can tell you that everything Erik is doing with his ... boyfriend ... is consensual, if ill-advised."

He sighs again, leaning forward and resting his hand over his face for a moment, brushing his hair back from his forehead before he sits up and gives Madelyne another small, tight smile. "In any case," he says, "since Erik hasn't talked to me about it, and what I know comes from telepathy, it would be a breach of my ethics to tell you what I've read from him. Just as it would be for me to tell him anything I've gleaned from you this evening. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Madelyne says, her mind emitting embarrassment at having asked such a personal question, even if she admits to herself she wouldn't be embarrassed at all if Charles had only told her what she wanted to know. He feels some tiny switch inside her click over, resolving to push Erik harder on it tomorrow when she sees him, find out for herself exactly what he thinks he's doing. "Thank you, Mr Xavier. He's ... Erik's very lucky to have you. He thinks the world of you, you know."

And there's nothing to say to that, really, that won't either reveal too much or break Charles' carefully-held calm. "Thank you, for being brave enough to come here to tell me," he says, clasping his hands in his lap, and extending his mind outwards to see where the boy himself is -- Erik is coming back from the university, crossing the park. "Erik is on his way home at the moment," he says, turning his attention back to Madelyne. "He’ll be perhaps another quarter of an hour. Would you like to wait? You're welcome to stay to dinner."

She hesitates for a moment, clearly worried that Erik will be suspicious, but in the end she just presses her lips together and nods and says, "Yes. Thank you. I'd like that."

Erik gets home twenty minutes later, his mind cold and closed-off as soon as he's inside the building -- not that it would keep Charles out, not really, but it's not a conscious effort. Just Erik's emotions getting the better of him, an automatic reflex. The front door opens, and while Charles freezes in place, suddenly uncertain, Madelyne gets immediately to her feet, trotting out into the gallery and calling, "Erik!"

He’s pathetic. Charles lets his head hang for a moment, heavy and aching, while out in the hall he hears Erik's rumbling greeting, more the tone than the words -- questioning, uncertain, before becoming surer again. Charles sits up straight before they can both come in together, Madelyne casting worried glances at Erik when he's not looking.

"Good evening," Charles says. "Welcome home. Madelyne wanted to wait for you; I hope that's okay."

"Of course it is," Erik says, and he smiles at Madelyne like she's his world -- she beams back at him, but Charles is looking closely enough to tell, now, that the expression doesn't quite reach Erik's eyes. "Is dinner ready?" He doesn't look at Charles at all.

Charles gets to his feet, slowly, and feels like the ancient of days, creaking and worn out, like he doesn't belong anywhere in this picture. "Not yet," he says. "I was just about to go and heat up some of the soup from the freezer, the homemade stuff. Shouldn't take long."

Erik still isn't meeting Charles' gaze, is pretending to be absorbed in folding up his jacket, and Charles notices with a self-deprecating, dark amusement that he isn't the only one staring at the muscles in Erik's arms as they shift beneath long black sleeves, slim and strong. At least Madelyne is too absorbed to notice in return.

"I'll call you when it's ready," he says, and escapes to the kitchen.

Dinner is an awkward, difficult affair, made worse by the stilted conversation. Erik is unwilling to unbend enough to speak normally to Charles, and Madelyne is too polite to let Erik direct all of his talk at her. It's a relief when she goes home afterwards, spurred on by Erik's quiet insistence that he needs to focus on his college homework, even if it does mean the two of them are left alone together again, two dried up peas rattling around in the bottom of an empty jar.

"Madelyne tells me you've been drinking during school hours," Charles says after a long silence has passed, deciding that directness is the best way now, when Erik is so determined to dismiss attempts at subtlety.

"So that's why she came here," Erik says flatly, getting up from the sofa and dropping his book in the cushion where he'd been sitting a moment before, heading toward the gallery, apparently fully intending to just walk out of this conversation altogether. "I should have known."

"Come back here and sit down," Charles says firmly, his voice sterner than he's managed in weeks; Erik pauses, glancing back over his shoulder, and Charles gives him a long, hard look, eyebrow rising. "You heard me. I can speak to you anywhere in the city, if I choose to -- you might as well come back and sit on the couch so you can argue back at me."

"I'm going up to the roof," Erik says, turning around again like he hadn't heard at all. "If you want to join me, well, I'm not stopping you. But I'm not staying here, either."

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Charles lets out a harsh huff of breath and gets to his feet, walking with deliberate pace behind Erik, lips pursed. It's easier, if he works himself up into a parental state, not to get derailed by other thoughts.

"Erik, you can't drink during school time," he says as they reach the front door, walking out into their little private hallway and over to the elevator doors, which slide open the moment Erik looks at them. "You shouldn't be drinking in any case, but during the day is a definite no, if you want to keep your place at Trinity and not be expelled." Best, as ever, to appeal to Erik's practical side; emotional arguments so rarely work with him that Charles thinks it more unlikely than ever that they would sway Erik right now.

"All my classmates are the children of billionaire socialites and stockbrokers," Erik says, leaning against the wall of the elevator, watching the doors as the lift climbs up, up, up. "You think anyone cares if I drink off school property, so long as I still make straight A's? Everyone in that place makes their grades off Modafinil and cocaine as it is."

They reach the roof, one floor up, and the doors slide open again; Erik walks out without waiting for Charles, his long legs bringing him quickly out onto the flat rooftop, boots leaving large tracks in the fallen snow. The city is spread out all around them, glittering and distant in its way, the park a black lightless square to their left. Erik heads east, and stops only when he's at the very edge, standing silhouetted against the bright city. He reaches into his pocket and draws something out, bends his head down for a moment. When Charles gets closer he sees the red flare of coals, the lit end of a cigarette held between Erik's fingers, smoke when he exhales.

"Oh, for -- I thought you'd kicked that filthy habit," he says, unable to keep himself from the agitated response, his carefully cultivated calm giving way to his distaste for smoking. "You have to know what that does to your lungs -- how long have you been smoking again?"

Erik doesn't answer the question, just barks out a bizarre, manic-sounding laugh and stares out toward the horizon, toward the East River and Queens, his face twisting into a grin so sharp and wide it's almost a grimace. "It's like they say. What doesn't kill you ...."

"What doesn't kill you immediately gives you cancer over the long haul, apparently," Charles says, folding his arms across his chest. "Look ... Erik, I know we're not okay right now, but you can't do this to yourself. Drinking, smoking, the masochism -- it's not acceptable behavior, okay? I try very hard not to tell you what you can and can't do most of the time but I will put my foot down about this. This sort of self-harm is the sort of thing I will step in to stop, and damn my ethics." As if Charles doesn't have enough problems just dealing with the emotional fallout of their sexual entanglement, without all of this on top of it. It's enough to make him lose the will to live. But if anything, in some ways it's almost ... being annoyed is better than that nothing feeling he had before, when he wasn't sure he would manage to trudge through another day every time the sun came up.

"No," Erik says, and he whirls around to look at Charles, this time, the lit cigarette still held between his fingers, but at least he hasn't taken another hit from it, eyes bright with anger. "You aren't my parent. You gave up that role when you chose to be my sub. Choosing to stop being my sub doesn't mean you can pick up your old hat and start wearing it again. What's done is done. I'm not a toy that you can put on the shelf and expect to still be here when you want to play with it again. So don't you dare try to tell me what to do."

"What does that make me, then?" Charles asks, tired and irritated all at once, shivering a little at the cold out here. "You know Erik, if you don't want me to be involved in your life any more, then we can do that -- I can still call your case worker and ask her to find you somewhere else to finish high school. I don't want to do that, but I will if that's what you want. If you're living under my roof, though, then that means I have a stake in what you do to yourself, and I say you can't keep killing yourself like this, a little bit at a time. If that makes me worse in your eyes than I already am, well, so be it." It's not as if things with Erik can get much worse, after all -- Charles already feels exhausted every time they're in the same room, like trying to pretend he's all right, that he doesn't want to kneel at Erik's feet and beg forgiveness, and it’s draining the life out of him.

Erik turns away, and for a moment Charles thinks he's going to leave, just walk away again like he did before, but Erik just stands there, his arms wrapped around his middle and the cigarette slowly burning to ash, clutched in the hand that's gripping his opposite elbow. It's a long second -- too long -- before Charles recognizes the tight trembling in Erik's shoulders for what it is, but when Erik finally looks back at him his cheeks are, unexpectedly, dry.

"I can't do this," Erik says, and he's trying to sound calm but his voice breaks, a little; Charles can feel the tight weight in Erik's chest like it's his own, threatening to crack inside Erik like a raw and rotten egg. Erik's gaze drops from his, looking down at their shoes, snowflakes already speckling the black leather of Erik's boots. With his eyes lowered his lashes look very long, almost feminine, at odds with his sharp features. "I can't be what you want me to be. I'm sorry."

Oh. Charles feels his own expression change, a twist he can't stop, and he walks forward before he can stop himself, wraps his arms around Erik and tugs him close, hugging him in tightly against his chest. His hand goes to the back of Erik's head and draws it down to his own shoulder, keeping him there. "No, I'm sorry," Charles says, feeling his own eyes prickling but ignoring it, trying not to let it out. "I ... I know I've confused things. We were happy, before sex got in the way, and I ruined that. I'm sorry. I should have had more self-control."

Erik shifts in his arms, and a moment later he's embracing Charles in return, the cigarette dropped from his hand and quenched by the snow underfoot. His fingers dig hard into Charles' flesh, holding him so close that Charles suddenly finds it hard to breathe. "We were happy after sex got in the way, too," he says tightly. "I don't understand why you're doing this."

"Do you remember what you said to me, that first morning when you were setting the routine?" Charles asks, not pulling away -- Erik needs this now, the contact, if he's not going to feel as though Charles hates him, when Charles continues, "You said you liked that you could touch me now, and that you could pull me apart whenever you wanted. The thing is, Erik, if touch was all it was -- you could have had hugs, contact, any time. What you meant was that you liked that I was controllable now. You were more comfortable once you knew you could manipulate me using sex. That's why. It wasn't about me for you, and you told me that upfront, but I didn’t really listen. And that meant that I could ignore all the things that told me I was making things worse -- that I was tainting the one relationship in your life you relied on to be there for you, making it so you felt you had no choice but to have sex with me, and that’s coercion, Erik, that’s not choice at all. It was wrong and I’m trying my best to fix it."

“Don’t tell me what it was about for me,” Erik snaps, and he pulls back, out of Charles’ grasp, his gaze narrowed and heated again. “I gave you what you wanted. You don’t have the right to be upset if I got something I wanted in return.”

“It’s not -- Erik, that wasn’t what I wanted,” Charles says, the cold stinging through him like being stabbed with an icicle. “I wanted -- you didn’t want me, Erik. I wanted something reciprocal, something good for both of us, not something you endured or tolerated. That wasn’t what you got from it. And that’s not your fault, it’s mine for mistaking it in the first place.”

“You’re a telepath,” Erik says acidly. “Don’t pretend you didn’t know just to make yourself feel better post-hoc.”

Charles swallows, then says, “You’re right, of course. I pretended to myself very well that I didn’t, but I did. I’m sorry.”

Erik grimaces at him, mixed anger and disgust pulsing out of his mind like poison. “Stop apologizing. It’s pathetic.”

“Just promise me you’ll stop with the drinking and smoking,” Charles says instead of responding, though he wants so badly to flinch away or to lash back. “I mean it, Erik. Insofar as Frank goes, if he keeps roughing you up then he and I will have words."

Erik frowns at him, looking more furious than ever. "What I do with Frank is none of your business," he says, and he states it evenly, not cruelly, as if he's conveying a simple fact. "If we aren't lovers, then I can choose what I let other people do to my body. I asked him to do it."

"That would be fair, if he weren't breaking bones and leaving you with serious injuries," Charles says, though it makes his stomach clench up tight, a nauseous, awful feeling of jealousy warring with his own need to be as far from this as possible, to be a parent instead of remembering how it had felt to be a lover. "I'm not -- I'm not trying to tell you who to sleep with, Erik. I don't have that right anymore. But I worry about you, okay? It's not ... I just don't want him hurting you worse than he means to, by accident."

Erik's lips press into a thin, grim smile, and he says, "I'm not thirteen years old anymore. I'm not your baby boy to take care of. I told you, you can't just expect to go back to how we were and have me listen. It doesn't work like that."

"The drinking and the smoking, then?" Charles presses; Frank he can deal with himself, if it comes down to it. "Neither will help you win races."

“Fuck you,” Erik says, taking a half-step toward Charles, his face close and his eyes dark, jabbing toward Charles’ chest with his forefinger. “You don’t get to tell me what to do anymore. You might have fun playing daddy, but don’t you forget that I could put you on your knees right here if I wanted to. So don’t make me.”

“Erik, I’m serious, it’s one thing to be angry with me and to lash out at me, but don’t hurt yourself to do it,” Charles says, folding his arms and lifting his chin. “Hit me if you have to get it out somehow, God knows I deserve it, but no more cigarettes and no more afternoon benders. Understand?”

For a moment Erik looks like he’s sorely tempted to take Charles up on the offer, but he doesn’t, just makes a harsh, derisive sound in the back of his throat and shakes his head, says, “You don’t know me at all, do you,” and finally he jerks away, stalking across the icy rooftop toward the stairwell, his body like a black slash against the fallen snow.

“Erik!” Charles calls, and follows, feet slipping a bit even as he tries to catch up, catching himself on the stair rail. “Erik, we need to finish this. I know you’re angry with me right now but if you’d just -- ”

“No,” Erik says, rounding on him again, and his eyes are too-bright now, glittering with unshed tears. “Stop talking. I’m done listening to whatever you have to say. If all you want is someone to exonerate you, go and find someone else. I’m finished with this.”

“That’s not the point at all,” Charles exclaims, frustrated to the point of wanting to cry himself. “I’m trying to make sure you’re okay and that I haven’t fucking _broken_ you, all right? I’m trying my damnedest to do the right bloody thing and make sure you’re as good as you can be instead of killing yourself with drink and drugs and who knows what else because of me. Fuck!” And he smacks himself upside the head, the pain of it welcome, trying to make things clearer in his own head. For a moment he considers knocking his head against the wall, see if that helps, but it would probably only upset Erik. “Fuck.”

He feels Erik’s mind soften briefly, before Erik forcibly pushes any sympathy away again. “Raven asked me to come and stay with her for a while,” he says, apparently oblivious to the frigid breeze that picks up across the roof, chilling Charles down to the bone. “I’m going to take her up on it.”

Oh. Oh.

“Oh,” Charles says, everything in him coming to a grinding halt, like the world has just … stopped, with a groaning, awful sound. “That’s … when?” He knows he sounds stupid, but he can’t make himself sound normal, not now. “How long for?”

“Tonight,” Erik says. Even though he’s standing two steps lower than Charles he’s still taller, his head tilted slightly downward to hold Charles’ gaze. “I don’t know how long. As long as I need to.”

“Oh,” Charles says. He feels a bit lightheaded. “You should … probably call her. First. She might be performing tonight, but you could speak to Hank, if she is.”

Erik nods, and for a second Charles thinks he’s going to say something, can feel the little twist to Erik’s thoughts that usually precedes speech -- but then he only turns and goes down the stairs, the door to the building opening ahead of him with his powers. And Charles …

Charles sits down, on the cold concrete, and lets him go, despite the freezing air and the way his eyes are burning, because -- how can he do anything else, when he’s the one who made it this way? He waits until he feels Erik leave, and even then he waits a while longer, unable to motivate himself to move, until he becomes more concerned about catching pneumonia than the need to not be alone in that huge apartment again, knowing that Erik may never come back.

*

_Erik_

He wakes up in a strange bedroom, in a strange house, full of metal instruments and dusty old theatre costumes. The first thing he notices is -- nowhere in his metal-sense does he feel the glimmer of Charles’ wristwatch and ring, as if he had been scrubbed out of existence. It takes a moment for Erik to remember Charles isn’t here, isn’t _supposed_ to be here. He’s on the other side of the city entirely, locked up in that huge empty apartment, far from Erik.

He gets out of bed, the unfamiliar hardwood floor cold beneath his bare feet, and dresses in the dark, pulling clothes out of the suitcase he didn’t manage to unpack last night and brushing his teeth in the same bathroom where he puked up Christmas dinner, the sink counter clean and bare in the way of guest rooms, as if it’s always been totally untouched.

When he emerges out into the apartment proper, Hank is sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in one hand, the paper in the other. He looks up when Erik pauses on the threshold, pushing his glasses back up his leonine nose.

“Good morning,” he says quietly. “Can I get you anything? There’s bread for toast, and coffee or tea. I think we have some cereal too.”

“Oh,” Erik says, feeling suddenly out of his depth; he’s never before been a stranger in another person’s home, not for any significant length of time, not since he moved in with Charles. In a strange and unsettling way he thinks he preferred living with Hellfire to this sense of unease and unbelonging, because at least with them he knew his place. “Toast is fine. I can get it -- is it in here?” He crosses toward the kitchen, gesturing toward the pantry, and Hank gets up from the table, says, “Oh, no, you’re our guest. Take a seat.”

Erik obeys, the awkwardness intensifying; he isn’t sure what, if anything, Raven has told Hank. If she’s told him the truth, it’s impossible to tell what Hank thinks about any of it. Erik can’t really read the expressions on his face, so many of the muscle movements he relies upon disguised under blue fur. He clasps his hands together atop the table and watches Hank put the bread in the toaster, fetching almond butter and jam from the fridge and dabbing them onto a plate with a butter knife.

“Where’s Raven?” he asks after a little while, just to fill the silence.

“Still asleep,” Hank says, going back to the refrigerator. “She’s up late performing most nights so she sleeps in longer than us poor nine-to-five mortals. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Coffee?” Erik asks, and moves his hands into his lap, trying not to give into the desire to tuck them under his thighs -- or the keener urge to pull out his phone and check to see if Charles has texted him.

“Sure.”

Erik taps his fingers together under the table, thumb on top of thumb, and tracks Hank’s watch around the kitchen, feels the metal toaster heating up until finally the bread pops out of the slots and Hank transfers it onto the plate, carrying it over and sliding it in front of Erik before going back to the coffee. Erik eats in silence and tries not to wonder what Charles is doing right now, if he’s managed to make breakfast for himself without burning the house down. If he’s eaten breakfast.

“Here you go,” Hank says, placing the mug in front of Erik, and then he sits down again, looking a little uncertain for the moment before he separates out the paper and wordlessly offers Erik the arts and leisure section, which Erik pretends to read while he finishes up the first slice of toast, the sound of his chewing and Hank’s page turning the only noises in the apartment.

It’s awkward, not the sort of comfortable quiet Erik is used to when having breakfast at home, Charles slumped forward grouchily conceding to the need to have his eyes slitted open so he can effectively remember where he put his tea. Their bread is different too, white instead of brown, and even the coffee tastes wrong, not bad but not what Erik’s mouth is expecting. He’s on the verge of giving up and going back to the guest room when Raven finally lurches into the kitchen, a familiar shambling shuffling sound accompanying the overlong legs of her pajamas dragging over the floor.

“Good morning,” Hank says, and gets a mumble in response. “You’re up early.”

“Mmmph,” says Raven, hitting the on button for the coffeemaker.

“There’s already coffee, here,” Erik says, pointing to the French press on the table; he’s unavoidably reminded of Charles, who is equally useless in the mornings, who probably isn’t even awake right now, actually, without Erik there to coax him out of bed.

“Bah,” Raven says, grabbing a mug from a hook under the cabinet and shuffling back over to the table to pour herself some. “Dirty tricks.”

Erik takes another bite of his toast, chews, swallows, and washes it down with a sip of his coffee. “Did you sleep well?” he makes himself ask, trying to be polite.

“Yeah,” Raven says, slurping at her mug for a moment, eyes closing, before she opens them again. “G’morning. Sleep okay in there?”

“I’m going to clear out some of my mess today, so it should be better for tonight,” Hank says, and Erik decides the metal instruments must be things he uses to work from home, doing science at all hours of the day and night. “I hope it wasn’t too uncomfortable for you, Erik.”

“It’s fine,” Erik says, and he pokes his finger at the corner of his toast, pushing it around in a slow circle on his plate before picking it up and eating it again. He appreciates that Raven and Hank are letting him stay here, of course he does, but he can’t forget why that is. That Charles went and _told_ Raven everything, and now she’s here, letting him stay under her roof, out of pity. Because she thinks Charles has done something so very reprehensible, so very _Shaw._ It’s enough to ruin his appetite.

“Okay,” Raven says, leaning back against the kitchen counter and sipping again at her coffee, still not looking like she’s all the way awake. “Mmm. Oh yeah. School, right? You know how to get there from here?”

Erik nods. “Take the L to 6th Ave, then the 1 uptown,” he says. “I can figure it out.” He’s not sure he plans on actually _going_ to school, but Raven isn’t Charles, she can’t read that from his mind. He lifts his coffee mug to his lips, sipping at the bitter brew and watching her for a moment over the rim before he looks down again.

“Cool,” she says, listing slightly to the side as the mug seems to become vacuum suctioned to her mouth so she can extract the maximum amount of coffee.

“She’s not good in the mornings,” Hank says as if he’s imparting a secret, a little smile on his face. “This is a lot earlier than I usually see her, she must have got up to check on you.”

“Stop telling Erik things,” Raven says from over by the counter, flapping a hand at Hank. “S’an order. You’ll make me look bad.”

“Yes, Raven,” Hank says, but he doesn’t sound like he’s taking her very seriously.

Erik gives them both a small smile and finally gives in, pulling his phone out of his pocket with his power and glancing at it under the table. Nothing from Charles. A few messages from Madelyne, one from Frank, but other than that -- radio silence.

“I should get going,” he says, trying not to show his disappointment on his face. He downs the rest of his coffee in a few quick swallows and sets the empty mug down on the table, sliding his chair back. His heart aches. “Different commute, and I don’t want to be late.”

“Okay,” Raven says, and puts her mug down on the table. “Don’t fuck about at school or whatever positive parenting message you need first thing in the morning. Give them my number so they can call me if you blow yourself up.”

Erik actually does laugh a little at this, and it’s strange to feel amused when everything else feels so heavy inside him, but he does. “All right,” he agrees, reaching for his school satchel where he left it by the door, setting it down on the floor while he pulls on his heavy winter coat. “Thanks,” he adds, belatedly, abruptly, and he isn’t sure what he’s thanking her for, but he feels it anyway, a weird sort of gratitude tingling in his chest.

“No problem,” she says, and drapes her arms over Hank’s shoulders, resting her chin on the top of his head. “See you later.”

“Bye,” Hank says, taking hold of one of Raven’s hands, blue on blue. It’s so much like what Erik and Charles used to have that it leaves him feeling cold and heartsick, scraped down to the bone and swollen with his own loss.

He doesn’t end up going to school. Instead he goes to a little café near NYU and orders himself a huge breakfast, full of the kinds of foods he would never have allowed himself to eat a week ago, and eats it all, every bit, until there’s nothing but crumbs on his plates, and then he scoops those up and eats them too. He’s left feeling a strange mixture of sick and energized after, over-stuffed, but at least now he can’t feel as hollowed-out as he did before.

Madelyne texts him around 10: _Where are you??_ and he ignores it. He can’t stand the thought of being cooped up in a little room for the next six hours, listening to teachers rattle on about subjects he doesn’t care about, pretending it isn’t so very easy for him. He stays instead in his seat in the café, reading a novel off the screen of his iPhone and trying to lock himself away in a world that isn’t this one for a while.

There’s a guy sat in the corner of the cafe with a laptop, tapping away at the keys. He _was_ looking up every so often to glance at the waitress, but after a while Erik starts to notice him looking at Erik, too -- long, lingering examinations before he goes back to whatever it is he’s doing. It’s an old, familiar kind of look. Erik turns his phone screen off and gets up, walking over to the man’s table and sliding into the seat opposite him. “Hello,” he says, meeting his gaze over the top of the computer when the man looks up. “I noticed you looking.”

“You’re good-looking, of course I looked,” the man says, right before he looks back down at his computer, his lips thinning. “Congratulations.”

Well, of the things Erik could be noticed for…. “So are you,” he says, and decides not to beat around the bush. “Do you want to go somewhere?”

The man glances up again, his dark hair flopping down over his forehead, and frowns at Erik, the expression looking familiar and well-worn on his face. His eyes slip over Erik’s face, like he’s searching for something, his frown deepening when he does -- or doesn’t -- find it. “Are you a hooker?” he asks after a second. “I don’t fuck hookers.”

“No.” Erik smiles at him, the smile that always works, resting one hand atop the table and tapping his forefinger against the wood. “I’m just particularly interested. Come on.” He tilts his head to the side, toward the back of the café. “The bathroom’s single-occupancy. I bet I can get you off in less than five minutes using only my mouth.”

The man huffs, but he gets to his feet anyway, and he follows Erik into the bathroom, locking the door behind them with a quick flick of his hand. “All right then,” he says, putting a hand on Erik’s shoulder and pushing down. “Show me.”

Erik succeeds, of course. It’s always validating, being with a Dom; they’re so easy to please, and Erik never has to worry about the kinds of things he would with Charles, like coming too quickly or not being Dominant enough. When he swallows the man’s come down and rises back up to his feet, the man looks at him from where he’s leaning against the sink and says, “Okay, fair’s fair,” before reaching for Erik’s belt and starting to unfasten it.

“None of that,” Erik says, pushing his hand away before he can finish. “If you want to repay me, you can buy me a bottle at the liquor store across the street.”

“Kid, I’m not buying you booze,” the man says, zipping himself up. “They have cameras to catch you at that shit you know,” and he leaves the bathroom without so much as a thank you, going right back to his table and his laptop.

Disappointing, but it doesn’t always work. Second time’s the charm; Erik catches a Dom who’s leaving the ABC store and offers him the same deal. This time he’s taken up on it, and an hour later he’s drinking vodka out of a water bottle on the subway, crammed in between an old man who keeps leering at Erik and a young submissive mother with her two squalling children. He can’t even care, not today. He feels like he’s floating through the world unimpeded, a ghost that can be seen but not touched. Or maybe that’s just the vodka; he’s starting to get tired, blurry-feeling and woozy. He decides to leave off the alcohol for a while and hides the bottle away in his satchel before he gets off the train at Morningside Heights.

Frank finds him after Erik’s been sitting on the floor outside his dorm room for forty-five minutes, screwing the cap of his water-vodka bottle on and off repetitively; he takes one look at Erik before saying, “Okay, up you get,” and reaching down for him, tucking one hand into each of Erik’s armpits and lifting him effortlessly, like a marionette. “Come on. In we go.” He shifts Erik into the hold of one arm so he can unlock the door with the other hand. “Why didn’t you just open it with your mutation?”

“Trespassing,” Erik says, and he’s surprised to hear the way the word sounds coming out of his mouth, slurred and sibilant. Frank manhandles him inside and Erik finds himself dropped unceremoniously on the bed, bouncing a little as he lands.

“Well, come in instead of lurking next time,” Frank says, sitting down at the desk and looking at Erik with a weird expression. “So. Drunk, huh? Any special occasion?”

“I wasn’t aware I needed one,” Erik says, and sinks back on the bed, lying down with his head on the pillow to stare up at Frank’s still ceiling fan, both his hands lying open and palm-up on the mattress. He tilts his head toward Frank after a moment and arches a brow. “You’re welcome to some of my hard-earned liquor, if you like.”

“Nah, the sun’s not yet past the yard-arm,” Frank says, unshouldering his bag and dropping it to the floor. “You okay? You look not so great.” He starts unbuttoning his coat, revealing an ugly college sweater underneath. “Need me to beat someone up for you? Knight in shining armor?”

Erik wants to say, _what does that mean?_ , certain he looks just fucking fine, but decides that would be rude. Instead he pushes himself up again, swinging his legs off the edge of the bed to lean in close to Frank, reaching out to tug at the wool of his sweater with two fingers, twisting his lips into a suggestive sort of smile. “This is horrible,” he murmurs instead of answering, flicking his gaze up at Frank; he’s close enough he can feel the heat of Frank’s breath on his cheek. “You should … take it off.”

“Yeah, nah,” Frank says, taking hold of Erik’s hand and moving it back down to rest on Erik’s own thigh. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a dog as the next guy, but given you’ve apparently been screwing your way through the liquor stores of the city I’ll wait until you’ve brushed your teeth at least. You want some water?”

Erik nods, and after a second he adds, “And some mouthwash, if it really bothers you that much.” He’s irritated, not used to being turned down, but that doesn’t mean he’s given up either. He stretches out one hand, waiting, and Frank rolls his eyes, getting to his feet and walking over to the little sink area that’s hidden behind the end of the other bed and a screen, coming back with a plastic beer glass and a bottle of listerine. “Here.”

Erik takes them both, drinking the water out of the glass before he rinses his mouth out with the listerine and spits it into the cup, setting it aside on Frank’s desk. “Such a Southern gentleman,” he says in his best imitation of Frank’s drawl.

“Don’t y’all know it,” Frank says, taking it back to the sink to throw it out. “So what’s got your panties in a bunch today?”

Frank turns around to head back toward the desk but Erik is already there, pressing all five fingertips of his right hand against Frank’s solid chest, keeping him where he is, stood there with Erik close enough they’re nearly pressed together. Frank’s brows go up, but he doesn’t push Erik away. “Less talking,” Erik says. “More fucking.” He drops his hand down to Frank’s fly, where his power has already started to undo the belt buckle, pressing the palm of his hand against Frank’s groin and squeezing lightly.

“Nympho,” Frank says, snorting, but there’s no pretending Erik can’t feel the way his cock responds, pressing out a little against Erik’s hand. “Tell you what. I’ll fuck you if you let me suck you off for once.” He raises an eyebrow, challengingly. “Deal?”

“Ugh,” Erik says, making a face and finally pulling his hands away. “No.” He doesn’t step away, though, and instead he dips his head enough to gaze up at Frank from beneath his lashes. It doesn’t immediately occur to him that this might be too submissive, considering Frank is only interested in Doms -- it just feels natural. He bites at his lower lip a little to draw attention to it and says, “Don’t you want me?”

Frank snorts and wraps an arm around Erik’s waist, holding him close -- then lifts him again and carries him back across the room, dumping him firmly back on the bed before taking the chair again. “You’re drunk and upset about something, and you know I’ll fuck you six ways from Sunday normally, but not now,” he says, letting his hands hang loose between his knees. “I’m not a total asshole, Lehnsherr. Besides, I have class in twenty, I just came back to take a dump and switch books.”

Erik lies back on the bed again, tucking one arm under Frank’s pillow and rolling onto his side, facing him. “Fine,” he says. He doesn’t feel so drunk anymore, not really, even if he knows it hasn’t been long enough for the alcohol to be out of his system. “Whatever you want.”

“Sleep it off,” Frank says, and reaches over to ruffle Erik’s hair. “I’m hitting the head.” He gets up and leaves the room, and Erik doesn’t mean to sleep, but it claims him anyway before Frank can return.

He doesn’t wake up until the door creaks open, and the mattress dips beside him as Frank sits down. It must have been hours; the room’s darker now, the sun must have passed over the dorm to the opposite side of the sky, leaving them cast into its shadow. It’s late. Erik can feel eyes on him, and after a moment he squints up at Frank, who says, “Hey. Feel better?”

Erik nods, twisting a little at his waist so he can look up at Frank properly. His head is pounding, an ache that throbs in his temples. “Tylenol?” he asks. His mouth feels dry, like it’s been stuffed with cotton balls.

“Sure,” Frank says, reaching over to pull open his desk drawer and fishing around until he pulls out a blister pack. “Here. Need water?”

“Please.”

Frank gets up -- the mattress lurches as his weight lifts -- and comes back with the same glass from earlier, offering it to Erik again. “You wanna talk about it?” he asks, sitting back on the bed, his side pressed up against Erik’s thigh. “Whatever it is.”

“Mmm.” Erik swallows the pills and washes them down with several long sips of water, the coldness in his throat waking him up a little more. After he puts the glass down he pushes himself up to sitting, bracing himself with his palms against the mattress. “Charles and I fought, that’s all,” he says. “I’m staying with his sister for the time being.” Just recounting it makes his chest feel tight.

“Huh,” Frank says. “Is she hot?”

“She’s blue,” Erik says, which he knows for the both of them is an affirmative answer, and cracks a tiny smile, one that doesn’t entirely reach inside him.

“Nice,” Frank says, waggling his eyebrows. “Domme?”

“Married.”

“Eh.” Frank shrugs. “So she’s on your side? Weird. You’d think she’d go with her brother. He piss her off too?”

Erik looks at Frank for a moment, considering, then decides -- screw it. If Charles gets to tell someone, then so does Erik. “I fucked him,” he says bluntly.

Frank blinks. “Who, your dad?”

“He’s not my dad,” Erik retorts instantly, the insinuation still rankling at him, even after everything.

“Okay, fine, whatever, you fucked your foster dad?” Frank asks, his eyebrows rising steadily towards his hairline. “Wow. I mean, I know I said he was hot, but still. Jesus, Erik.”

Erik shrugs, feeling a little uncomfortable now, not sure if he wishes he’d kept this to himself after all. Maybe he shouldn’t be admitting to this kind of thing, that he’s so far gone as to seduce someone like Charles, intentionally or otherwise. After a long few moments Frank snorts, still looking kind of stunned, and then finally he says, “Was he any good?”

Typical Frank, Erik thinks, with a sudden rush of relief so deep it nearly overwhelms him -- not that Frank’s apparent obliviousness to the legality of the situation isn’t weird, but Erik’s had enough moralizing from Charles and Raven as it is. It’s nice just to be around someone who takes Erik’s perspective on the matter for a change. “I don’t know, he’s a sub,” Erik says, relaxing back against the headboard and trying not to let on how quickly his heart is still beating. “I have no point of comparison.”

“I dunno, I think you’d know if he was shitty,” Frank says, shrugging, and leans back into his desk chair, kicking his feet up onto the edge of the bed. “He looks so uptight, I’m surprised he hasn’t had it surgically removed so his vacuum-applied chastity pants could stop restricting his blood flow.”

Erik does laugh, genuinely this time. “He is uptight. You have no idea. He’s the one who turned himself in to Raven, you know. That’s his sister. I suppose his conscience just couldn’t take it anymore.” Erik should have seen it coming a mile away, doesn’t know how he didn’t predict it, how he ever let it get this far. And yet here they are. Here he is.

“Hmm,” Frank says. “Well, I can’t exactly judge him for fucking you given I’ve also plumbed those depths, so I guess it really boils down to if he was good in bed or not as to whether it’s a shame.”

“It’s a shame because this is the only way I could get him to talk to me,” Erik says, meeting Frank’s gaze and feeling something go hard inside his chest at the same time, walling off any risk he might feel something, actual emotion, here, and let it show.

Frank frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I figured out what he wanted a long time ago,” Erik explains, reaching down and picking at a loose thread on Frank’s comforter, twisting it around his thumb. “He started staying out all the time, avoiding me. He didn’t stop until I let him fuck me. It’s only a matter of time before he just leaves again, now.”

And when he does, Erik … Erik can’t go back to living like that. It’s not even worth considering. He will never live like that again. He’s old enough now to see this for what it really is, to appreciate that Charles was always, is still, the only person who ever loved him. He refuses to give that up so easily.

“Back up a minute,” Frank says. “You said you fucked him - you mean more than once, then? And now it’s over?”

“Yeah,” Erik says, glancing back up again. Frank is just looking at him, his face bland but friendly. “He stopped because he apparently sees it as some kind of abuse. _Human_ morals,” Erik practically spits out.

Frank shrugs, his lip quirking. “It’s pretty fucked up. Not surprised he freaked.” He lets his hand rest on Erik’s hip, a casual weight. “So what’re you gonna do about it?”

“I have no idea,” Erik says bluntly, uncurling the thread from his thumb and gripping his hand into a fist instead. “But he made me stop fucking anyone else while we were together, you remember. He certainly seemed to think it was better him than other people, but I no longer have a good reason to give Charles Xavier everything he wants, do I?”

“Well, that depends, doesn’t it,” Frank says, and his thumb starts stroking over Erik’s hip. “Whether what you want most is for him to take you back or to get back at him. If the second, I’d be happy to oblige now you’ve sobered up a bit.”

“Who says I can’t have both?” Erik says, and he feels a vicious, angry heat surge up in him; he reaches for Frank and twists his fingers hard in his hair, pulling him forward into a rough kiss. It’d be bruising if it weren’t for Frank’s mutation, a clash of lips and biting teeth, Erik’s hand grasping for the hem of Frank’s sweater. He can feel as well as hear Frank’s chuckle before he kisses Erik back, one hand curling around the side of Erik’s head even as the other goes to Erik’s shoulder, forces him down onto his back by brute strength.

Frank’s only got half his weight resting on Erik’s chest, but it makes his broken ribs feel like they’re cracking open all over again. The pain lances bright through Erik’s body and mind and he makes a harsh sound against Frank’s mouth and just kisses him harder, breaking away only to pull Frank’s sweater off and drop it down off the side of the bed.

“Shit,” Frank says, ruffled-looking and flushed. “You’re so hot.” He leans down again, and this time when Erik makes a noise Frank pulls back, frowns at him. “What?”

“My ribs,” Erik says, even though he hates drawing attention to it. “... Never mind. I’m fine.” His power’s got Frank’s fly undone already, and when he reaches his hand down beneath Frank’s trousers and boxers he finds Frank’s hard already, thigh and hot in his palm as he starts to drag quick strokes up along his length. His other hand drags down Frank’s back, leaving long scratches in its wake and keeping Frank there, not allowing him to pull back again.

“Idiot,” Frank says, and grabs hold of Erik, manhandling him out of the way -- none-too-gently, although he probably doesn’t mean it that way -- until Frank can lie on his back and drag Erik on top of him, rocking his hips up into Erik’s grip. “There. Better? Was it me that did your ribs?”

Erik can’t decide if he should be annoyed or not, having his demands disregarded even if it’s in his own best interest. “You did,” he says. “Want to see?” -- and strips his shirt off over his head with the hand that isn’t on his injured side. Coincidentally, the same hand not currently working Frank’s cock, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the sensitive spot at the underside of the head, or at least it is until he needs to let go to get his shirt the rest of the way off.

“Well fuck,” Frank says, reaching up to frame Erik’s bruises with his hands, visible now without Charles’ bandage covering them. Frank sucks his teeth. “I’m sorry, I don’t know my own strength sometimes. You should be resting those, you know.”

“Fuck off,” Erik snaps, and knocks his hands out of the way to go back to jerking his cock, a little harder than he was before. “Don’t tell me what to do.” That’s an order.

“All right.” Frank raises an eyebrow, grunting a little on a particularly tight squeeze. “I’ll just lay here and let you have your wicked way with me then.” His hips are twitching a little under Erik, barely weighed down by his body straddling Frank’s thighs; Frank’s hands lift to fold under his head, until he’s the picture of relaxation. “Better?”

Erik tips his head forward and spits in his hand to ease his progress some, even though Frank is uncut. The motion of his palm on Frank’s cock is quick, slippery. “I can’t let you fuck me today,” he says. “Not unless you’re going to do all the work.”

“Pretty sure I shouldn’t fuck you at all with broken ribs,” Frank says, making a disapproving noise. “I mean, I could stop you, but then you’d get mad and things would get messy. If you’re so insistent on making me come, you can jack me off, and then I’ll jack you off and when you’re addled and vulnerable I’ll wrap your damn ribs.”

“Like hell you will,” Erik says, but he gives Frank a tiny slice of a grin all the same.

It’s silent for a while after that, or at least Frank isn’t talking; his hands are squeezing Erik’s thighs, carefully, and his breathing gets heavy as his cock hardens further in the channel of Erik’s grip; Erik can feel him trembling a little as he tries not to buck up and send Erik flying. His cheeks are flushed, his lips parted to let out a groan. He isn’t holding Erik’s wrist, or hair, like the Doms who use him as a sub would -- but he isn’t lying there completely under Erik’s direction either, like Charles. And somehow this feels safer than either of those other options, at least right now, never mind how easily Frank’s mutation could kill. For once in his life, Erik isn’t serving anyone.

Frank comes with a loud grunt, his cock spurting come over Erik’s hand and onto his own stomach; he does jerk a bit, and Erik hisses as the movement jars his ribs, though Frank’s hands fly up to steady him, even as his eyes close, the flush darkening on his face. “Fuck,” Frank says, blinking them open again a few seconds later, once he’s spent, looking up at Erik. “That’s good.”

“Good,” Erik says, and he leans forward across Frank’s half-naked body to grab a handful of tissues from the box on Frank’s desk, wiping the come from his hand and stomach and passing a few down to Frank as well, to clean himself up. It doesn’t help that much; Erik’s hand still feels sticky. “There,” he says once they’re both cleaned up, feeling suddenly awkward and not really meeting Frank’s gaze, focusing down instead on the tissues he’s balling up in his palm.

“C’mere,” Frank says, and takes hold of Erik’s belt, working it open, then his fly, the zipper dragging down, the fabric loosening. For some reason Erik doesn’t stop him, though this is normally the point where he’d smack people away; instead he just watches as Frank tugs his half-hard length out of the gap in his boxers, spits on his hand and starts to jerk him off, quick, efficient motions of his hand, tugging at Erik until he starts sluggishly to harden.

Erik braces one hand back behind him, against Frank’s thigh, and takes in a shallow breath, tension gripping him deep in his stomach. He almost doesn’t want it to feel good, but it does, little shivers of electricity running between his spine and the head of his cock where heat is slowly building. Erik closes his eyes and thinks about nothing, nothing but the motion of Frank’s hand on his cock, a little rough where the calluses on his hands rub over Erik’s shaft but nice, too, something he’s having a harder and harder time overthinking as his mind starts to blur out.

When he comes it feels like surrendering, his hips jerking into Frank’s hand and his stomach tightening up in a way that sends a sharp and immediate pain ripping through his broken ribs; Erik makes a sound in the back of his throat that doesn’t seem like it should belong to him and digs his nails hard into Frank’s flesh.

“There you go,” Frank says, stroking him through it, until Erik is almost too sensitive, when he finally lets go, wiping his hand on the tissue Erik had used earlier. “You okay? Need medical attention?” His mouth is quirked as if he’s joking, but his eyes are serious.

“You broke it, you bought it,” Erik makes himself say once he’s sure his voice won’t shake, and he uses that same tissue to clean himself off before tucking his cock back into his jeans and doing up his fly. His power is steadier than his hands. He gets off Frank carefully, favoring his right side, and settles back against the wall. “What time is it?”

Frank shrugs. “Four-ish.” He rolls over and grabs his phone out of his jacket pocket where it’s slung over the back of his chair. “Four thirty. You need to be somewhere? I’ll wrap those ribs for you, you should be keeping pressure on them.”

“Not really.” It’s not like he’s rushing home to see Charles, after all. Charles will still be at work, now, writing notes on his last patient of the day and getting ready to catch his train home. It’s strange to think about it, that Erik won’t be there waiting for him, getting dinner ready. Charles will probably have to order in. “They won’t stay wrapped. I have to take the bandage off to shower and I can’t put it back on myself. If I ask Charles’ sister to do it and end up fucking her too, well, people will start to wonder.” Erik grins like it’s a joke, even though it isn’t, really.

“Just saran wrap them in the shower, idiot, everyone knows that,” Frank says, getting up and rummaging around in his desk drawer again until he emerges with a roll of bandages. “Now sit up and shut up like a good patient.”

No matter how firm his tone is, Frank’s hands are careful as he wraps Erik up again; it’s impossible not to think about Charles doing this, himself, the other night -- how he’d taken such care not to touch Erik’s skin at all. It’s not something Erik wants to think about. Missing Charles is like having a sharp stone pressing beneath his breastbone, a constant pressure and pain that, when it flares, makes it hard to breathe.

“Thanks,” Erik says when Frank finishes up, pinning the bandage down to itself. “Very professional. Drop engineering, go to nursing school.”

Frank snorts. “Fuck that. I’m building bridges.”

“Are your bridges as pretty as your bandages?” Erik says, and he isn’t making fun -- Frank’s wrapped him up tighter than Charles had, with perfect efficiency, like he’d done this before.

“Yep,” Frank says, snipping off the rest of the bandage and chucking it back into the drawer. “Get people from A to B, at least, without bending in the middle.”

“You have no sense of romance,” Erik tells him, and he reaches for his shirt to pull the sleeves right way out and draws it back over his head. It’s still painful, but not as painful as it was. “Or no sense of the dramatic, I can’t tell which. Possibly both.”

“I could have said, ‘not as pretty as you’, would that be better?” Frank asks, sounding amused. “You can stay here if you want, I have another class at six but you’re welcome to crash.”

“No, I should be getting home,” Erik says, dragging his left hand back through his hair to fix what the static on his shirt messed up, combing it back into place. “School got out an hour ago. I should try at least to seem consistent.”

“Okay.” Frank reaches for his own shirt, putting it on with brisk efficiency. “Want me to walk you to the station? Romantic.”

“I meant big-R, not little-r,” Erik says. He gets off the bed; when he stands his ribs creak and send little painful shivers lacing up his spine again, enough to make him feel queasy and remember -- he hasn’t had anything to eat all day, not since breakfast, and not unless he counts vodka. “Pragmatism’s all well and good, but concrete bridges won’t get anyone’s attention.”

Running his hands down his chest to smooth out his shirt before reaching for his sweater, Frank gives Erik a sardonic look. “Not like skipping class, sucking off a bunch of strangers and getting drunk before noon, no, they won’t. Your foster-dad’s probably not listening, you know.”

“You’re wrong. He’s always listening.” Just because Erik can’t feel him in his head doesn’t mean he’s not there, and Erik very much doubts Charles would have cut the constant telepathic connection between them just because Erik’s left home. He picks up his satchel from where it’s fallen on the floor -- he can’t remember how it got there, if he dropped it or if Frank put it down -- and slings it over his uninjured shoulder.

Frank makes a face. “That’s weird. Have you told him you don’t need a baby monitor?”

“I don’t care if he’s there, as long as he doesn’t abuse the privilege,” Erik says, finishing up with his shoes and heading for the door; Frank follows, pulling on his coat, apparently making good on his offer to walk Erik to the station after all. “And sometimes, the benefit’s all mine.” He gives Frank a pointed look over his shoulder. “Like now.”

“Okay,” Frank says, holding up his hands in surrender. he reaches past Erik to push the door open, and waves for him to go through. “After you.”

They walk to the station in relative silence, the snow dirtied now underfoot. “Oh,” Erik says halfway there, “I forgot my vodka on your desk table,” and glances over at Frank, brows lifting. “I’ll come by for it later this week, so don’t drink it all.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Frank says, the bulk of him only widened by the thick puffy layers of his coat, until he resembles nothing so much as a black wall with a face. “I’ll buy you some more. You know how to get to your new mommy’s house from here?”

“Made it here in the first place, didn’t I?” Erik says, and waves Frank off, pulling his headphones out of his bag and plugging them into his phone so he can at least have something to listen to as he stands on the rush hour train, people pushing in around him from every side, tourists’ shopping bags bumping his ribs occasionally and making him swear under his breath. He’s the only one who doesn’t need the handrail; magnetism keeps him perfectly balanced even as the train speeds underground, carrying him downtown.

When he gets back to Raven and Hank’s apartment, though, Raven is waiting for him in the living room with her hands in fists on her hips, foot tapping, her brow furrowed and furious. “Where the hell have you been?” she snaps. “Charles texted me and said you didn’t go to school today. That is not okay, Erik! What the fuck!”

So here’s Charles’ revenge, Erik thinks grimly. Even out from under his roof, Charles expects Erik to follow his rules. “He shouldn’t have told you,” Erik says, shrugging his satchel off his shoulder and dumping it in one of the armchairs, then keeps walking, past her, toward his room. “Text him back and remind him he isn’t my parent anymore.”

“Come back here,” Raven says, her voice sharp. “Of course he texted me, he cares about what happens to you, idiot. And if he’s not your parent then I am, and I get to tell you you have to go to school!”

Erik scowls at the wall, then fixes his face into a plastered-on smile just before he turns around to look at her again, folding his arms across his chest. “You dropped out of high school when you were sixteen,” he says mildly. “Charles told me.”

“I moved in with Charles, got a job off-Broadway acting in a small series of productions of Pinter plays and got my GED.” Raven’s mouth is tight and flat, her golden eyes still furious even if her tone is less immediately explosive. “I didn’t go off around town not telling anyone where I was and putting myself in potentially dangerous situations. It was a career choice, not me deliberately trying to provoke Charles.” She steps in closer, one step, two. “Erik, this is not okay. You have to go to school. If you don’t graduate you don’t get to go to college, and part of graduating is attendance. I know you want to go to college, so why are you fucking about with your future like this?”

Erik doesn’t want to answer that question. Can’t answer it, because the reason is -- he doesn’t know the reason. He has no idea why he does half the things he does, just that it makes him feel better in some vicious, dark way. Maybe the danger is the point.

“I’ll go to school,” he says instead, not dropping her gaze. “It won’t happen again. All right?”

“All right,” Raven says, and she finally lets her hands drop from her hips. “But Charles will totally tell on you if you don’t, understand? He’s a real snitch, always has been.”

“Charles can fuck me,” Erik says easily, then grins and adds -- “Whoops. Guess he already did.”

“Ugh, Erik, that’s not funny.” Raven makes a face, looking genuinely repulsed. “There’s some shit you don’t joke about, okay?”

“You’ll have to make me an itemized list.” Erik tilts his head toward the bedroom, says, “I have homework to do. For my future. If you’ll excuse me,” and holds his hand out to catch his satchel as it flies across the room toward him, drawn by the metal in the laptop inside. Raven lets him go, and as soon as the door is shut behind him he pulls his phone out of his pocket. He has the text to Charles already written, his thumb poised over the ‘send’ graphic -- and then thinks, no. Fuck him. He knows what he did. And he puts his phone inside the dresser drawer, to ignore it the rest of the night.

That evening though, when he’s curled up under the sheets in this dark, unfamiliar house, in a bed that’s neither his nor Charles’, he can’t escape the dull pain as it rises up inside him once more and keeps him awake, stuck lucid in a permanent bad dream.

*

_Charles_

It’s so quiet, with Erik gone. The apartment feels still, dormant, like a museum full of ancient artifacts and patrons only whispering as they move between the displays and pretend to read the description cards -- and Charles feels like the ghost of the objects’ owner, moving amongst his old belongings but not disturbing them, leaving them for the future people to view and interpret in their own ways.

He’s clean himself, of course, and he goes to work the same as he always does -- his patients still need him, and he needs to be presentable and in control and adult about it all. But the apartment … well. He lived amongst his own mess before Erik arrived, it only seems fitting that he do so again now.

It’s been four days. Erik hasn’t been in touch once.

Charles is settling in with his dinner when Raven calls him around eight thirty, during the interval, the phone shrill and piercing in the silence; Charles flinches over his chow mein before he can make himself get up to go and fetch it, wondering if it might be ...

“Hello?”

“Charles, hey, it’s Raven.” A long pause, the sound of her shifting in her chair; he tries not to be disappointed. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine,” Charles says, carefully pinching a piece of bok choy between his chopsticks. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Raven says, then there’s another pause, shorter this time. “Charles, how are you really doing?”

Charles shrugs before he remembers she can’t see it; then he says, “I’m fine, Raven. How’s everyone at your end?” He puts the bok choy in his mouth, sips at his water. “It must be a bit crowded there.”

He hears Raven huff, then she says, “Everyone’s good, Charles. Far as I can tell Erik is going to school, or at least you haven’t told me otherwise, and he’s eating his greens. Hank doesn’t know what’s going on, just that you guys had a fight -- I don’t like keeping stuff from him, but I think he’d rather not know, to be honest. Erik seems … I’m not sure really. He’s hard to read.”

Charles knows. Charles knows, intimately, how Erik is.

He ought to stop reading him, of course -- Erik clearly needs space, and that includes mental as well as physical, but the thing is that Charles is so used to having a light touch on Erik’s mind that it’s subconscious now, difficult to keep from doing -- and besides that, Charles can’t help but keep paying attention to where Erik is, what he’s doing, how he’s feeling, like prodding at a sore tooth, painful but mesmerising. He has to keep poking it to see if it still hurts.

“Are you and Hank holding up okay?” he asks, stirring his noodles to see if he can find any more bok choy. “Erik can be a handful. I’m sorry you’ve had to disrupt yourselves over this.”

“Next time think about that _before_ you fuck a minor, not after,” Raven says, then exhales, loudly enough for him to hear. “Charles, are you cleaning up after yourself? I know you don’t when you’re left to yourself, but you’re a grown man, you know where the trashcan is.”

“I’m fine, Raven.” There are takeout boxes on the counter, but they’re stacked, and only a couple of them still have leftovers in, but only of things he didn’t like enough to eat the leftovers of. And maybe there are a few old newspapers on the coffee table in the den, but that’s normal, he just hasn’t got around to the recycling yet. “You don’t have to check up on me. Like you said, I’m a grown man.”

“Hmph. I’ll come over tomorrow and check,” Raven says. “I’ve got to go, we’re back on in five and I need to be in the wings, but don’t be an idiot, Charles, if Erik turns up at the apartment don’t make him think he’s walked into the city dump, okay? If he rocks up and you look like the moleman then he’ll feel he has to stay, and you don’t want him staying out of pity. That would just be sad.”

“I’m really all right, Raven,” Charles says, looking down into his box again and scratching with the end of the chopstick at his stubble, which he hasn’t shaved off today -- too much effort with nobody to see it. “Don’t worry about me.”

Raven makes a disagreeable noise, but she says her goodbyes and hangs up anyway, and Charles finishes his lukewarm noodles before getting up and leaving the trash there to tidy up later.

It’s too quiet. There’s no scratching pencil or television sounds, no turning pages or muttering over a book, no clash of pans and chopping board-on-knife staccato; no Erik, just everywhere scattered with the remnants of his tidiness, not so much an impression of presence as an impression of the emptiness he left behind.

Charles lays down on the couch on his side and drags the blanket down off the back of it to drape over himself, and after a minute he reaches for the remote and turns on the television to drown out the silence.

*


	25. Twenty-Five

_Charles_

Raven comes to visit unannounced three weeks after Erik moved out, turning up at Charles’ front door with a bag of takeout and an empty duffel slung over her shoulder that Charles recognizes immediately as Erik’s. He looks up at her from his position curled up in his favorite armchair, dressed in his oldest sweats and a faded band t-shirt that he can’t remember how he acquired -- it may have been in his teens, but it fits okay and there are only a couple of holes in the shoulder -- and winces as he hears what she’s thinking as she sees the place.

“Well,” Raven says, looking around herself, “this is a mess. Good job on the adulthood.”

Charles pushes himself up to sitting, wishing she had called ahead, given him some time to hide the way he’s been living. He’d heard her coming, of course, five minutes ago when she emerged from the subway, but it wasn’t enough warning to make a significant enough dent in the disarray to make it worth getting up. No matter what he did she was going to judge him, so he’d thought that it might as well be for the sheep as the lamb -- though now he wishes he’d made at least a token effort to clean up.

“I let things go a little,” he says, and looks at the coffee table with its stack of dirty plates and cutlery, overspilling copies of newspapers and a few magazines and catalogues falling onto the floor around it in a colorful pile, like autumn leaves. There’s an old duvet on the couch -- wrinkled and crumpled up at one end where he kicked it off -- and he knows without needing to check that the kitchen is just as cluttered. It’s not his best foot forward.

Raven’s mouth twists.

“I wish I could believe this is just your natural state,” she says with a sigh, “but you’re not normally this bad. Jesus, Charles -- you have a dishwasher for Christ’s sake. Carry the plates in the kitchen and put them in it then put it on. It’s not hard.” She looks around again, slower this time, and Charles can hear her thinking -- _It’s all very well his being depressed all over everything, but it’s not as if this wasn’t his own damn fault in the first place. For fuck’s sake. Moping around like fucking Miss Havisham in_ Great Expectations _. He’s not in a wedding dress but he’s got the rotten cake part down pat._

It’s like being scalded, the feeling of Raven’s lack of surprise and disappointment in him splashing against his flesh and searing him, and Charles deserves it, of course -- even more so because the only impulse Charles feels is to ask about Erik. Pathetic. Not doing so is like leaving a splinter under his skin, but with a pulse of self-loathing Charles clamps down the urge and instead just says, “Raven, why are you here?”

She turns and gives him a pointed look. “You’re my brother and you’re depressed. Of course I came to check in on you. Plus Erik needs a few things and I saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.” She shifts her grip and slides the duffel bag down to the floor, where it lands with a soft thump. “Now, let’s tidy up a bit before the toxic mold kills you.”

Charles pauses in his armchair, wanting to refuse, since it’s embarrassing enough as it is without her tidying up after him -- but only until Raven says, in an ordering tone, “Charles, pick up the plates and bring them into the kitchen to wash.” Just the thought of moving, of getting up and tackling the mess he’s created, which seemed small at first but grew bigger and heavier and more all-consuming every day, is exhausting, but he lets himself be carried by the order in her voice, the comfort of the command almost overriding the emptiness of its not being imperative, of its having no true power over him. Charles concentrates only on obedience, compliance, and lets that wash away the sordid feeling of self-loathing while he does as she asks.

“How is Erik?” he asks, finally, when they’re stood side by side at the sink washing those few things too big to fit in the dishwasher, his hands immersed in the soapy water while Raven dries.

“He’s okay,” Raven says aloud; inside, she’s thinking that Charles must already know, given that he’s obviously been keeping tabs on Erik telepathically. “Angry a lot, mostly, though he’s polite to Hank and me now. He’s out with Madelyne a lot of nights, and to be honest I suspect he’s getting into trouble there -- sex for sure, alcohol I’m pretty certain, and I’m a bit concerned he may be taking drugs but I can’t prove it enough to call him out on it. Are you keeping an eye on him?” She sets the grill pan down on the side and picks up a wine glass.

Charles shrugs, scrubbing the inside of a burnt saucepan to try and get the charcoal out of it. He’s not … comfortable, admitting that he can’t help but keep track of Erik, wincing every time he catches him at something harmful, backing away entirely once Erik zeroes in on his partner for the evening. If he didn’t hear Erik thinking _See this? Now fuck off, Charles_ whenever he does something he knows Charles disapproves of then Charles would probably be less anguished about it, think more calmly about how to intercede, but knowing Erik is doing all of these things, hurting himself, as a deliberate jab in Charles’ eye …

“I’ll step in if I think he’s going to do permanent or serious harm to himself,” Charles says, water sloshing around his wrists. Coward. “Right now, though, he just needs space to work this stuff out. Erik isn’t good at emotions, he has to vent them through physical action or bad behavior. My stepping in unless absolutely necessary would probably only spur him on.”

“All right,” Raven says, her lips pursing; displeased, but unwilling to push further. “Well. You’re clearly in need of more help than you’re getting yourself, Charles. Are you still going to work?”

“Yes, I’m going to work,” Charles says, nettled at the very suggestion. “I shave and wear clean shirts and everything. Small children who see me in the street are unafraid, no dogs bark, nice policemen don’t come over to ask me if I’m quite all right and if I need help. I’m not a recluse, Raven.”

“Well, you’re living like Boo Radley,” she says, and puts down the tea towel, turning to face him with her hands set in fists on her hips, her jaw a determined line. “You know I’m pretty fucking uncomfortable with all of this and with thinking about what went on here between you and Erik, but if we’re all, Hank and Erik and me, going to power on through it then you need to too. I’m not digging you out of your dungheap, Charles, you’ll have to do that yourself.”

“You’re helping me right now.”

“Your metaphorical dungheap,” Raven says, scowling. “Come on, Charles. I know this isn’t fun for you but I’m doing my best not to tell you to deal with it your fucking self here. I didn’t ask for this.”

“I know,” Charles says, and reaches for her, then remembers his wet hands and holds off, standing impotently in front of her, his hands falling back to his sides. “I know. Thank you, for helping us. I know Erik can be difficult to manage, and circumstances aren’t … what we’d want them to be, and … thanks, Raven. I do appreciate it.”

She doesn’t reach back. “You should get out more, meet people,” Raven says, her brow beetling, thinking, at the same time, _adult people_. “Not hole up in here for the rest of your life and encouraging yourself to be depressed. That doesn’t help anyone. Date! Go out to dinner, a movie, anything, but don’t just sit here and marinate. Okay? Now, you go tidy up the other crap in the den and I’ll grab Erik’s things from upstairs.”

Charles lets her go, and does as she says, going back into the den and piling up the magazines and the newspapers, the odd bit of mail that’s snuck in, tossing it all in together to put in the recycling. He can feel her moving around upstairs, her mind a buzzing active presence inside his central area of awareness, and it’s both like and unlike having Erik home, someone else to break up the quiet and the stillness of it all. If Erik were here things would never have got this far, would never have become so untidy -- it all would have been swept away the moment Erik saw it, as if it had never been anything other than picture perfect.

Charles sits down on the couch on top of the crumpled duvet and lets his hands hang between his knees, a heavy sigh escaping him before he can stop it, exasperated instantly by himself and the pathos of it all, of himself -- thinking about Erik sat beside him reading a book or working on school things, his shoulder casually brushing Charles’, his cold toes insinuating their way under Charles’ thigh when Erik would turn to sit with his back against the couch arm, utterly owning the space between them.

It’s not that Charles can’t be alone -- he’s been alone before, for years, and he was just fine, could enjoy his own company without worrying about needing anyone else. But now he’s used to the aura of Erik’s presence, permeating everything with his personality and his influence, making everything feel like home.

Charles sits like that for a while, limp and lackluster, until he hears Raven coming back, and then he gets to his feet to make it look like he’s been tidying all this time.

*

He takes Raven’s advice and spends the next few evenings out, drinking at one of the bars he’d frequented when trying to avoid Erik. He doesn’t overindulge, but it’s … nice, having other people around and active, and even if he never starts the night with company he usually finds someone to talk to. It’s relaxing, really, to talk to other human beings instead of holing up by himself in the silent apartment.

He’s halfway through a conversation about arts education when he feels his cell vibrating in his pocket, and he says, “Sorry, hold that thought,” as he pulls it out to see who it is. Then pauses, staring at the name on the screen, frozen in indecision, his stomach clenching with a sickening lurch.

Erik doesn’t hang up, though, so finally Charles presses the answer button and lifts the phone to his ear, says, as normally as he can, “Hi.”

“Hey,” Erik says. His voice sounds so strange, after weeks of silence -- both like and unlike Erik, somehow deeper than Charles remembers it, like Erik’s grown up while they’ve been apart, changed out of Charles’ sight into a stranger. There’s a moment’s pause, and then Erik says, “Where are you? I can barely hear you.”

“Sorry,” Charles says reflexively, and gets to his feet, making an apologetic face at Tanya, who just shrugs and waves him away. “I’m out and about. I’ll try and find a quiet corner.” He glances around and notices the entrance to the other, smaller room -- there’s no sound system in there, so he makes his way inside. There’s only two other people in there, deep in their own conversation, so he takes a seat. “Better?” He wonders what Erik wants, why he’s called -- but he doesn’t dare ask in case it breaks the spell somehow. Erik hanging up on him would be worse than hearing his voice at all.

Erik doesn’t say anything at all for several seconds, and Charles thinks he must know where Charles is, and why, and Charles doesn’t need to read Erik’s mind to guess he isn’t happy about it. “The school psychologist wants to meet with you,” Erik says at last, his accent slightly stronger now than it had been even a few seconds earlier. “They sent home a form. You’ll need to call the front office to schedule an appointment.”

Charles kind of knew that Erik wouldn’t be ringing just to talk to him, but nonetheless it brings a bitter smile to his lips, knowing that he did this to himself. “Okay,” he says. “Could you … scan the form, maybe, and email it to me? I’ll go, you don’t have to join though if you don’t want.” He pictures himself sitting next to Erik for an hour, two hours, unable to talk or touch or anything, pretending everything is normal while being berated for Erik’s poor behavior lately, unable to explain it without going into unpleasant detail that neither of them can discuss -- no, Charles can’t imagine Erik wants to suffer through that either. “How … how’s school going? Anything I should be aware of beforehand?”

Charles hears the sound of Erik shifting, wherever he is -- he imagines him sitting on the sofa in Raven’s apartment, probably with his laptop within reach and a coffee held in one hand, easily transplanted from Charles’ home to someone else’s as if nothing had changed. “That’s what they want to talk to you about, I expect,” Erik says, a bit wryly -- and then he adds, as if it were Charles’ only concern: “My grades are fine.”

It’s not that Charles doesn’t know Erik’s been acting up, but the evasion rankles given that Erik must know that Charles knows. “Good, good,” is all Charles says, though, instead of pointing that out, looking down and picking at the seam of his pants where they crinkle at the knee. “And … everything else? How’s that going?”

“You’ve been reading my mind, haven’t you? Enough to tattle to Raven. So I think you know the answer.”

“I have a general awareness of people I’ve spent a lot of time with, you know that,” Charles says, a little stung -- he has checked in on Erik with embarrassing regularity, but it’s not as if he can shut off that awareness without a sustained and tiring effort. “And I care what happens to you. I’m not going to let you throw yourself away. For what it’s worth, I haven’t told her anything recently.”

Another silence, stretching out between them, until Charles wonders if Erik has hung up -- but no, when he checks his phone the screen’s still illuminated. 

“You’re selfish, Charles,” Erik says at long last, though he doesn’t sound angry, not really. His voice is too even, the way he speaks when he’s trying not to give away how he really feels. “You didn’t do this for me, you did it for you. At least admit that much.”

Charles bites his tongue on his first response before he can say something he’ll regret. It tastes like bile, like poison, like something his mother would say. So instead he takes a moment, and finally replies, “You don’t have to understand why I’ve made this choice, Erik, and believe what you want to believe. But guilting me into changing my mind won’t get you what you want. I love you.”

He hears Erik’s breath catch at that, even over the music, and the way it shakes when Erik finally exhales again.

“And what is it that I want?” Erik says.

“You want me,” Charles says, very quietly, “to give up everything I believe, everything I want for myself, to give you the illusion of safety and security you crave so very deeply, let you have me entirely and make you my everything and damn everything and everyone else in the world. And I can’t do that, Erik. I tried. I’m not a very good guardian and maybe I never was.” He feels exhausted, all of a sudden, gets up from the table with the phone still held to his ear, and heads for the main room and the exit, the music suddenly getting louder again around him. “I’m sorry.”

“No you aren’t.” Charles imagines him gripping the phone too tightly, white-knuckled and his mouth set in that characteristic grim line.

“You know me well enough to know that’s not true.”

“I have to go,” is all Erik says in response. “Good-night, Charles.” The phone clicks just as Charles makes it out onto the street, and then there’s just the dull blare of the dead tone, and the cold air on Charles’ face, the wind whipping at his hair.

The email is in his inbox when he gets home, empty except for the date and time of the conference and the scanned copy of the letter from school asking for his attendance. Charles writes it into his diary and stares at it for a long time before going to bed.

When Thursday comes around Charles arrives at the school a little early, wanting to try and make a good impression on the teachers and hopefully offset some of Erik’s recent bad behavior by being reassuringly upper class and polite. It’s probably a lost cause, but if he can persuade them to give Erik more slack and that Charles can take care of it then it’ll give them some breathing room to work with. It’s still bitterly cold outside, so his face is half-hidden in his scarf as he pushes through into the main entrance, stomping his feet to try and knock off the snowmelt that’s caught on his shoes without taking his frozen hands out of his pockets.

The little reception area is just as he last saw it, the Domme behind the desk just as blandly polite; “If you’ll just wait here, Dr Xavier,” she says once Charles has signed in, and waves him towards a seat. “Dr Gregory will be with you in a moment. I’ll call through to the classroom to ask for Erik to be sent along.”

“Oh,” Charles says, hovering for a moment over the seat before finally settling into the chair. “All right. Thank you.” His heart is beating a little fast all of a sudden, though he can’t tell if it’s with anticipation or fear.

The corridor is quiet, save for the tapping of the receptionist’s fingers on the keys of her computer and the ticking of some unseen clock, all tiled floor and wood-panelled walls, nothing to look at except the backs of his own hands, or to flick through some emails on his phone.

It’s almost a relief, then, that Charles doesn’t have to wait long before he hears footsteps approaching -- and then Erik is there, sitting down next to him and dropping his satchel onto the floor to lean against his leg, the pressure of his shoulder and arm against Charles’ startling after almost four weeks with barely any human touch. Charles manages not to jerk away or lean in, but only just. He turns to look at Erik sidelong, not quite trusting himself to look at him full-on when they’re so close. His stomach is turning flips inside him.

“Hi,” he says, keeping his hands folded and still in his lap. It feels stupid, insipid.

“Hey.” Erik’s long fingers are fiddling with a coin -- a quarter -- flicking it between his fingers and across his knuckles, then back again. It’s mesmerizing. “How are you?” Erik asks, not turning his head to look at him, his gaze fixed at some invisible point across the room.

“I’m fine,” Charles says, watching Erik’s face for another moment before dropping his gaze back to the coin. “You?”

A long pause, the clock ticking, slowly, slower still. The coin flips, back, forth, back again. Then Erik opens his mouth to answer, but before he can do more than inhale the counsellor appears at Charles’ other side, smiling down at them both as if this is all perfectly routine. She’s a small white woman with dark hair pulled back into a low ponytail, a thick binder tucked under one arm; her voice when she speaks is light and pleasant. “Dr Xavier? Hi, I’m Hannah Gregory, the school psychologist here at Trinity.” She takes two steps forward, heels clicking on the floor, and offers him her hand. “If you and Erik would just come on back to my office….”

“Of course.” Charles gets to his feet and takes her hand, giving it a firm shake, as if everything were perfectly normal, as if the awareness of Erik standing right behind him weren’t making cold tremors run up and down his spine. “Thank you for asking me, it’s been a while since I last caught up with the school.”

She just smiles at him, polite, and leads the both of them down the short hallway to an office bearing the label ‘Advising.’ There’s another teacher waiting there as well, a submissive male who stands when they come in, his gaze sliding from Charles over to Erik.

“Hopefully we can keep this brief, Erik,” the man says; his voice is quiet, friendly. “I’d hate for you to miss too much of this period. What class were you in?”

“Ethics. ‘Violence and its Aftermath.’”

Charles only just holds back his wince when the teacher thinks, rather loudly, _how appropriate_.

“I’m Dr Charles Xavier, Erik’s guardian,” Charles says, offering a hand to the teacher, who shakes it.

“My name is Mr Powell,” he says, and gestures towards the chairs. “Please, sit.”

They all take their seats -- shuffling to get comfortable, Erik’s bag slumping to the floor, Charles shucking his coat -- it’s all so awkward, the sense of people waiting until they’re settled before broaching the difficult subject. Charles wishes he could just … push them, a little, read it all from their minds and skip the conversation altogether. It’s not ethical, of course, and it’s rude besides, but it would avoid the awkwardness of having to go through everything in painstaking detail while Erik sits beside him, close enough that Charles imagines he can feel the warmth from his body against his own arm.

“There’s a Keurig, over there, if anyone would like some coffee or tea,” Dr Gregory says, gesturing, and Charles sees the little black machine perched atop an end table near one of her book shelves. “Just help yourselves at any time. So. Dr Xavier, I’ve asked you to come in today because there have been a number of concerns raised by some of the teaching faculty about Erik. Erik and I have talked already,” she says, her gaze flicking briefly to the right, toward Erik, before returning to Charles, “and if I may be frank, nothing he said made me feel very reassured. First off, I think I’d like to ask if there is any light you might be able to shed on matters that could put these concerns to rest. Have you noticed anything unusual lately, or have there been any issues at home or with -- the trial, that Erik might not have told me about?”

Charles pretends to think, while telepathically reaching out to Erik and asking, _Have you said anything to the school about your living with Raven?_ That’s one beartrap Charles would prefer to keep his foot firmly out of.

 _No,_ Erik thinks back without much delay, and Charles can feel him resisting the instinctive urge to shake his head. _I haven’t told them anything close to the truth. You don’t need to worry about that._

“Not in particular, no,” Charles says aloud, folding his hands on his thigh and giving Dr Gregory a small, courteous smile. “As I’m sure you’re aware, in situations like Erik’s the road to recovery can be a rocky one, sometimes for no obvious reason. Erik has been easier to anger lately, and less inclined to talk, but if I’m honest I put that partly down to his being a teenager, especially given that we’d mostly avoided the typical teenage troubles earlier on.” Explaining the real reasons would be a prison sentence, of course, but it rankles to lie to another professional. “Can you tell me what it is that’s been happening in school?”

Dr Gregory has watched him speak with a neutral expression on her face, her hands clasped loosely across her desk, but now she unlaces her fingers and reaches to open the binder in front of her, turning through a few of the pages. “Well,” she says, “that’s partly why I’ve asked Mr Powell here today. Mr Powell has come to me a few times about this matter over the past few weeks, and I’ll let him convey his concerns before I discuss some of the other issues we’ve had.”

Mr Powell clears his throat, then nods. “I’ve noticed myself that Erik has seemed … upset, of late,” he says, his voice habitually soft. “He’s withdrawn, rarely speaks up in class any more when he used to be one of the most reliable contributors, and he is having issues with his attention span. None of these things are like the Erik of the past two years. Erik is usually an excellent student, and while his grades haven’t suffered, I am concerned that he may be depressed.”

“Is that your … _professional_ opinion?” Erik says, too lightly for it to be anything but sarcasm, and Charles gives him a sharp look before turning back to Mr Powell.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says, and it’s entirely true -- the way his heart is sinking feels like his chest might cave in after it, pulled along in the vacuum left behind by the empty space. “Is there anything else?”

“There are multiple reports that Erik’s been falling asleep in class, which generally means the student in question isn’t getting enough sleep at night,” Dr Gregory interjects. “I’ve also spoken to him quite a few times about some verbal altercations he’s been having with other students, missing classes, recurrent illness, not to mention the possibility that he’s been getting into fights outside of school -- he still won’t tell us where he’s been getting these bruises. If you’ll forgive me, Dr Xavier, I must say I can’t entirely believe you when you say you’ve noticed nothing wrong at home. In my experience, with behaviors like these, there’s usually no smoke without a fire.”

“I think it’s worth mentioning at this point that Erik is not only my ward, but also my patient,” Charles says, maintaining his calm only with considerable effort. “As such, there are things that I cannot discuss with anyone else, even a fellow psychologist, due to doctor-patient confidentiality. That extends to Erik’s behavior and emotional state I’m afraid. I appreciate that that makes your job here difficult, as we cannot fully discuss the problem at hand, but I have to stick to that principle.” Perhaps he can get Erik to come to his office after school today to talk things through -- unlikely, but possible. Or alternatively, if Erik won’t, maybe Charles will have to conduct a session by telepathy. Either way, they need to talk about this. “Erik and I will of course discuss all of this and come up with a plan of action to address and resolve these current issues.”

Mr Powell leans forward, a very serious look on his face. “Dr Xavier, we’re all just concerned for Erik’s well-being,” he says, reaching up to adjust the fit of his collar around his neck. “My daughter is a 4D, and she sometimes struggles with her Dominance and the balance between exerting it appropriately and inappropriately. It’s caused her some emotional issues in the past that I see echoes of in Erik now, and I can’t imagine how much harder it must be to be learning to be a Dom at his age instead of from birth. Here at the school we just want to help in any way we can.”

“Erik,” Dr Gregory says, her voice utterly calm, “would you leave us for a few minutes?”

Next to Charles, Erik lifts his head to look at the counsellor where she’s sat behind her desk, and Charles can feel him thinking about resisting and trying to make a point out of staying right where he is, but in the end he just nods and reaches down to grab his satchel, all their gazes following him as he walks out of the office, the heavy oak door falling shut behind him with a heavy thump.

“Sometimes students find it hard to tell us things with their parents or guardians in the room,” Dr Gregory says after a few seconds’ silence, adjusting her glasses where they’re perched on the bridge of her nose. “I find that can go both ways. I want to give you the opportunity to say anything you might like without worrying we’ll report it back to Erik. I have a teenage son myself; I know how they get when slighted.” She gives him a crooked little smile.

It’s almost insulting, that she thinks this will get around his earlier, reasonable, objection. Charles takes in a breath, then lets it out as quietly as he can so it won’t sound like a sigh. “I really can’t divulge anything to you, I’m afraid, regardless of whether or not Erik is in the room,” he says, crossing his legs and laying his hands over his knee. “I know this must seem evasive, but Erik only speaks to me about his issues _because_ I’m so strict around doctor-patient confidentiality. We can all agree that he is a troubled young man, who has lived through some terrible traumas -- is it surprising that from time to time he has difficulty dealing with all of it? Every day I say a prayer of thanks that he’s even _sane_.”

Mr Powell and Dr Gregory exchange looks, and Charles isn’t looking intentionally, but nonetheless he reads it, that they’ve discussed before the possibility that there may be something going on at home, that Charles might be the problem rather than their ally -- but then Dr Gregory shakes her head, however minutely, and Charles realizes with a sick, guilty sort of relief that whatever it was, he’s passed the test.

“All right,” Dr Gregory says, looking back to Charles at last and rising from her seat, the wooden legs of the chair scraping against the floor. “I appreciate you taking time out of your workday to come and speak with us, Dr Xavier. Please do have a talk with Erik. He’s such a bright young man, and it would be a shame to see that go to waste.”

“Thank you both for your time, and for caring,” Charles says, getting to his feet and giving them both a nod. “It’s not every teacher that takes the time to do the pastoral work that’s necessary to support young people, and I very much appreciate it. I’ll do my best to send you back a better-behaved, happier Erik soon enough.”

Out in the corridor Erik is still standing, ignoring the chairs sat against the wall in favor of pacing, though he turns around immediately when he hears the door open -- or senses Charles’ watch and ring -- and then goes still, his gaze flitting over Charles’ face and trying to read from his expression what he’s said to them.

“Well?” he says when Charles is close enough, and for once it’s just apprehensive, impatient, not angry and bitter the way everything else out of Erik’s mouth has been of late.

“Well,” Charles says, trying to be just Erik’s therapist, ignoring everything else, and starts back towards reception, shaking out his coat ready to put it back on, “I think we need to have a session to talk things through and set some action points. Can you come to my office after school?”

Erik falls into step alongside him, and gives him a sharp look. “‘Action points,’ Charles? What, is there a section in the CBT handbook with worksheets I can fill out every time I think about what you did?” At least he keeps his voice low.

“I’ll make you some,” Charles says without missing a beat, concentrating on buttoning up his coat and keeping his eyes on his fingers. “Can you come this afternoon or not? I have time today, but tomorrow I would need to reschedule someone else.”

There’s a sharp flick of irritation from Erik’s mind, but even that’s all tangled up with the hurt and betrayal and grief that are still all too predominant, dragging down the brighter emotions. “No,” he says. “I can’t.” He’s stopped walking, forcing Charles to stop as well, there in the middle of the hall at Erik’s high school, with all the hundreds of Erik’s classmates shut away behind the closed doors all around them. “I won’t let you designate me the problem child when you’re the one who started all this. If you don’t like the consequences of what your decisions, I’m sure you can find a psychologist of your very own who caters to people with … _wants_ like yours.”

“All right,” Charles says, as if he doesn’t feel like he’s been stabbed, a sick shaky feeling rumbling through his gut; he takes his gloves from his pockets and putting them on, tugging the fingers down properly and not looking up. Although it’s hard not to let the pain show on his face, he knows Erik can probably feel it from him no matter what he does -- Charles has never been very good at keeping that barrier between them, after all. “Then I’ll look forward to being called in again next week. Give Raven my regards,” and he speeds his step so he can reach the reception desk before Erik can say anything else, picking up the pen to sign out with fingers that tremble, just the slightest bit.

It’s not fair, not fair at all, he thinks to himself, for Erik to want Charles to act on his desires so badly, then punish him viciously for having them in the first place.

He can hear Erik’s shoes clicking against the tile, his long strides carrying him away from Charles, the harsh bundle of anger that is his mind heading down the hall and back to his classroom; Charles just smiles absently at the receptionist and leaves, his shoulders hunching up around his ears in preparation, he tells himself, for the cold wind outside.

*

_Erik_

He doesn’t have classes after lunch that day. After Charles leaves Erik returns to Ethics, then Mandarin V, after which he would usually take the train uptown to his Columbia classes -- but today it’s an optional review day, and Erik can do that just as easily in the public library. The class in question is the second section of one he took in the fall semester, though, and he’s been finding it more difficult to follow the material since he moved out to Raven’s house. He hadn’t realized just how much he’d been relying on his notes from last year to draw the necessary connections between units, and those notes are in his desk drawer in his old room at Charles’ apartment, locked away where he’d have to face Charles to get them -- and facing Charles hasn’t been something Erik’s been willing to do voluntarily as of late.

Today, however, he can be assured Charles isn’t home. There’ll be no one there to question him, or lurk ghost-like in the shadows of the house like a bad memory. Erik can get in, get what he needs, and get out. By the time Charles realizes he’s been there, Erik will be long gone.

Walking across town only gives him more time to fume, of course. Even with his headphones on and music playing he can’t stop rolling that morning meeting over in his mind, again and again and again. As usual, Erik is set to play the role of designated patient, of the bad kid, the fuck-up 7D ex-terrorist mutant foil to Charles’ prince charming. Charles, who wears his façade of responsible grown-up doctor-parent like he hasn’t taken each of those roles and summarily destroyed them. Charles is so used to being perfect that sometimes even Erik has a hard time telling he’s faking it.

It’s an uncanny feeling, walking into Charles’ building and taking that gold-walled elevator up to their floor, weirdly akin to déjà vu. He keeps expecting to look over and find Charles standing next to him, unwrapping his scarf from around his neck. The lift _pings_ at him when it reaches their floor, the doors sliding open and letting Erik out into the short hall that leads to their duplex. He didn’t bring his keys, but he doesn’t need them; the lock opens before him automatically and he pushes the door inward with his power, stepping into the empty gallery.

“Hello?” he says into the silence, even though he knows no one’s here, can feel no metal jeans-rivets or buttons or wristwatches in movement, or still but heated by human skin. The door falls shut behind him and Erik steps forward, tugging off his coat and heading toward the living room, intending just to toss it over the back of the sofa -- but what he sees when he reaches the doorway makes him stop in his tracks.

The coffee table is littered with abandoned mugs, a stack of plates in the middle of an empty space like Charles has made a token effort at tidying up; there are blankets strewn on the sofa -- Charles has been sleeping down here, and drinking, too, as evidenced by the empty bottles are clustered around the feet, lids on the floor. There’s a solitary glass, but it’s got something dried and sticky in the bottom. Charles’ patient notes are on the floor too, when before he would never leave them anywhere Erik or anyone else might accidentally see them and void confidentiality.

It’s not just messy, or cluttered; it’s actively _dirty_. Erik can smell something unidentifiable, something that might be rotting food, repulsive enough that he wrinkles his nose and unintentionally takes a half-step back. Even when he came to live with Charles, when there were used mugs on the end tables and dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, it was not nearly so bad as this. This is as if a whole city of men have been living in Charles’ apartment, all of them filthy and uncivilized, enough detritus here to rival the city dump.

“Right,” Erik says out loud, looking around -- he can see from here into part of the kitchen, which looks even worse. He tries to reach down into his gut to find that anger that had carried him just a moment before, but he grasps at nothing. He wants to just … go upstairs and get his notes, disappear and forget about all this, but he can’t stop thinking: this isn’t the home of perfect-Charles. Whatever mask he might be wearing out there, with Erik’s teachers and with Erik himself, he takes it off in here. This is the burrow of the kind of man who’s forgotten how to live with himself, except to just keep surviving, mired in his own guilt.

It’s hard to make himself be angry with that man, at least not while he’s standing at the epicenter of an imploded life. It’s as if Charles has shut himself down to just this one room in the whole apartment, created his own prison cell within these airy confines: no need for judge nor jury. All Erik can manage in response is a vague, pulsing sense of regret that heats him up just behind his breastbone. Just earlier today it had seemed so important to make Charles understand his own fault in all this, to force him to feel it, rub his nose in his mess if need be, only now Erik thinks Charles has probably been doing that well enough on his own.

Erik moves further into the room, setting his coat down on the back of an armchair and hoping to god it isn’t nested with maggots or spiders, and starts to clean as best he can. It’s slow going, and Erik keeps having to turn his face up away from the molding dishes and decaying leftovers to breathe fresher air and keep from gagging, but he manages at least to load up the dishwasher and run through three cycles while picking up the rest of the mess. He folds the blankets up into a neat stack at the foot of the sofa, takes Charles’ discarded clothing upstairs to put it in his laundry hamper and start a wash cycle, changes the sheets on Charles’ bed and carries down the dishes he finds on Charles’ bedside table. The patient notes he simply stacks and hides within a crummy-looking manila folder, setting them atop the piled blankets for Charles to find upon his return.

The worst of it is scrubbing down the kitchen counters and floor, the sheer volume of rags he goes through before he’s gotten rid of the sticky residue coating the tile. He doesn’t bother putting the rags in with the rest of the laundry; he just throws them out with the overflowing trash. 

At least, Erik thinks as he’s dumping all these empty liquor bottles into the recycling bin, it appears that Charles has totally exhausted his alcohol supply. The liquor cabinet is empty now, not so much as a snifter’s-worth of brandy left, which is slightly disappointing as Erik could have done with three or four shots himself, just to take the edge off, but it does mean Charles will be forced to either stay sober or venture out into the real world to buy more.

It takes him four hours to get the apartment into something resembling order, all the things put back in their proper places or disposed of, the carpets vacuumed and every room, bedroom included, somewhat habitable again. Even so, Erik thinks the lot of it could stand a good bleaching; it’s a minor miracle Charles hasn’t made himself sick staying here. There’s not much Erik can do about the fruit fly infestation beyond making a vinegar trap for them, and he has to throw out a lot of Charles’ food ( _Erik’s_ food, really, because Erik’s the only one who would have bought anything like flour -- now laden with pantry fly eggs -- or long-expired soy milk), but Erik imagines that between Seamless and the take-out section of the yellow pages, Charles will make do.

Focusing on cleaning up allows Erik to avoid having to think too deeply about Charles, or how Charles could have gotten himself into such a state, but now that it’s done and Erik is still here, just waiting for the dishwasher to finish rinsing so he can put in the final load, he can’t avoid it any more. Inasmuch as Charles brought this upon himself, Erik can admit that he himself is at least … partly responsible. He hasn’t done anything to improve upon Charles’ situation at least, and it’s perfectly obvious Charles can’t function without him. He can practically hear Raven’s voice now, of course, telling him he made the decision to leave for his own benefit, that Charles is Charles’ own responsibility, but even so….

Erik checks his phone for the time once he’s put the last dishes into the dishwasher and turned it on, the dull roar of the wash cycle humming behind him as he leaves the kitchen and heads back into the other room to get his coat and school notes. It’s only 3:45 -- Charles’ office is fifteen minutes away, and Erik can get there quickly enough to catch him before he leaves early if he hurries. 

He feels dirty even after he leaves, like Charles’ mess has rubbed off on him even though he washed his hands quite thoroughly once he was done, the stink of it clinging to his hair and skin and clothes and tracking him all the way underground into the train and then back up onto the street again, where even the icy air can’t entirely blot it out.

The receptionist is busy on the phone with another client when Erik arrives at the practice Charles shares with three other psychologists and two psychiatrists, their names all embossed in gold on the glass door and on the brushed-steel nameplate behind the front desk. He waits for her to finish talking, giving her a tight little smile when she waves at him; she must recognize him either from television or from the few times he visited Charles here at his official work, even though he can’t place her in return.

“Hi,” she says when she hangs up the phone, smiling up at him and scribbling something down on her pad without looking. “Are you looking for Dr Xavier? His last patient already left, you should catch him if you head along now.”

Erik thanks her and follows the narrow corridor past the waiting room, walking by all the other shut doors with their white noise machines humming on the floor -- he remembers thinking they looked like tiny little UFOs back when he was a thirteen/fourteen-year-old being forced to come here by the CIA and his caseworker for Charles’ evaluations. There’s a UFO outside Charles’ door too, but it’s shut off, silent, even though his door is closed. Erik knocks on the frosted glass just below the label with Charles’ name.

There’s a long pause, even though Charles must know Erik is here, before he finally says, “Come in, Erik.”

Erik sinks his power into the brass knob and opens the door. Charles is sat at his desk side-on to Erik, typing at his computer. He lifts his head and turns just enough to look at Erik for a moment, give him a small, awkward smile, and say, “Well, this is a surprise.”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Erik says, pushing the door shut behind him, though he doesn’t go to sit, not yet; as much as he doubts Charles will tell him to leave, he isn’t prepared to make that kind of presumption.

“Of course not,” Charles says, all automated, almost robotic politeness, and gestures towards the chairs. “Please, sit.”

Erik does, unbuttoning his coat first to hang it and his satchel up on the hangers by Charles’ door then sinking into the armchair nearest the window, leaning back against the puffy cushions but leaving both feet planted firmly on the floor. “I went by the apartment,” he says by way of introduction, deciding there’s no point in beating around the bush. 

Charles winces, his shoulders twitching upwards. “Yes, well,” he says, his fingers stilling on the keyboard. “I got a little caught up in things. I didn’t expect company.”

It’s evasive in a way that almost makes Erik want to flinch, himself, a kind of second-hand embarrassment spinning in the pit of his stomach. “Charles,” he says to the back of Charles’ neck, leaning forward a little and clenching one hand into a fist atop his knee as he tries to figure out a way to put this as delicately as possible. “Do you need me to come home?”

“No,” Charles says, not looking away from his computer. “I’m a grown man, Erik, I ought to be able to keep on top of the cleaning. I just get distracted sometimes. You need to do what’s healthy for you, and right now that’s staying with Raven and being out of … well … it was getting a bit stuffy in there between us. I’m fine.”

“No you aren’t.” 

Erik can’t stand trying to have a conversation like this, Charles sitting with his back to him while Erik tries to tease him out of his shell. He stands up and moves around the room so he’s in Charles’ line of sight and then -- well, this _is_ presumptuous, but Erik doesn’t care -- he insinuates himself between Charles and his desk, sitting back against the edge of it and furiously not-thinking about the way their legs are tangled up, knees knocking against each other and Charles’ head at a height with Erik’s heart. 

“You promised me you would never lie to me,” he says now, when Charles has no choice but to look at him.

Charles’ face has two red spots high up on his cheeks and the pucker of his mouth as if he’s bitten a lemon, everything in his expression restrained and tied back and held down until it’s as revealing as if he let it all out. 

“I’m okay,” he says, lifting his chin a little as if he’s willing Erik to believe it. “Besides. I’ve made my bed, Erik. You can’t … you can’t just give up on what you need because you think you need to look after me. It’s my job to look after you and to look after myself, you don’t have to take care of me. That’s not your job.” His hands have settled on his thighs as fists, knuckles rubbing along the muscle there almost obsessively. “I did this. I am the one who deals with the fallout.”

“And I’m the one who says that you’re done now. You’ve been punished long enough.” Erik takes in a shallow breath, and adds, “By yourself and by me. So no more of it.” 

Charles closes his eyes, and it only makes the lavender, bruise-like circles under them more apparent, the slight beginnings of crows’ feet at the corners, crinkled and paper-thin. “Erik, you can’t just wish it away. I don’t need you to pity me. The idea alone makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

Something sharp lances through Erik’s heart and he leans forward, placing both hands firmly on Charles’ shoulders. He can feel his pulse beating all the way down in his stomach, hard and fast. “You wouldn’t let me do that kind of thing to myself, so why should I let you? It doesn’t have to be pity.”

“Erik … ” Charles trails off, then shakes his head. “I think coming home would be a -- a bad idea, right now. At Raven’s you have, space, and … I’ll keep on top of the cleaning. Don’t worry. We should probably talk about school.” He hasn’t opened his eyes, his head bowing forward, just a little, until Erik can see the back of his neck -- he probably doesn’t even realize how submissive he looks, that he’s bending this way, and certainly he can’t realize how difficult it is for Erik to keep from reaching out and touching him there. “Since you’re here we should talk about school.”

“All right,” Erik says, only because he can’t let Charles keep on like this, not without just -- giving in, and ordering him down to kneel. He draws his hands back, bracing them against the edge of Charles’ desk instead, the sharp line of its surface cutting into his palms. “Let’s talk about school. What did you want to say to me?”

Charles shifts in his chair, and his head lifts, not entirely but enough that he’s looking at Erik’s chest rather than his shoes. “You need to get it together,” he says, his hands coming to fold in his lap. “Whether that means setting some strategies in place to help you concentrate or keep your cool, or if you need extra support. This is the year your teachers will be writing your letters of recommendation to colleges, you need to be making a good impression. I know why things are hard right now, and you know I empathize. But you … this isn’t helping.”

“You think I’m doing it on purpose,” Erik says dryly, his grip tightening against the desk.

“No,” Charles says, and he looks up finally, his hand lifting for a moment as if he’s going to reach for Erik before it settles again. “No, I don’t think that. But I don’t think you’re trying very hard to not do it, either. And there are things we can do that will help you to manage what you’re going through, to keep it from affecting your schoolwork so much. I just want to help.” His expression is so tentative, entirely sincere.

“Fine,” Erik says, because he can give Charles this, he can do this much to help Charles feel like he’s making up for everything and fixing whatever it is he’s convinced he’s broken. He gets up from Charles’ desk and steps away again, going back to sit in the armchair like a good patient would, crossing his legs at the knees and resting his elbow on the armrest nearest the window. “How do I start?”

“Well, let’s look at what’s been happening,” Charles says, turning his chair to face Erik. “What have you noticed recently about yourself and your thoughts and feelings? Let’s pretend I’m not me, I’m someone who doesn’t know anything about the situation.”

“Very well.” Erik closes his eyes for a moment, because he can’t look at Charles and think about these things, not actively; too much of him rebels against the prospect of making himself so vulnerable when he knows Charles will immediately be able to read the effects in his mind. It’s painfully different from before, when Charles was the only one Erik trusted himself to be open in front of. Even with his eyes shut it’s hard to make himself push past the reflexive desire to cover up and hide, to actually interact with the way he feels when Charles isn’t here. It hurts even thinking about it, like prodding a raw wound. “I’m … upset. It’s a feeling like nausea, only it’s not in my stomach, it’s in my mind. Everything makes me angry, even things I wouldn’t have cared about before, like the sound of someone tapping their foot in class or a child crying on the subway. Not just irritated, but -- _enraged_ , like I want to blow the whole place up. I feel like I don’t have any feelings left except for that. The anger and the queasiness. I’m not happy, I’m not bored, I’m not sad, I’m just nothing except this sickness inside. Like the rest of it drained out overnight.” 

He opens his eyes again to look at Charles, who looks thoughtful, considering. “Okay,” Charles says, nodding slowly. “Would it be accurate to say that you feel oversensitized to the world, like you’re hyperaware of everything around you and can’t shut it out?”

“No. It’s the other way around. Everything else is blurry, like I’m walking underwater. The only things that stand out are the things that annoy me -- like the baby in the subway.”

“Hmm,” Charles says, and tugs over a notepad to scribble something down. “What have you done lately that you enjoyed? Something that made you feel good.”

Erik makes a short, bitter sound that he thinks he probably meant to be a laugh. “Well, Charles, back in January we made out on the sofa. That was nice.”

“Since then?” Charles asks, without reacting.

“Nothing.” That was the last bright spot in Erik’s memory, before the rest of it was tugged down into the black. He says it bluntly, harshly, like a challenge, though he doesn’t know who he’s meant to be challenging: Charles, or himself. It just feels better having it out there, admitted and confessed before Erik can think too hard about it or wish he could take it back again.

“All right,” Charles says, and notes that down, too. “Erik, it sounds to me like you’re experiencing anhedonic depression, which is what we call it when you can’t feel pleasure in anything, and when you’re more sensitive to things that annoy you, like the baby. I’m going to suggest that you try doing things you usually enjoy, and doing them in a mindful way. For instance, eating nutella out of the jar would be a good example -- focus on the way the nutella tastes, the way it feels, the way the metal spoon resonates with you, and ignore any intrusive thoughts. Or try making something complicated out of metal using your powers -- feeling the way the metal bends and vibrates, the difference between alloys, looking at the way the light catches it when you’ve shaped it into something lovely. If you get frustrated, acknowledge it and then let it float past you without latching onto the thought.”

“I remember this,” Erik says. “You made me try to do this when I couldn’t sleep before the last trial session. I can tell you right now I’m not very good at it.” It’s letting the thoughts go that gets him; Erik’s far more inclined to latch on to a particularly salient one and let it consume him, completely forgetting about the gentle emptiness he was supposed to have been meditating on. He usually ends up more frustrated at the end than he was when he started.

“Don’t think about emptiness, then,” Charles says. “Focus so hard on the thing that you’re doing that everything else is drowned out. The feel of the metal, the taste of the nutella. Trying to empty your mind is hard, but concentrating on a good thing is easier.”

“You know this goes two ways, right?” Erik asks, uncrossing his legs now and meeting Charles’ gaze. “If you keep going home and drowning out the world with a marathon of last season’s _Top Model_ the current clean state of your apartment won’t last very long. You could at least try to eat your Chinese take-out _mindfully._ ” He arches an eyebrow.

“Quis medicus medici,” Charles says, flapping a hand, but there’s a tiny curl at the corner of his mouth, something wry and undeveloped. “Try it for me, okay? And I’d suggest that the substance abuse probably isn’t helping you to maintain a good chemical balance. Quit the drugs.”

At least that much Erik knows he can do; he’s never heard of anyone over 5D finding it difficult to break a habit or addiction. Even Shaw with his two-pack-a-day habit never had any problem ignoring cigarettes for months at a time if he was feeling sufficiently motivated. If it’s just a matter of willpower, Erik has that in spades. 

“As you say.” Erik tilts his head toward Charles in a gesture that might be deferential if the idea didn’t seem ludicrous between the two of them, in light of all their old practices. Or maybe it still is. Even when he was Charles’ Dominant, it wasn’t like Erik ever doubted who was really in charge. Charles has no right to tell him what to do, not before and not now, but the only reason Erik did the drugs was to piss Charles off. He doesn’t feel the need to do that anymore. He meant it when he said Charles had been punished enough. The alcohol and cigarettes … that might be a different story, but he decides not to mention those; _those_ aren’t any of Charles’ business.

Charles blinks, looking a little nonplussed by Erik’s easy acquiescence. “Good,” he says, looking down at his paper and writing something. “Do you … want to talk about the bruises?”

“Do _you?_ ” Erik says, giving Charles a bit of a Look; after all, it’s not as if Charles doesn’t know perfectly well where those come from. He hadn’t thought Erik-with-other-people would be quite the subject Charles was keen to discuss.

“I’m concerned that you’re letting someone hurt you in order to punish yourself for something that isn’t your fault,” Charles says; his mouth is tight, but his voice is surprisingly even. “It’s a form of self-harm, which we should talk about, because if you feel you deserve to be hurt then we should address that feeling.”

“Maybe I just like rough sex,” Erik says, crossing his arms and leaning back in the armchair, not breaking his gaze from Charles’. His heart is racing for some reason, a tiny shiver cropping up on his skin, the gooseflesh thankfully hidden from Charles’ view. He’s lying, of course, and they both know it, but admitting to anything else feels dangerous somehow. Like bringing Charles in somewhere he isn’t invited.

“Maybe,” Charles says. “Except that you don’t really like sex, Erik. Or being hurt, for that matter. You’re entitled to practice sadomasochism if you want to, so long as you’re being safe, but it should never be a means to get someone else to hurt you for you. Why do you feel that you need to be punished?”

Right, then, Erik thinks -- enough of this. The question pushes too close to things Erik can’t think about, cold truths he has himself half-convinced are irrelevant.

“Are you a pedophile, Charles?” Erik says abruptly, both his eyebrows lifting.

Charles freezes, and his whole face goes abruptly white, like all the blood has fallen out of it at once, like his internal gravity has suddenly quadrupled. He looks down at his paper and it’s as if he means to write something but can’t quite get it together enough to pretend. “You’re a teenager, so no,” he says, very stiltedly. “The correct term for an adult who is attracted to teenagers is ephebophile.”

“Well then, are you an ephebophile?” Erik presses on, unwilling to let himself be dissuaded from his point.

“Apparently so,” Charles says, his voice breaking, and he gets jerkily up from his seat, picking up a mug from his desk. “Please excuse me, I’m just going to get some more coffee. Would you like anything?”

“Hold on, Charles,” Erik says, jumping out of his chair too quickly -- it sends a bolt of pain ripping through his broken rib and clenches at his stomach, threatening to make him buckle over. He blocks Charles’ path to the door before Charles can reach it, holding an arm out across it, putting himself between Charles and the knob (he knows Charles won’t risk that, won’t push him away if it means touching him to do it). Charles jerks back as if burnt, and there’s a wildness to his eyes that’s heartbreaking, like a trapped animal. 

“You aren’t,” Erik says once he has his voice back, once he knows it isn’t going to break with the way his side is throbbing. “That’s my point. It’s not that you have this unrestrainable desire for every pretty teenage Dom. It’s just me. Isn’t it?”

It’s always just him, it has always _been_ just him, Erik is the common denominator, the poisonous root of all these problems, slowly spreading his sickness to everyone he meets --

“I’m trying to help you,” Charles bursts out, his hand shooting out to lean heavily against the wall, his face reddening now, until it’s scarlet under his freckles. “Don’t make me do this, Erik. Just let me help you. That’s all I want to do.”

The sudden movement catches Erik off guard and he nearly takes a step back -- only there’s nowhere to go, and he only succeeds in bumping his shoulder against the door, another sullen heat-flare of pain in his gut. He has a sense of deep, overwhelming certainty, like he’s made a decision without realizing it, knows down to his bones that he can’t allow Charles to leave this room. That if Charles leaves this room, he’ll never come back -- and that if that happens, Erik will never be able to tell him the truth, and all of this effort, all of this pain between them will have been wasted.

“I know,” he says, and he’s got his other hand up now as well, between them like he’s trying to surrender, to keep Charles where he is. “I know -- I’m --” _scared_ , a voice whispers in the back of Erik’s head, _you’re scared_ and he pushes it away, the back of his throat feeling like it’s convulsing when he swallows, trying to close up on him. “I know,” he tries again, and almost sounds like himself this time, or he would, if the words didn’t feel like they were sticking to the roof of his mouth, his mind full of cotton balls. “I know, I’m trying to -- I just -- _fuck!_ ” He clenches his eyes shut and shakes his head roughly, as if that could force it clear.

“Please let me go and get some coffee,” Charles says, lifting his mug as if to demonstrate; Erik hates the panicky thing in his chest that flinches back when Charles moves. “I’ll come back and we can -- we can talk about it if you want. I just -- I just need a minute. To get -- to not -- this. Please.”

“No,” Erik says; he feels disgusting and feverish inside now. “No, I’ll go. I’m sorry.” He reaches for his coat with his hand but his power’s got there first, forcibly bending the metal rod of Charles’ coat rack with a wretched-sounding creak to send it spilling into his hand. “Sorry,” he says again, his heart pounding harder, sicker, as he twists the steel back how it was and grabs his satchel, too, clutching it toward himself like a life vest. 

“Don’t be silly,” Charles says, and he jerks forward, his hand taking hold of Erik’s upper arm before Erik can get the door open. “Sit down. Please sit down, Erik. Don’t go. I’ll sit.” He tugs gently, back towards the chairs. “Come on. We’re both -- we’re both being silly. Let’s sit.”

Erik only lets Charles pull him away from the door because he can’t bring himself to fight against Charles’ grip; Charles releases his hold when Erik’s a foot away from the chair, and Erik takes a step toward it only to have his legs go watery beneath him. _Fuck_ , he thinks, and when his knees go out he just goes with it, folding himself down onto the floor, his coat and bag in a rumpled pile against his shins. He presses one elbow against his bent knee and lifts his hand up to tilt it against his brow, hiding his face from Charles’ view. 

“Oh, no,” Charles says, and he immediately drops to the floor beside Erik, reaching for him to pull him into a hug, tilting Erik’s head against his shoulder and squeezing him tightly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Come here. It’s okay.” His chin is resting against Erik’s temple, the faint prickle of afternoon stubble brushing the thin skin. “I made this mess, and I’m sorry. I really … I really made a big mess of everything.” His sweater is very soft. Erik closes his eyes and lets his hands come to rest very lightly on Charles’ back, where he can feel it rise and fall with every one of Charles’ breaths.

“It’s not your fault,” Erik says to the crest of Charles’ shoulder, which feels safer somehow than saying it to his face. His voice is firmer now, sounds like it actually belongs to him, and Erik exhales slowly, says, “You’re a good person. I -- “ He feels his lips twist up into something bitterly like a smile, and he says it before he can convince himself to _not_ -say it, the words falling from his mouth one after the other, solid and true. “They should have left me in prison with the rest of them.”

Charles’ body tenses, and then Erik feels a sharp pain at the back of his neck where Charles has pinched him, hard. “Don’t you say that,” he says, and pinches Erik again, another small and momentary agony -- there’s frustration coming from Charles now in a tin-tasting cloud, and he sounds more like himself when he says, “I’m supposed to let you think your own thoughts and discuss them with you but that’s just -- I won’t allow you to think that about yourself.”

Erik leans back, pulling away just enough to see Charles’ face, his shoulder blades hitting the seat of the chair he’d been sitting in just five minutes earlier. Almost on autopilot one of his hands lifts up to rub at the back of his neck, grimacing, the skin there too-warm against his fingertips. “You’re never going to be able to fix me, Charles,” he says at last, once he’s lowered his hand back down and met Charles’ gaze. “Don’t you get that yet? Whatever they were trying to do, it worked. You can fix something that’s broken, but I’m not. They broke me apart and then they put it all back together again the way they wanted it, and that’s how I am now. Finished product. There’s no going back from that.”

It’s perhaps the most honest thing he’s ever said to Charles, and he knows if Charles is honest with himself he believes it, too; that whatever hope there might have been once for Erik-the-victim, the toddler in the missing child photograph with the chubby cheeks and the big grey eyes, that doesn’t apply to whatever frankensteinian creature Erik has become. And there it is: the truth, torn out of him like a vital organ. Without it he’s raw and mangled inside, leaking all that energy that had filled him just a moment before. He feels weak.

“You don’t need fixing,” Charles says, frowning at Erik with that quasi-disappointed look on his face that Erik hates. “You’re not broken, Erik, you’re right -- you’re stronger than anyone I know, in fact. But there are things that I can help you with, different perspectives and considerations that will make your life easier and help you to feel better about yourself and your life. I love you the way you are, you know that. It’s not a question of fixing you.”

“I’m not so sure I can be helped, either,” Erik says, and his gaze drops down away from Charles’, looking instead at the hem of Charles’ sweater, a little frayed above his belt buckle, at a loose thread Erik would like to sew back into the weave. “I’m not sure I want to be helped.”

“Well, I’ve been helping you for the past three years, I’m already in the habit,” Charles says, a little awkwardly, but still rather gentle. “Albeit sometimes better than others. I won’t stop trying.”

Erik pushes the corners of his mouth up, a bit half-heartedly, and he’s not really consciously thinking about it, distracted by wishing he wanted to be better more than he wants to be angry, which is how he doesn’t realize he’s brought his hand up to touch the back of Charles’ until he already is doing it, his fingertips skating along the back of Charles’ hand where it’s pressed against Charles’ thigh, moving down to push Charles’ fingers up enough to lace theirs together, the heel of Erik’s hand on Charles’ knee. “Good.”

“Things just seem bad right now,” Charles says weakly, but he squeezes Erik’s hand, and brings it up so he can clasp it between his own, away from his leg. Of course, Erik thinks dully. Predictable. “It will get better, I promise. It’s difficult when your emotions are still so raw, but that will calm over time. And then maybe things can be like they were before again. I’d like that.”

“I liked it even better when we were fucking,” Erik says, lifting his gaze again, thinking that he might as well tell the truth, might as well keep going once he’s started. “We were equals.”

“No, we weren’t,” Charles says. “We -- it was servicing what I wanted, not what you wanted or needed. It was a system set up to serve my perversion, and it wasn’t really good for either of us. I know you don’t feel that way but it wasn’t good. It was wrong of me to put you in that position.”

“Just because we wanted it for different reasons doesn’t mean I didn’t want it,” Erik says, and he rubs the pad of his thumb against the side of Charles’ hand, toward his wrist, Charles’ skin so soft and smooth to the touch. The sun has set outside the window, the light taking on a grayish cast across Charles’ features, making him look like a man carved from silver.

Charles looks away, and he pulls his hands back, slipping them free and folding them away in his lap, clasped together and excluding Erik. “It’s still done with, Erik,” he says, his voice firmer now, as if he’s trying to persuade them both. “We can’t be that way with one another. I haven’t changed my mind.”

Not yet, anyway, Erik thinks privately, but he doesn’t reach for Charles again. He isn’t not-angry, even now, but at least Charles is here, still. At least Charles can bear to look at him. 

“I understand,” Erik says, and he pushes himself up to his feet, leaning against the table between the armchairs for support; his legs still feel weak. Charles stays where he is for a few moments more, but then he follows suit, slowly rising from sitting at Erik’s feet to standing on his own.

“I’ll tell you what,” Charles says, and goes back to his desk to fetch one of his cards, then offers it to Erik, as if Erik doesn’t already have Charles’ office number in his cell’s address book. “Call me at this time next week and we’ll see how things are going. Or you can come here in person. Whichever is more comfortable for you.” He looks -- guardedly hopeful, though he’s trying to hide it behind the guise of professionalism. “I’ll block out the time in my schedule.”

“All right,” Erik says, turning the card over and over between his fingers, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the sharp edge of it, digging it into the groove where his finger bends. After a second he makes himself put it away, into his back pocket, and pulls his coat over his shoulders. “I’ll -- good-bye, then.”

“Bye, Erik,” Charles says, and while he doesn’t walk Erik out he does smile, just a tiny, awkward curve of his mouth, tentative but real.

*


	26. Twenty-Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw at end of chapter.

_Charles_

The room the support group meets in is large and airy for a basement, dotted with comfortable mismatched chairs and an L-shaped sofa and lit by overhead fluorescents that show in stark contrast the thin carpet’s age, worn where many feet have trodden over the years. There are always things stacked in one corner -- old furniture, mostly, and a couple of filing cabinets -- and the tiny kitchenette is only stocked when Charles brings snacks with him. But still, it suits its purpose, and it’s good to be out of the apartment for a couple of hours to do something normal. It’s been so quiet at home these past weeks that it feels like all he does is listen to people think, or try not to. He can’t quite remember what he used to do when he lived alone before, to pass the time between work and sleep.

The mutant center is just over on the other side of Central Park, by the university, and Charles arrives ten minutes before the meeting is due to begin, though clearly not early enough; as he descends the concrete steps into the mutant center’s basement he can already hear some of the kids laughing, their minds all bright and excited. It’s good, of course it’s good, but he still needs a moment to adjust, pausing at the bottom of the steps before he finally reaches out and opens the door.

Warren is beating his wings hard to stay up by the ceiling, ducking his head and bracing a hand against the concrete to keep from knocking into one of the light fixtures; he’s grinning like an idiot, because across from him Jean Grey is bobbing up and down like a yoyo, her coltish, skinny arms flailing as she uses her telekinesis to try and keep herself aloft. Her unsteady grip on her power waxes and wanes, jerking her up when she tries to correct herself then letting her sink whenever she loses hold. At ground level Alex is sat on the sofa laughing at them both, and when Charles steps into the room Alex is the first to see him, giving him a quick wave of one hand. “Hey, Dr Xavier.”

“Dr Xavier!” Jean cries, trying to twist in mid-air as her mind bubbles over with enthusiasm, and she bobs wildly upwards before losing her control entirely and falling the four feet down onto the armchair below her with a thump and an “Oof! I’m okay!”

Charles laughs, then walks forward to the seating area, unfastening his coat. Warren comes down to land rather more gracefully than Jean, his feet settling on the floor with barely a sound. “You’re all early,” Charles says, draping his coat over the back of the couch and shifting his grocery bag to the other hand. “No school today?”

“Nah, just good trains I guess,” Alex says; behind Charles the door opens again to let Armando and Bobby inside, closely followed by Kitty and Anna-Marie. There are sometimes a few others, but this is the core group -- and all of them very timely tonight. Charles turns to smile at the new arrivals before taking the bag over to the kitchen area and laying out the juices and cookies on the counter and taking down plates.

“How are you, Dr Xavier?” Jean asks, ignoring the way that Warren and Alex cast glances at one another, both thinking that she’s a teacher’s pet; Jean is confident enough in herself not to care. “Are you good?” _You feel sad,_ she says silently, and Charles is very glad that he carefully builds barriers around his private thoughts before he comes to these sessions, because it means it’s not notable now that he’s keeping things from her sight. God, all he’d need is a teenager seeing about his problems with Erik ….

The fact that he’s not attracted to any of these teenagers, and never has been attracted to any teenager but Erik since he was a teenager himself, does not distract Charles from the fact that if anyone knew about Erik he would be barred from going near any of these young people ever again.

“I’m fine, Jean, thank you,” Charles says, flashing her a brief reassurance mentally while his hands arrange cookies on a plate; Jean accepts it with dubious grace, settling back into her armchair, but he can hear her thinking that she doesn’t believe him. Nothing to be done about that. 

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Armando asks, dropping down onto the sofa beside Alex and resting his elbows on the back cushion.

“Well,” Charles says, pausing to allow himself time to consider -- he hasn’t really set a plan for tonight, which is more because he hasn’t had the focus to do anything in depth than because he wanted to be spontaneous. “We’ll have a chat first, like usual, and then I thought we could all just hang out, relax for a while, maybe have an Xbox tournament. We spend so much time working hard and talking about very serious subjects, and I don’t want these sessions to feel like work, they’re supposed to be fun.”

“Okay,” Armando says, and Jean says, “But I was hoping we could practice some more! I’m getting much better!”

“We can practice, then,” Charles says, bringing the cookies back over to the coffee table in the middle of the seats. “It’ll be optional. Those who want to play Xbox can do that, and those who want to practice can practice. Fair?”

“It’s all right for some,” Alex says, folding his arms across his chest. There’s a dark look on his face, though it’s directed more inward than outward. “There’s nowhere in the whole of New York that I can practice. It stinks.”

“Try being me,” Warren says. “I used to go flying in the park, but once or twice some gun-toting assholes have tried to shoot me down and now my Mom’s forbidden me to go. I’ve got wings and yet I’m grounded from flying!”

The other girls are notably quiet; Kitty, Charles knows, is still having trouble controlling her mutation, with often embarrassing consequences, whereas Anna-Marie would rather do anything _but_ practice. While Charles disagrees for the most part with the idea of separate classes and schools for mutant children, there is something to be said for some students needing the extra support and attention -- there’s no chance in the public school system of anyone having enough time to spend with Anna-Marie to make her feel less negatively about her power, or to reassure Kitty that things won’t always be this way. The only option within the current program is for students to take outside classes, which has its own problems to contend with. 

“Hmm,” Charles says, more thinking aloud than anything else, “it sounds like what we really need is more space, where we’re not going to break anything or anyone.”

“Yeah, but where do you find space in Manhattan?” Bobby asks, picking up a cookie.

 _There’s always the Westchester house,_ Charles thinks, the germ of an idea, and Jean must catch that because she perks up immediately and says, “Oh, could we? That would be so awesome! Could we please, Dr Xavier?”

The other teens all sit up at that, ears pricked, and Alex asks, “Could we please what?”

“Thank you, Jean,” Charles says wryly, with a silent remonstration for sharing a thought he hadn’t finished yet; Jean flushes a pretty pink, ducking her head. “I was thinking about the possibility of our going to my family’s house out in Westchester for a weekend,” Charles continues aloud, since the cat is already out of the bag, smiling at the interested looks coming onto their faces. “It has extensive grounds, and it’s out in the country, so it would be ideal. But it would depend if it’s feasible or not, I might need a license or all sorts of things to do it, so it’s not a definite possibility, just an idea.”

Armando leans forward to take a cookie, and sits back, biting into it before finally saying, “Still, that would be pretty cool. I bet my Mom would give me permission to go.”

The oldest among them approving, the others seem to take it as an endorsement, because there’s a sudden hubbub of chatter, and Kitty says, “Mine too,” in an excited voice, thinking that at least her mother already knows Charles.

“It’s just a thought,” Charles protests, but he’s interrupted by Jean, who exclaims, “You could bring Erik!”, her exuberance bouncing right back. Charles can barely conceal his wince.

Just hearing Erik’s name from her is a reminder of how far apart Charles and Erik still are, even after that mini-reconciliation in the office last week; Charles can no sooner imagine Erik coming with him on a field trip with these other teenagers than Erik’s coming home. The very thought of it only serves to highlight just how … different, Erik is, from these kids, with their positive outlooks and permission slips and …. Erik has never been this innocent, not since he was very small, and much younger than when Charles first met him.

“You always talk about him but you never bring him,” Warren says, shifting so that he can drape his wings over the end of the couch, sitting sideways to make room. “I saw him at school a bit before I transferred, he’s the right age.”

“Erik … isn’t really the support group type,” Charles says diplomatically, instead of the truth, which is that Charles had invited him to come along soon after he’d moved in but had been a little relieved when Erik had refused, because when the topic turned to mutant politics Erik would have crushed every other debater in the room with vicious disregard for anything except winning his point, and then Charles would have to explain to angry parents why their children came home ready to start a revolution in the streets.

“Anyway, let’s shelve the topic for now and I’ll see if it’s something we can do and report back,” Charles says, settling in to start the session. “Okay. Who has a mutation story for us this week?”

The rest of the session, once they’ve calmed down a little and been distracted by telling each other about their experiences at school and at home -- Warren has been arguing with his father again about dyeing his wingfeathers, Bobby got in trouble at school for freezing a bully’s feet to the floor -- is more in line with what Charles had in mind, easy and relaxed, helping Jean with her telekinesis and Kitty with her phasing while the others duke it out on the newest fighting game Charles brought with him from home, since Erik isn’t around to miss it. It’s all so … he can’t help but compare this to the way things are between himself and Erik, the way he feels like a teacher, a helpful mentor, to these young people, instead of whatever it is he is to Erik. This is what he was expecting when he took Erik in, and it’s both easier and much less than what he actually received.

He walks home afterwards with the Xbox and the empty juice bottles to be recycled, and wonders if Erik would even let Charles be a mentor to him now, or if that ship has sailed along with parent, guardian, and friend.

Over the next few days, when he’s not brooding on his solitude Charles finds himself thinking more and more about the weekend at the mansion, about bringing the support group students there. It may be a bit of an old mausoleum, but it’s large enough to sleep all of them, and for all of them to have their own rooms. Not to mention, the grounds are certainly expansive enough for a proper powers practice without being interrupted by anyone or inconveniencing anyone, without the risk of property damage to anything that doesn’t already belong to Charles. He’d need to get permission, of course, and possibly some other adults to help supervise and make sure everything was above board, but with things … the way they are, Charles needs a project if he’s going to keep from wallowing.

He sketches out plans across sheets of scrap paper, lists of things to arrange and considerations, safety precautions. Jean is usually quite safe, but Alex and Warren are another matter altogether, being rather careless by nature. Most likely it would be best to have some of the family heirlooms removed or put into storage first.

The more time he spends on the plans the more involved Charles finds himself becoming, looking up from his desk to find that hours have passed in drawing out possible exercises and tests, everything in the apartment dark save for the lamp he must have turned on without thinking about it. It’s better than thinking about the way things are with him and Erik, anyway, and so that Friday, when he has no appointments booked and an entire day empty and listless ahead of him, he forces himself to get out of bed and get dressed in smart slacks, a button-down shirt, and a thick sweater against the lingering spring chill, and head out of town to Westchester to take a look at the house for himself.

It’s not a long drive, and the interstate is fairly clear in the late morning. He makes good time sat in the back of the chauffeured car, watching the landscape slide by in a wash of concrete and exhaust, then giving way in dribs and drabs, then larger spots, then finally all around greenery as they break away from the metropolis of the city and away from all those minds and all that hubbub. It’s simultaneously a relief and a wrenching pain to realize that other than their one trip to the mansion and their long flight to Europe and the trial, he and Erik have never been outside of New York together, that all Charles has seen for the past three years is concrete and the tame wilderness of Central Park. 

Coming outside of that feels like stepping out of a birdcage: suddenly everything around him is open, and free, and vast, and barren, and alone.

Charles does not speak to the driver until they arrive at Greymalkin Lane, and then all he says is, “Drop me here at the gate, I’ll walk in.”

“Are you sure, sir? It’s a long way, I’d guess.”

“It is,” Charles says, with an attempt at a smile, “but I’d prefer to walk. Feel free to spend the day in town, I’ll call when I want to be picked up.”

“All right,” the driver says, but he stays parked by the gate until Charles has turned the next corner of the drive out of sight.

It’s quieter here still than it was on the road. The trees muffle much of the noise from outside the grounds, and so the crunching gravel under Charles’ feet is the loudest sound, dry and rasping as the stones scrape together; there are birds singing in the trees, and he can hear, far-off, the sound of the lake, its water washing up on the stony shore. His satchel jounces a little against his hip. Strange to be here and to feel -- Charles is so used to being among millions of minds, all immediate, all crammed into a tiny space like sardines in a tin. Here most of the minds are far off: the driver finally leaving, shaking his head; a gardener in the neighbouring estate, mowing the grass; and --

Oh. _Oh_. Charles’ feet grind to a halt, and he can feel himself paling, nostrils flaring as if he’s caught a scent, the back of his neck tensing as if he’s waiting for a hand to fall.

Kurt Marko is sitting in the house.

Charles’ breaths are coming fast, sharp in the hollow of his throat, like they’re catching on something in there. What is Kurt doing here? Charles flits through the man’s thoughts, making sure not to be detected. Kurt has never been a man of complicated thoughts, so it’s easy to find without needing to prompt his memory that he’s been here for three weeks already, that Kurt has been -- has been _living_ in the house as if he has the right to, still feels as if it is _his house_ , at this very moment is --

\-- he is _smoking_ in the _library_.

Indignation flares up in Charles’ chest, a hot and awful feeling, coiling in on itself, thick and glutinous. How dare he, how dare he be in this house smoking his damn cigars as if he still lives here, as if this is his? As if he has any rights at all to do with the Xaviers any more after Mother’s death! Charles hates this house, but it is still his house, and Kurt is not welcome here.

Charles starts walking again, steeling himself against what is sure to be very unpleasant. It’s all very well being indignant, but the pit of his stomach is churning, and every muscle in his back and neck is wound tight and getting tighter as he walks, a tingling cold feeling in the tips of his fingers and toes. Charles remembers Kurt as an almost elemental force, entirely human but enormous, titanic in the monstrous sense of the word, his hair and beard black and bristling and hiding half his face, like a mask. Even though Charles knows, logically, that he was a small child then, and that he has grown since -- that in every way Kurt can no longer tower over him, is no longer so vastly larger, vastly stronger -- he is shamefully afraid.

And still. Still. He cannot just let this go.

Charles walks into the house through the front door, and holds his chin high, his shoulders loose, hiding his fear under the façade of perfect calm. It’s not very far to the library; he knows Kurt hears him come in by the way Kurt’s mind jerks to alertness at the sound of the lock clunking open, and by the time Charles has walked through the small entryway into the main corridor Kurt is standing on the library threshold, staring at him with dark eyes. He’s a dark figure in the windowless hallway, dressed in shirt and dress trousers as if he expected somehow to be seen here, and wanted to appear respectable when he was.

“Charles,” he says, his voice just the same, a deep, masculine tone, just on this edge of a rasp. “It’s you, then.”

“Yes,” Charles says, coming to a stop, leaving a good three meters of space between them. “It’s me. What are you doing in my house?”

Kurt makes a scoffing sound, and turns his back, walking back into the library. Charles follows, but the amusement and dismissal in Kurt’s mind are shaking his confidence; it’s foolish, childish, but Charles can’t help it, the smell of the smoke and the books and the fire Kurt has lit in the grate all blending into a cloud of remembered anxiety, until when Kurt says, “Sit down, boy,” it’s all Charles can do to grit his teeth and say, “What are you doing in my house, Kurt?”

Kurt pauses, halfway down into his customary armchair by the fireplace, and makes the same scoffing noise again, his brow beetling with irritation. The firelight casts half his face in shadow, like some ancient greek theatre mask. “I said sit down,” he says, and he infuses the words with Command, bending his Will against Charles’ -- to no effect.

Charles steps forward, his mouth tightening into a firm pinch. “You have no right to be here. You are trespassing on private property.” His hands clench into fists at his sides even as his stomach roils, nausea rising in his throat with the fear. “Leave, or I will call the police and have you removed.”

At that, Kurt straightens to his full height, and with two great strides he crosses the space between them to loom over Charles, his teeth bared and his eyes blazing with fury as he jabs a finger painfully into Charles’ chest, bearing down on him intent on making Charles yield. Charles’ lungs stall behind his ribs, the air -- or maybe bile -- burning in his throat, his eyes watering with the effort not to blink.

Kurt snarls. “You’re nothing but what you’ve always been, a whimpering little -5S. How dare you speak to me like that?” he snaps, and when Charles tries to step back, stumbling, he grabs a fistful of Charles’ sweater, the fabric jerking tight around his chest, Kurt’s hand clamping down and holding him there by force. Charles feels panic rising up inside him even as Kurt continues, raging, “I married your mother, in case you’ve forgotten. This house is mine by right of marriage and I am your _family_ , boy. And we do not treat our family like common criminals in my household!” He lifts one fist, taking aim.

Memory burns itself into Charles’ mind’s eye, of cringing like this, crying, hearing Kurt shouting: _He’s a freak, Sharon, and he’s used his freak tricks on me for the last fucking time --_

Charles takes a sharp and shaky breath in and feels like everything inside of him is curdling and crumpling away from Kurt’s anger, like paper retreating before a flame, helpless and wanting to bend, to make it stop -- the memory of pain flashes brightly, but then he grits his teeth harder together and grabs hold of Kurt’s mind, forcing his motor centers to obey his will and snapping open Kurt’s hand, then staggering him backwards, clumsy and overbalancing, landing him on his ass on the rug just before he could fall into the fire.

“This is my house,” Charles says, drawing himself up and puffing up, like a Dominant would, making himself larger, though he feels anything but, like he should be on his knees, begging for forgiveness the way he would have been as a child. But he refuses to do that now. “My mother, my _father_ , left it to _me._ You have no right to it or anything of mine whatsoever -- legally or otherwise. You will leave or I will make you leave, and if I have to make you then it will be in the back of a police car. You know I can do it. You’d wake up in jail and have no idea how you got there if I decided so, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He glares down at Kurt, who is struggling to his feet, and ignores the way he feels shaky underneath, hiding it only with great effort. “Your choice.”

Kurt’s snarl curls the edges of his lips back to show the fleshy pink of his gums, and he glares at Charles as if his gaze could set Charles on fire, as if he would if he could. “I see you grew some balls,” he spits, looking Charles up and down, dismissive. “Though who could say where you keep them. You always were an aberration, and now to top it off you’re a submissive that doesn’t fucking submit. Your mother would be spinning in her grave to see you so poorly behaved. You’re a disgrace to her memory.”

It shows how poorly Kurt truly understands him. Charles’ mother is the one person Charles couldn’t care less about impressing, and it makes it easier for him to take a breath in, let it out, and say, “Get out of my house, Kurt. You may have ten minutes to gather your things. I’ll be here, waiting, and if you try to take anything that isn’t yours then I won’t just take that back. I’ll take a memory, too, and you’ll never know which one.”

For a moment Charles is afraid again, the look on Kurt’s face murderous now, his beard bristling like some wild beast. “Freak,” Kurt spits again, and takes a step forward, his hands in fists -- before stalking out of the library, and turning right towards the stairs.

Charles sinks into the other armchair like he’s made of melting wax, his legs shaking now that he’s not holding them so determinedly firm. There’s a cold sweat prickling at his nape and on his upper lip, and he wipes it away with swift, jerky motions of his arm, letting it soak into the sleeve of his sweater. In his mind he’s following Kurt around the master suite as he throws things into his duffel, swearing and plotting and cursing Charles aloud as he goes; on the physical plane Charles just feels sick, the rich plump velvet of the armchair doing very little to comfort his body while he waits. As Kurt rummages through the room for his belongings Charles does the same through Kurt’s mind, searching for answers and careless now of whether Kurt knows he’s there or not.

What he finds is not a surprise. Kurt has run out of funds after a bad run of bets that landed him in some trouble with a loan shark; he was planning to sell off some of the antiques from the house once the dust had settled, to pay off his debts and generate some seed money to work his way up again. It’s so -- venal, and banal, and Charles loathes him with every fibre of his being, loathes that this man, of all men, is the only parent he has left. This, no matter how much Charles hates him, is the man who raised him. Mother was no use in that; the drinking made sure of it. Other than the servants, Charles is the product of that man upstairs.

When Kurt comes back down Charles comes out to meet him just before he crosses the threshold, a fresh mask of control pasted over the cracks so that all he shows is cold indifference, a far cry from what he’s feeling inside. “If I see you or hear from you again, I will press charges,” he says, ignoring the ferocious glare this earns him from Kurt. “Don’t contact Raven either. If I find anything missing I will know who to blame and I will make the charges stick.”

“I’m leaving, aren’t I?” Kurt snaps, his eyes narrowed and his expression entirely hateful. In the daylight outside of the gloom of the house Charles can see the wrinkles on his face, the age in his skin and the recession of his hairline, the best part of two decades sitting on him poorly and making him seem -- less, than before, past his prime and revealed so in better illumination. 

Kurt makes a rude gesture and turns to head down the drive, stomping away, and Charles lets him, watches him leave just as the driver watched him arrive, earlier, before finally going back inside the house to review his plans for the support group weekend, forcing his mind back onto the easier track. He makes himself stay for the entire day, but it’s difficult not to keep reaching out to make sure he’s truly alone, and even though he knows he is he still flinches every time the old house creaks, half-expecting to be grabbed.

*

_Erik_

“Liar!” Madelyne shrieks, and smacks Erik in the upper arm, her face creased with laughter. “You always abandon me at parties. You’re the worst wingman in the history of wingmen. I don’t know why I bring you to parties at all.”

“That’s not fair,” Erik says, putting on a hurt expression even as he slips his free arm around her waist, tugging her in closer to his side. His other hand reaches for the bottle of scotch to fill his emptied glass. “I always come back for you. And who else is going to hold your hair back when you’re puking in five hours?” 

He grins at her and puts the bottle back down, picking up his drink to take another sip, watching her over the rim of his glass; she looks pretty tonight, unusually so, her black eyeshadow shimmering with silvery glitter and her cheeks flushed only two drinks in. 

“I brought a scrunchie, I’ll just use that.” Madelyne snuggles in against him, looking up with a winsome smile. “You’ve been replaced by a piece of elastic and velvet and it serves you right.”

All around them people are dancing -- a bit awkwardly in most cases, still, but the night is young -- and drinking, the heavy bass line of the music on the stereo thumping through the walls and the floor beneath their feet, shivering through Erik’s bones. He laughs, the sound inaudible over the noise, and tilts his head forward to press a kiss to the part of her hair, and then pushes his drink into her hands and says, “Bottoms up. Better in than out.”

“Tell that to the toilet bowl later,” she says, but she downs it anyway, knocking it back in one hit and slamming the glass down on the table. “There. Let’s dance.”

Madelyne jumps to her feet and grabs Erik’s hand, leading him into the other room where there are dozens of people crammed in and moving against one another, more an in-place wriggle than a dance. Madelyne of course insists on squirming them into the middle, through gaps that are barely big enough for her to squeeze through, let alone Erik; he manages it, just about, even if it means being groped by a few invisible hands and accidentally stepping on some poor sub’s shoe. 

At the center of the dance floor he can scarcely tell people apart; the flashing lights and heady fog that’s pumping out from the machines spaced around the room blur their faces and the heat makes him light-headed, unbalanced. Every second feels like a snapshot from a different hour, collaged together, dizzying -- or maybe that’s just the alcohol starting to hit him, Erik thinks, letting Madelyne pull him toward her to dance. Her hands are on his shoulders, and her long hair tumbles around her as she moves, smiling up at him as she tries to direct him to follow her lead.

“I know you’re a better dancer than this,” she shouts, barely audible over the music, a taunting sound in her voice. 

He arches a brow at her and thinks -- why not? -- and settles his hands on the small of her back, keeping her close enough that the effect of their moving hips only serves to grind their bodies tighter together, her arms twining around his neck and her fingers dragging up the back of his neck, into his hair, eliciting a shaky thrill that shivers down to the top of his spine. 

“Better?” he murmurs, his lips moving against her cheek; Madelyne just nods, and keeps dancing, more sway than anything else now. Her breasts are pressing against his chest, soft and firm and he can feel her breathing, a little fast and shallow, probably the heat. He smooths his hands up her spine, then back down again, past the swell of her hips. 

He wishes he’d had a chance to dance with Charles like this, he finds himself idly thinking. Maybe Charles wouldn’t, maybe Charles is too adult for any of this, but nevertheless he thinks about how Charles’ body felt beneath his hands, solid and stocky, real, like whatever Erik did he wouldn’t go anywhere. The way Charles fits against him perfectly, the two of them slotted together like puzzle pieces, a cosmic coincidence. How it might feel paternal and erotic all at the same time to have Charles embracing him like this, all the signals mixed and tangled up in Erik’s mind, Charles’ mouth pressing a kiss to his throat.

Those are Madelyne’s lips on his throat. “Erik,” she murmurs -- or maybe shouts, but it’s quiet, hard to hear over the music -- she’s rubbing up against him, kissing the angle of his jaw, slow and sexy, and it shocks him back to reality. “I didn’t think you liked girls.”

 _I don’t_ , Erik almost says. ...Doesn’t he? It’s hard to say; he’s not attracted to anyone, or so he’d thought, but he’s certainly _liked_ sex before, with Charles, and more recently with Frank…. 

_Focus_ , he snaps at himself, dragging his attention back to here, now, to Madelyne’s body undulating against his. She smells … nice. Delicate, floral. She must be wearing perfume. Her lips brush his cheek and he turns his head on impulse to catch them with his mouth, kissing her.

Madelyne makes some sort of sound -- the vibration of it runs through the kiss, and she presses into it, the burning taste of scotch on her lips and on her tongue when it deepens, her fingers combing through the back of his hair, her weight all against him as she stands on her tiptoes to reach. It’s unexpected but not unpleasant. Erik kisses back, kisses her the way he’d want to be kissed. One of his hands slips on her hip and skates down over her ass, a high round curve, and Madelyne gasps, the kiss breaking as she blinks at him with dark doe eyes.

“I know where the guest rooms are,” she says, breathless, her lipstick a little smeared.

Erik can feel his brows lift a fraction of an inch; he’d been about to apologize and make his excuses, but now they’re dead in his throat. He hadn’t thought she liked him like that. Sure, he’d known she was interested in the physical sense, it was perfectly obvious once he’d figured out how to read those same signals off Charles, but she had made such an effort to publicly distance herself from his sex life that he just assumed --

Obviously, he assumed wrong.

“All right,” he says, letting his mouth take over for his stunned brain, his hand finding hers and clasping their fingers together. He leans in again, quickly, nipping at the lobe of her ear before he says, there, where he knows she’ll hear it, “Lead the way.”

Madelyne smiles at him, and turns to tug him out through the crowd on the opposite side to where they came in, all tight spaces and body contact and heat until finally they break free into an empty space that’s mostly taken up by a spiralling staircase.

“Up here,” she says, and starts to climb, the skirt of her minidress riding up a little over her thighs. He follows, hand skating along the guard rail, and it feels like forever ago that he drank all that whiskey, his mind perfectly, scintillatingly clear. 

He realizes once they’re on the second floor and walking down the hall between all these closed doors that he’s operating under the implicit assumption that she wants to fuck him, only she hasn’t said anything of the sort; she’s never gone off with anyone at parties, not that Erik’s aware of anyway, and this -- he has no idea what this is. 

“What is this?” he ends up just asking her before she can open the door to the guest bedroom, his power catching the knob on reflex and keeping it shut as he steps in closer to her, not-touching, not yet. “I’m supposed to protect you from the strange Doms at parties, not _be_ them.”

“Well, you certainly are strange,” she says, tipping her chin up, a little challenging; her hands settle on her hips, but a little awkwardly, like she’s playing a role. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just thought that … that you’d changed your mind. You never touched me like that before.” There’s a hesitation on her face now, just the slightest hint, that boundless confidence she was wearing a moment ago wavering. “Why did you follow me up here then if you don’t want to?”

“I didn’t say that.” 

Erik releases his grasp of the knob and reaches for her again instead, skimming his fingertips along her cheek and slipping them back into her hair, curling around the delicate shell of her ear. His heart’s beating fast, because she’s looking at him the way Charles used to look at him, brazenness to cover nerves, wanting and a little hopeful. It makes something painful clench in his chest. He tilts his head toward the door, pushes it open with his power and says, “Come on.”

Madelyne relaxes, then smiles, slower this time, and goes inside, coming to a halt beside the enormous four poster bed and dropping her bag to the floor with a soft thump. Erik follows her in and closes the door behind them; it makes things quieter, but Erik can still hear the music coming from downstairs, the muffled sound of voices, just loud enough to be background but not loud enough to drown out the sound of his own breathing coming sharp.

“You should lock it,” she says, gesturing towards the door as she bends to tug off her heels, letting them fall beside her bag. “Unless that’s part of the thrill, for you. I don’t know if you like that.”

“It’s already done,” Erik says, though he knows why she might assume, since he didn’t need to use his hands. He steps closer toward her, toeing off his shoes near the foot of the bed, and switches off the overhead light in the same moment as he turns on the lamp at the bedside. It casts them into a softer glow, one that seems less … matter-of-fact, less clinical, than the overhead. “You should tell me what you want,” he says, meaning anything at all. His hand is on her waist, moving toward the small of her back. “How much Dominance. If you want me to put you down.”

“I don’t know,” she says, swaying towards him again, looping her arms back up around his shoulders. “What do you like to do?”

It’s hardly a question Erik knows the answer to; come March he’ll only have been presenting as Dominant for a year, and the only sub he’s been with is Charles, and that only for two weeks. It’s a stark reminder that she isn’t at all like his usual Doms, for whom the promise _I’ll do anything_ actually means something, a chance to fulfill all their darkest desires. He’s the Dom, this time. He’s supposed to be in-control. To make suggestions. 

“Well, it’s a guest room, so I doubt there are toys,” he starts, casting his power out just to make sure, though he hardly expects the owners of this apartment to have provided their company with complimentary dildos and floggers. His fingers are slowly, very slowly, unbuttoning the back of her dress, moving down over each inch of skin as it’s bared. He knows it’ll be easiest for him if she’s down, at least a little bit, even just a light order’s worth -- stupid, he knows it’s stupid, and it’s not like he expects her to … _do_ something, not like he thinks she’ll actually hurt him. It’s just how it is. But it seems like too much to ask.

“You can … maybe a little? Subspace,” she says, her teeth catching on her lower lip for a moment before she moves one hand to his shirtfront, echoing Erik’s actions, the fine linen loosening as she unfastens it. “Not all the way down. Just until I’m floaty and light. Is that okay?”

Erik keeps the relief from showing on his face and nods, just slightly. They won’t need a safeword if they aren’t engaging with bondage or toys, but Erik thinks it’s worthwhile to add, just in case, “I won’t put you down so far you couldn’t let me know if you don’t like something.”

That would be true even if he brought her to rock bottom, even if her saying it isn’t the same as her being able to fight back -- but there are enough misperceptions about 7Ds without him adding the caveat. 

“Okay,” she says. He undoes the last button of her dress and hesitates, smoothing his touch up along her spine toward the nape of her neck, the fine hairs there silken beneath his fingertips. With that same look of bravado on her face Madelyne draws her hands away from his shirt and lets her dress slip down and off into a puddle of velvet at her feet, exposing pale skin and the dark blue lace of her bra and panties to his sight, her body entirely on display. A flush starts in her cheeks as she stands there, looking at him looking at her, her arms coming up after a moment to fold across her belly as if she’s resisting covering her breasts. Her chest rises and falls rapidly, little goosebumps rising on her bared flesh. “Take off your shirt.”

“I thought I was the one supposed to be giving the orders here,” Erik says with a wry grin, but he obeys all the same, finishing the last few buttons she’d left undone and shrugging his shirt off, folding it before he drops it down onto the floor near his shoes. She makes a soft noise, her hand coming up to her mouth -- and Erik realizes she’s looking at his scars, shock paling her flush.

“Oh, Erik,” Madelyne says, and steps forward, reaching out to touch and stroking her fingertips down one of the worst ones, on his side.

“It’s okay,” Erik says quickly, not particularly keen on starting this off with her feeling sorry for him but feeling the color start to rise in his own face all the same, reactive. “This one’s just shrapnel.” 

He covers her hand with his, pressing her fingertips down against the white and risen scar tissue where he’d once had a sharp piece of wood buried deep between his ribs, bad enough they had Azazel on standby, holding Erik in his arms, ready to teleport them both to the hospital if he started bleeding out when Shaw ripped the shrapnel free. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” he says. “See?”

She lets him push her fingers down deeper, looking up at him again, and after a moment she rises up on her tiptoes and kisses him, the rich scotch taste of her mouth distracting Erik from the awkwardness. Her skin is pressed up against his, warm and shifting and soft, the lace of her bra soft too. It’s so different from being close to Charles -- she’s curved where he was flat, giving where he was firm muscle, smaller than Erik in an entirely different way. He isn’t sure how he feels about that yet.

He lets her press on a few moments longer before he breaks the kiss, but it’s only to trail his mouth down past her jaw and along her throat, biting lightly at her shoulder as he slips one bra strap down. Downstairs someone yells something indecipherable and the music stops, a brief and unsettling silence, before it starts up again with a new beat this time, something electronic. 

“Get on the bed,” Erik orders her.

Madelyne shivers, then she steps back and pushes herself up onto the high mattress, pulling her legs up after herself and sitting there, watching him, that pink spread now from her cheeks down to her collarbone. “You should take off your pants,” she says, glancing down.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Erik says, and he gives her a teasing smirk to distract from the fact he isn’t hard yet; he’ll have to put her down more first, and he doesn’t trust her not to take it personally. 

He follows her onto the bed, the mattress dipping beneath his weight, and presses his fingertips to the center of her chest, right above her breastbone, using just those points of contact to slowly tilt her back, down onto the bed. He undoes the clip at the back of her bra with his power and uses his hands to take it the rest of the way off. He’s never held a breast in his hand before, but when he cups his palm around hers it feels warm, pliant, soft-skinned. It’s oddly fascinating, the way her erect nipple rolls a little against his palm when he squeezes gently. 

“All right?” he asks, brushing his lips against her sternum, and he infuses it with a bit more of his Will to incline her to answer honestly even as he dips her further into subspace.

Madelyne makes a little sound, breathy and hitching, and says, “Yes,” her hands hesitating against his sides as if she’s suddenly shy to touch him. “It’s fine, I like it.”

Good. He spends a while there, then, just kissing, touching, licking; it’s new territory for him, which would be enough to make him nervous if she weren’t far enough in subspace now for him to feel more at ease. He tries things he knows Charles likes just to gauge her reactions, but nothing that would cause pain; she’s mentioned before that she’s not interested in masochism, which is perfect, because Erik isn’t into sadism. 

He wonders if Charles is paying attention to this. Erik hasn’t tried to draw his focus here, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything when Erik can barely stop thinking about him, even now. He tries not to; it feels unfair to Madelyne, even though she isn’t a telepath and hardly knows the difference, but even his best efforts can’t keep him from remembering in little glimpses and snatches how it looked when Erik did this and Charles arched his back up off the bed, desperate for more -- or when Erik kissed him here and Charles moaned. The way Charles looked, flush-cheeked, mouth falling open, at climax. When he shifts against Madelyne’s body he notices that, almost without meaning to, he’s gotten hard, the fabric of his clothing dragging against his cock where it’s pressed against her and sending little sparks of pleasure darting up his spine.

“Please,” she says, her hair a rumpled red cloud on the pillow, her lip swollen from her own teeth. She’s beautiful, lying there in her panties under him, staring at him with desire in her eyes, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. “Please, Erik, you’re making me anxious.”

“What’s wrong?” he asks, moving back up her body to get a better look at her face, checking all the usual micromuscular cues: impatience, nervousness, a little embarrassment, too, which seems out of character. But once he’s within reach she says, “Nothing, it’s fine,” and moves to kiss him.

He lets her, but only for a few seconds, before gently pulling back again and saying, “I mean it, Maddie. Tell me what’s wrong.” An order, but not much of one. Doesn’t need to be, not when she’s like this.

“I just … you know I haven’t,” she says, with eyes closed, her voice almost a whisper. “I keep thinking too much, but it’s fine, I’m just nervous but I want you to. Please.”

Oh. He hadn’t thought -- only now that he _does_ think, he realizes, of course she hasn’t. She’s never dated anyone, not seriously, and she always said she wanted it to be with the right person, not just to anyone and everyone who asked like Erik and his slutty self. 

It’s something that’s important to her, and even if Erik can’t understand that he can still respect it. Surely she wouldn’t want to give something that important away to … well, to someone like him.

“Maddie….” he says slowly, starting to draw back, but she opens her eyes and when she sees his face her flush turns into a scarlet wash of color over her cheeks, humiliation instead of nerves.

“Please don’t freak out,” she says, her hands clenching into fists where they’re pressed against his back. “I want it to be you, Erik. It’s not -- I don’t expect anything after, I just -- I only trust you and I want it. Please. It doesn’t have to be a big thing.” She’s getting closer to the surface, Erik can see it on her face as she starts to panic a little, already oversensitized by being put down and less in control of her emotions. “I’m sorry.”

“Ssh,” he says, touching his finger to her lips and relaxing down toward her again, smiling and trying to seem reassuring, safe, trustworthy -- whatever it is she thinks he is, that she needs him to be right now. He almost asks if she’s sure she wants it to be him, considering all the things she knows about him, considering his reputation around school, but he doesn’t want to insult her. 

“It’s fine,” he says instead. “It’s all right. I just -- I wanted to make sure.” He fumbles around in his head for something to say that will make her feel better, an anecdote maybe, but he can’t remember losing his virginity so he has no embarrassing stories to share, no _I know how you feel_ , because he doesn’t. He has no idea how she feels.

It’s strange, though, how recognising her inexperience makes something warm bloom behind his chest, a protective feeling that knits together with the Dominance that’s already so at-hand, a desire to please and to take-care-of that he usually associates only with Charles’ presence. He kisses her again, cautiously at first, then less so once it’s clear this is what she wants, licking back into her mouth and stroking his thumb gently against her cheekbone.

Madelyne sighs, relaxing again, and her hands start to smooth up and down his back, slipping further each time until she’s stroking over his clothed ass and pulling him down against her, rubbing her groin up against Erik’s erection and making a soft, surprised sound into his mouth. His cock feels warm and heavy in his trousers and it’s starting to get slightly uncomfortable; he’d worn tight pants today, assuming he’d only be taking them off for Doms, and that getting aroused wouldn’t be an issue. Obviously a lack of foresight on his part, or at least lack of imagination.

He lifts his head after a few seconds, grinning at her even as he insinuates a hand down between their bodies to rub one finger slowly between her legs. “So when you say you haven’t, before,” he says, “do you mean _anything?_ ”

“Kissing,” she says, squirming a little against the bed; her panties are moist where he’s touching her, and getting moister. “I’m not that kind of girl, you know. You were already the only one who’d seen me topless.” 

“All right then,” he says, grinning a little too widely, because he might not have penetrated a woman before, but he certainly knows how to use his mouth. “Lie back, relax, etcetera.” He kisses his way back down her body, his fingers hooking under the elastic waist of her panties and tugging them down, her hips lifting up to make it easier for him, although he has to sit up to pull them all the way off. 

There’s noise out in the corridor, and Madelyne freezes under him, tensing; but whoever it is doesn’t try the door, goes off into some other room, and Madelyne laughs nervously, letting Erik part her thighs, though her knees turn in as if she wants to squeeze them shut. “Think of England,” she whispers, her fingers tangling in the bedclothes.

“What?” Erik says, missing the reference, but she just shakes her head and he gives it up as lost data. He starts on her inner thighs, just kissing, tracing little lines and spirals with his tongue, working his way up, and when he finally licks at her cunt she moans, a surprised sort of sound that changes pitch as he keeps going, small soft sobs as he eats her out. Her fingers find his hair at some point but she doesn’t pull, just strokes, over and over, until she’s so wet Erik can slide two fingers inside her at once, and Madelyne arches, gasping open-mouthed, her grip tightening. 

He thinks about trying to get her off first, but she’s wet enough as-is, and he suspects (though he has no real basis for this suspicion) she’ll be more interested in the rest of it if she’s still aroused rather than hypersensitive, after. Still, he gets her close, using his fingers and his mouth, reaching into the pocket of his jeans with his free hand to find one of the condoms he brought with him and set it aside on the bed.

When he finally decides to draw away she squirms, lifting up onto her elbows to watch as he unzips his pants and pushes them down his hips along with his underwear -- her eyes widen when his cock bobs free, thick and hard, and she says, “Jesus, Erik, that’s not going to fit,” staring between his legs, her lips parting.

“I can just get you off with my mouth, if you’d rather,” he says, pausing, but she shakes her head no, biting her lip before saying, “No, I want you to, it’s just -- it’s bigger than I thought it would be.”

He doesn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sound arrogant -- it’s not as if he hasn’t noticed that he’s quite a bit bigger than most of the Doms he’s been with, but saying so seems gauche, even if it’s obviously true, even if just to reassure her it won’t always be like this. She might actually have a point; his cock might be fine for fucking Charles’ ass, but what women have is rather more of a closed system. 

“You can stop me anytime,” he reminds her, even as he reaches for the condom and tears open the packet to put it on. The outside is lubricated; Erik only ever buys lubed condoms, considering they’re usually worn by Doms who plan to use them to stick their cocks in his ass, and it seemed to him like you could never have enough lube. Madelyne’s wet enough on her own, but nonetheless he imagines she’d feel the same.

He settles himself back between her legs, his weight held up off her and balanced on his forearm. “Relax,” he murmurs, orders, thinking it’ll be easier if she can get back down again.

“Okay,” she says, still looking down between them and swallowing hard, her lip catching between her teeth. “Please -- do it, Erik. I want you to,” and she looks back up at him, her hands restless on his chest, his back, stroking him nervously as if it calms her to do it. “Please, I’m okay.” There’s a little tremble running through her, like a leaf in a strong wind.

“All right,” he says softly, then again, with a little more Dominance, “Just relax.” He knows from experience that the more afraid you are, the more it hurts. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.” There’s a part of him that’s fiercely, darkly jealous of her, but he buries it down deep and doesn’t think about it. 

He presses the head of his cock to her entrance, which is warm, he can feel it even through the skin of the condom, and clenching a little, reactively. _Slowly, now,_ he tells himself, because there won’t be as much resistance with a cunt as with an ass, and he’s too absorbed in trying to make sure Madelyne stays calm to remember to be nervous himself as he slowly starts to push in.

Even just the head of his cock is enough to make a delicious shiver run through his body, the pressure on all sides organic, intense, like her body is trying to pull him deeper in. Under him Madelyne is still quivering; she lets out a little “Ah!” sound as he presses forward, and then it’s like she’s barely breathing, her breath caught as Erik slides slowly deeper inside of her warm wet cunt, until he’s buried in her, as much of himself as can fit, and she’s staring at him with this wondering, shy expression on her face, clutching at him like he’s all that’s keeping her head above water.

“You okay?” he asks, his own breaths a little shallow now, his cock hard and throbbing, and maybe if he’s lucky he won’t embarrass himself like he did with Charles. His hand is moving on her side, past her hip and up her thigh then back again, her skin hot to the touch.

“It feels weird,” she says, clenching around him; Erik bites the inside of his cheek, trying not to get too excited by it, and she squirms on his cock, her breasts pressing up against his chest, her nipples tight and erect. “Erik … you’re inside me, I’m not a virgin any more.”

“Congratulations,” he says, smiling at her and keeping his hips still by force of Will. “Does it feel any different?”

She lets out a breathy laugh. “Well, your dick is in me, that feels different,” she says, spreading her thighs a little wider and shifting her feet. After a moment her expression softens, and she says, “Yeah. I feel different. I can’t explain how. But it’s nice. I’m glad it’s you.” And she leans up to kiss Erik’s mouth, soft and slow.

He kisses her back, and after a few seconds he starts to move, slowly at first, just rocking his hips back and forth, really, until she’s responding enough that he can risk more. The pull of her cunt around his cock is entirely different from how it feels to fuck Charles’ ass, not as tight but not necessarily worse because of it, and if he could relate it to anything he’d relate it to having his dick sucked. There’s the same friction, the same heat and wetness and pull around his shaft. Once he has a real rhythm, a movement, he reaches back down between them to start rubbing her clit again, determined that if she can’t get off from this she should at least feel nice.

Madelyne gasps and moans under him, kissing him with growing passion even as she makes little hurt noises, her hips jerking and rolling up to meet his, at first awkwardly but then catching his rhythm; then it’s all wet and thrusting and mouths, her hands urging him on, the smell of her musky and arousing, Madelyne’s thighs tight around Erik’s sides.

Erik nips at her lower lip and grabs at one of her legs with his hand, pushing it further back to change the angle so he can thrust deeper, get more of himself in, bringing his finger up to his mouth to lick it after a while to keep it wet against her clit. God, he really doesn’t think he’s going to last, even if already he’s doing better than last time, heat coiling in his groin and the muscles of his abdomen starting to clench up. He groans quietly against her mouth and his fingers dig harder into the soft flesh of her thigh.

She moans, and he hears her breath hitch -- and then she moans louder and her cunt ripples and spasms around him as she comes, her eyes closing and her lips stilling as it rolls over her. The sudden clenching tightness of her cunt around him is enough to tug him that last step over the edge. Erik comes with his brow tilted against her shoulder, his cock spurting and jerking inside her, and afterward all he can manage to think is how relieved he is that he didn’t fuck it up, the low pulses of pleasure that rock through his body in the afterglow threatening to pull him down into exhaustion.

They stay like that for a long moment, just breathing, Madelyne’s heart racing -- he can feel it even at her shoulder, like a drumbeat reverberating throughout her entire body, in arrhythmia to his own. At last he pulls out, reaching down to strip off the condom and drop it into the trash can next to the bed as he rolls off her. 

“So?” he asks once he’s settled at her side again, tilting his head toward her and trying to read her face, still feverish inside.

“So,” she says, stretching, and then winces, followed immediately by an awkward giggle. She rolls onto her side, facing him, her hand on the pillow near her face. “Was that okay?”

Erik had been trying to ask her the same question, and decides that the verdict must not be all that bad, considering. “Of course,” he says, smiling at her. She doesn’t seem to be in pain, which is something; the overarching read he’s getting from her is that she’s pleased. “Was it very different from what you expected?”

“I don’t know, it was nice,” she says, smiling back at him and shifting again, settling into the mattress. “You’re nice. I’m glad I made myself be brave and actually ask.” She lowers her lashes and looks up at him through them, a flash of green. “If I ask prettily, can we cuddle too?”

“Sure.” He lets her shuffle closer to him on the mattress, tucking his arm around her waist and just holding her there for a while, a warm and soft and breathing thing pressed up against his body with his fingers idly combing through her hair, until the music dies downstairs and they finally have to get up and dress and go back out into the world.

“I’m really not expecting this to be a thing now,” she says as she’s stepping into her panties, tugging the blue lace back up around her hips and reaching for her bra. “In case you were worried about that. I know you don’t do relationships. This was just a friends thing, not a thing thing.”

Erik does his buttons without his hands, using the metal backings, and says, “All right.” Despite what she’d said before, he had still worried, a little, as they were lying there after, that she might have changed her mind -- that she might still be wanting something more than he knows how to give. “Friends,” he echoes, and passes her her dress, and tries to quash the shadow that’s slowly blooming in this mind, that growing sense of resentment for the way she’s lost her virginity, the way she’s safe and happy, his quiet and entirely unfriendly envy of that which he knows he can never have.

*

That night, he wakes up drenched in sweat, his sheets tangled up around his legs and his whole body shivering, and when he tries to close his eyes all he can feel is old too-familiar hands on his skin, that clenching feeling in the pit of his stomach, the unavoidable and ever-present pain. He feels sick, and drags himself out of bed, lurching across the room to the little guest bathroom to splash water on his face. His reflection in the mirror is grey-skinned and wan, and his adult-like body looks wrong somehow, like it doesn’t belong to him, too tall and unwieldy.

The bedroom’s still full of ghosts so he goes out into the kitchen instead, curling up in one of the chairs at the table and staring at a knot driven deep in its wooden surface, tracing the concentric circles with his gaze and trying to think about only-that, not the memories kissing the nape of his neck. 

There’s a shuffling sound behind him a few minutes later, and when Erik turns Raven is shambling into the kitchen, her robe pulled around her and her hair a bird’s nest around her head, her eyes barely open. “What is it?” she asks without any preamble, coming to drop into the chair beside Erik’s, her limbs lax and resentful. “You’re awake.”

“Nothing,” Erik says, and he unfolds his legs to put his feet back down on the floor, his hands on the table, hoping she’s too tired to read from him the swell of embarrassment at having been caught like that, balled up and shaking in the kitchen like a child. “What time is it?”

“Dunno,” she says, shrugging one shoulder. She looks like she could fall right back asleep at any moment. “Night time. What’s wrong? Tell me. Makes it better.”

“Just a bad dream,” Erik says. Only not a dream; they never really are. It’s not something he wants to discuss with Raven, who has only ever seen Shaw and the rest of them on a television screen, who sees him only as an obstacle to her brother’s happiness, and who presumably, like Madelyne, grew up expecting that the people who took her to bed would care about her and take care _of_ her. For whom it only ever had to hurt the first time.

Raven squints at him for a long and silent moment, but when she finally speaks all she says is, “Okay,” and rests her head on her hand, her elbow on the table. “If you make cocoa I will get bourbon. Deal?”

Erik tilts one corner of his lips up and nods. “Deal,” he says, but when he gets up and heads into the kitchen to start getting the materials together he can feel her eyes on him, watching him. He heats the water to boiling in the kettle with his power warming the metal chassis, although it still takes about sixty seconds. As he scoops the cocoa powder into their mugs he catches himself wishing he were back where he feels like he belongs, where waking up like this would just mean Charles’ arms around him and his lips pressed against Erik’s temple, murmuring soft soothing words over and over as he stroked his hair. Being angry at Charles, still, doesn’t mean he doesn’t still feel like the center of Erik’s universe, the sun around which all other things must inevitably orbit.

“Here,” he says when he brings the mugs back over to the table, spoons stirring the cocoa into the water. He slides one across the wood toward Raven and settles back down in his chair, tucking one leg up under him.

She gets up from the table with a groan and disappears into the living room, reappearing with a bottle in one hand that she dumps on the table to uncap, pouring a generous measure of golden-brown liquid into each of their mugs. “There, now it’s Irish,” she says, lifting hers and clinking it against Erik’s before taking a sip. “We’re so continental. I’ll have to get a beret.”

Having grown up mostly on the European continent, Erik has no idea what hot cocoa with bourbon (an American drink) has to do with either Ireland (an island), or with the continent of Europe for that matter -- but he tips his mug toward hers nonetheless and takes a small, testing swallow. The bourbon is starkly noticeable in contrast to the watery nature of the instant cocoa, hot-feeling at the back of his throat, and Erik wonders if it would be considered in bad taste to ask Raven to morph into Charles for a while. Not for any reason he necessarily thinks she’d disapprove of, just that … seeing him right now would be a comfort, in some deep and basic way Erik can’t entirely describe, Charles’ presence too long associated with warmth and safety and feeling-better. But even if she wore his skin, Raven wouldn’t _be_ him, not in the ways that matter. Erik sighs, putting down his cup.

“I went to see Charles,” he says, and Raven’s eyebrows drift upwards towards her hairline.

“When was this?” she asks, her own cup paused halfway to her mouth.

“Day before yesterday.” Erik drives the edge of his thumbnail into a groove of the wooden table, rubbing at a tiny crumb that’s caught there. “The apartment was --” there’s no good way to explain the state of that apartment. “I don’t think he can be alone right now,” Erik says instead, glancing up at her from beneath the fringe of his lashes, not entirely willing to commit to looking her in the eye.

Raven’s mouth has tightened, but she says, “He’s a grown man, Erik,” in a nice tone of voice, none of the frustration he can guess lies under her façade audible. “Charles has plenty of money to hire a cleaner, it’s not your job to tidy up after him. Did you go to see him at home, then? Was everything … you didn’t …?”

“He wasn’t at home. I found him at his office after I finished cleaning up.” He can understand why she feels she has to ask, but having what still feels like his-and-Charles’ secret thrown in his face again is like scratching at a scabbing wound. “He’s still being your good boy, don’t worry.”

Raven rolls her eyes. “He’s not _my_ good boy,” she says, sipping at her cocoa. “But that’s good, I guess. Are you okay? That must have been pretty tough. I knew what to expect when I went over, he’s always filthy when he’s depressed, but I didn’t think you would go back so I didn’t think to warn you.”

Erik shrugs one shoulder and finally gets that crumb loose, brushing it off onto the floor. “He’s afraid to be around me now. I can see it in his eyes. He tries to act normal, but he doesn’t trust himself anymore.” And that’s Erik’s fault, for pushing so hard, for being the way he is and drawing Charles down deep into his web. It will take years to undo the damage Erik’s done, if he can even undo it at all.

Raven’s mouth softens, and she reaches out with one hand to squeeze Erik’s upper arm. “I think it’s more likely he’s afraid for you, rather than afraid for himself,” she says, without letting go. “He’s scared that he’s hurt you in ways he can never fix, except that Charles could fix them, if he wanted to -- he has the power to do it, and that has always scared him more than anything else, knowing he could do almost whatever he wanted if he just let himself slip.”

“I don’t want him to just make me forget.” Erik frowns at her, and though his hand clenches into a fist beneath the surface of the table, he doesn’t pull away from her grasp. “He hasn’t done anything to me.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Raven says. “He won’t do that, wouldn’t even if you begged him to. But he’s afraid because he could and he knows it. He could just -- fix it, erase it from history, if he wanted to. So every time he fucks up he knows he’s playing the game of life blindfolded with one hand tied behind his back.” She shrugs. “Then again, maybe he fixes stuff all the time and nobody knows about it. Nobody would, if he didn’t want them to.”

Erik makes a soft, snorting sound. “No, he wouldn’t fix it. He enjoys being a martyr far too much to give that up.” He reaches for his cocoa, tugging it toward him across the table then lifting it to his mouth to take another sip of his drink. The bourbon isn’t really doing much, unfortunately. He doesn’t really want to talk about Charles with Raven though, not again. As much as he is bitterly gratified she’s on ‘his’ side in this whole thing, she doesn’t want it to end the same way Erik does. Erik doesn’t know why he brought it up -- it’s not like he needs to be reminded that everything he cares about eventually ends like this: dead or dying. That even the one part of his life he thought might turn out normal hasn’t, and can’t ever be. 

“Thanks for this,” he says to Raven, finishing off the rest of his cocoa and pushing his chair back from the table, the legs scraping across the floor. “I’m going back to bed now. Good night.”

“Okay,” she says, sipping at her cocoa again. “Let me know if you want to talk, Erik, seriously. I know things are shit right now but you can talk to me any time. All right?”

He nods, and waves at her with one hand, heading back down the hall to the guest room. The sheets are as he left them, still all mussed and knotted toward the foot of the bed. His phone says it’s 4:36 AM, nearly early enough that Erik would be getting up for his run if it weren’t so cold these days. He huddles up under the blankets, lying on his side with his face tilted toward the pillow, breathing in the musty scent of the cotton pillowcase. 

It’s hard to clear his mind and get it to a place where he can fall asleep. His thoughts keep turning back to Madelyne, how scared she’d been at first, but then how easy it seemed, after, her relief and happiness, how simple it was to give her something like that. Erik tries to imagine himself in her place, with someone he trusts, someone like Charles, maybe, tries to imagine how things might be different if that was the way it’d always been. How would he feel? Not like this. His own memories of sex are just the same actions, over and over again, piled up in the corner of his mind devoted to remembering that kind of thing like so much refuse. It’s hard to imagine sex as anything other than this … dirty, physical habit, like something you should cleanse yourself of after -- like pissing. Vulgar, but necessary. 

He finds himself wondering in a sick, self-destructive sort of way if he’d been afraid the first time. If he’d screamed and cried and thrown a fit or if he’d just gone along with it like a mindless little idiot, eager to please. Such a stupid little boy he’d been. No wonder Shaw thought him good for little else.

Erik opens his eyes, staring across the blackened room, his heart suddenly racing in his chest. He can feel the threat of old memories seeping in around the edges of his mind, not a flashback, not yet, but it can be one if he lets it. He tries to edge down deeper under the comforter, drawing its warmth in around his body, but all that manages to do is remind him of the wide emptiness of this bed. Like all those nights he lay awake and waited for someone to creep into his room on soft steps, hands slipping beneath the covers, cold on his skin. 

He rolls over and stretches his arm out, fumbles in the dark for his phone. It only takes a few taps of his finger to dial the number from his favorites; he tucks the phone in between his cheek and his pillow and bundles up again, the screen warm and glowing against his face. 

It rings what feels like a million times, and Erik is sure it’s about to go to voicemail when suddenly the line connects and he hears Charles’ standard disgruntled, early-morning-wake-up groan. “Nuhhhhh.”

“Charles?” Erik keeps his voice low. The walls are thin in this apartment, though, and as quiet as he is, Raven’s awake and he knows she’ll hear him from her room, even if the words are indistinct. He closes his eyes.

“Gah,” Charles says, and there’s a rustle of bedding. “S’early. Late? Early. S’wrong? Dream?”

“Yes,” Erik says, and curls his fingers in the sheets. He tries to pretend Charles is lying just next to him, close enough he could reach out and touch him. His imagination is not very convincing. “I can’t sleep.” He’s exhausted, though, fatigue reaching slim fingers up his spine and dragging down at his limbs. Not that it does much good; he’s too afraid to follow sleep into its shadows. 

Another shifting noise, distant springs creaking, and then Charles says, “S’okay. They’re all gone. Safe now. I won’t let them.” His voice is drowsy-slurred, not fully awake, but entirely sincere, as if there’s nothing in the world that would make him break that promise. “Safe with Raven.”

“I wish I were with you,” Erik says, confesses, an admission he can only make in the dark when no one is here to see him make it and he can pretend Charles will have forgotten by morning. Charles’ breath catches. “I don’t -- you can go back to sleep, but will you … can you, just, stay on the line? With me?” Shame tugs at his heartstrings but he doesn’t take it back, just clenches his eyes tighter shut. 

A moment of quiet then, “Okay,” Charles says, drowsiness running thickly in his voice. “Be listening to me snoring though. Tired.”

Erik makes a tiny smile, and says, “I know. I don’t care.” Already he feels softer, easier inside, sinking back down into the mattress with the low sound of Charles’ voice, his breathing, in his ear. Charles makes a humming sound and then he’s quiet, just the ambient noise of his bedroom to punctuate the slowing down of his exhales until Erik can tell he’s fallen asleep, the little hitch before the snore, very soft, more sleep-grumble than anything else. Charles is the most determinedly grumpy sleeper that Erik has ever met.

That’s the last thing Erik remembers thinking, sleepiness tied up with his own amusement, before he’s waking up in the late morning to the sound of the city outside. When he checks his phone, migrated now off the edge of his pillow and magnetized, strangely, to the back of Erik’s outstretched hand, Charles has already woken and hung up.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: brief references to past child sexual abuse/rape.


	27. Twenty-Seven

_Erik_

As far as Erik’s aware, arousal isn’t something that occurs apropos of nothing. There’s usually an inciting factor: pornography, seeing someone attractive or available or both, being propositioned, feeling compelled to overpower or to punish. Erik himself is something of an expert on what turns people on, which is why it comes as such a surprise that the first time he finds himself aroused outside the context of sexual activity it seems so … _random._

He was lying in bed, half-asleep, not dreaming of anything particularly sexual, but at some point he rolled over from his side onto his stomach and gradually became aware that he was rubbing his hips down against the mattress, idly chasing the soft warm thrum of arousal. 

He nearly loses his erection just realizing what’s going on, the shock of it snapping him out of his doze. The immediate urge is to try to suppress it. Shaw used to torture him like that, to find some way of stimulating Erik’s cock even while ordering him to stay soft, or not to come, and then beating him senseless when he inevitably failed to obey. But Erik’s gotten good these days at recognizing those old instincts for what they are -- and so when he shoves his hand down between his hips and the bed to palm himself through his pajama bottoms, it’s as much to defy the ghost of Shaw’s demands as it is to satisfy himself, rubbing and squeezing his cock until it’s hard again.

Of course, that leaves him fully erect in the empty silence of Hank and Raven’s guest bedroom and not entirely sure what to do about it. The sound of his own breath is blasphemously loud, heavy and huffing in his ears. Every time the apartment creaks he worries it’s Raven come to check on him. 

Slowly, almost hesitantly, Erik reaches out with his power to flick on the bedside lamp and rolls over onto his back. Beneath the weight of the covers it’s impossible to see the evidence of his erection, yet when he slides his fingers down his stomach and past his hips it’s unmistakably _there_ , a solid heat that both excites and intimidates. 

All right, Erik thinks. This is new.

He touches it through his pajama bottoms again, running his fingertips up its length and feeling the respondent shiver low in his stomach. It feels good, which of course, it’s meant to. There’s absolutely nothing strange about any of this, especially for someone Erik’s age. That doesn’t stop him feeling like he’s doing something illicit by touching himself, half-expecting the door to be thrown open at any second, revealing the tall shadow of an angry Hellfire Dom. 

Erik decides to close his eyes. And, then, he decides to push his hand down under the elastic of his pajama bottoms and curl his fingers around his shaft. 

_No_. 

The reaction surges up in him too quick for him to suppress it, and Erik yanks his hand away, clenching it into a fist atop his chest, his heart racing. The shame comes immediately after, sinking into his bones and flushing heat into his cheeks. 

No one’s there. He’s allowed to do this if he wants. He’s being stupid.

Even so, he doesn’t reach down again. Instead he turns back onto his stomach, trapping his hard cock between his pelvis and the bed, and rocks his hips down against the resistance. That … feels good. Warm. Not too much, not as dangerous. It could almost be accidental, the way his hips move a second time, then a third, pleasure slowly building like tension between his legs. 

He squeezes his eyes tighter shut and starts moving a little faster, until his cock isn’t just rubbing down against but also _along_ the mattress, a faint friction that won’t be anywhere near enough to get him off. For now it feels good, though, and he doesn’t need to push it further. Slowly, slowly, he feels the anxiety drain out of him, better if he isn’t thinking about it. Every time he remembers that he should be afraid, it undoes half his efforts and he has to start over again.

He keeps up this steady grind for a while, the pillowcase hot against his cheek, lips parting as his breaths get shallower. He imagines grinding down against a person instead, skin against his skin, someone else’s quiet moans against his ear. That spurs him on, enhancing those good feelings, especially when he imagines that person wanting him back -- arching their back against him, squeezing legs around his waist, maybe another cock hard and slipping alongside his, chasing friction.

Erik barely even thinks twice about it this time, when he presses his hand down to squeeze himself, rubbing down against his own flesh instead of just cotton and pretending that flesh is someone else’s. 

He doesn’t get off. He doesn’t really try to. After a while he lets the pleasure start to fade, and rolls onto his side, his erection wilting more and more as the seconds pass without stimulation until he’s soft again, the whole thing nothing now but a warm desire bundled up in the pit of his stomach. He keeps it there. It makes him feel like he could summon that desire back, as long as he still has that unfulfilled need tangled in his groin. Not that he has any need to summon it back, he reminds himself as logic starts filtering back into his thoughts, organizing them into their usual neat rows and lines. Charles isn’t fucking him anymore; Charles isn’t here to be impressed, or pleased, by Erik’s sudden wants. 

Why, Erik thinks a bit viciously, couldn’t this have happened two fucking months ago?

What’s changed?

Well, Charles left him, for one. Erik moved in with Hank and Raven. He had sex with a girl. Another sub, for that matter -- Madelyne. Could this be about her? He frowns at the darkness behind his own eyelids. It doesn’t seem likely. He enjoyed himself with her perfectly well, but it wasn’t the kind of erotic epiphany you’d think it would be if he had been secretly attracted to women all this time without realizing. 

Experimentally, he imagines fucking some random woman, but there’s no response from his cock. If anything he feels vaguely repulsed, disgusted, albeit more with himself than with the imaginary girl. The opposite of turned-on. He tries thinking about fucking some random man instead, and while he doesn’t get hard thinking of that, either, at least the concept is vaguely entertaining instead of disturbing. 

Definitely not into women, then. That much is a relief; it’s already more than enough to be getting on with, realizing he has sexual desire at all. It would be worse if he had to contend with realizing his implicit assumptions about the _kinds_ of people he’s attracted to had been wrong his entire life. 

Though they are just that, Erik reminds himself: assumptions. He never felt particularly compelled to seek out sex for its own sake, but in his heart of hearts, in his own private sense of self, he always just figured that he was into cock. It was reflected in the types of Doms he tended to look for, too -- he always picked out men. He only ever fucked women incidentally, it seemed, like at that college fet party where he had the bad flashback and Charles had to come pick him up. Or Madelyne. 

Madelyne’s the one outlier in all this. If he isn’t attracted to women at all, then why her? Why did he want her? Was it because she’s a submissive? The only people he’s remotely felt this way about have been her, Frank, and Charles. 

It doesn’t make any sense. A straight submissive female, a gay Dominant male, and a straight submissive male. 

What do these all have in common?

 _Submission_. The answer suggests itself almost too easily, drifting up to the forefront of Erik’s mind light as a feather. Madelyne, Frank, and Charles were all perfectly happy submitting to Erik, one way or another. Madelyne might be the exception to the male-female issue, or maybe she just submitted well enough that it didn’t matter.

Maybe this is all far too fucking confusing to try to figure out at -- Erik opens his eyes to look at the clock on the bedside table -- eleven-thirty in the fucking evening. 

Or maybe there’s a simple answer, and he’s just overthinking it.

Erik untangles his arm from beneath the covers and catches his iPhone as it flits across the room into his hand, and dials Madelyne’s number. She picks up on the second ring.

“Hey,” he says, keeping his voice low so Raven won’t overhear. 

“Hey,” she says, with a crumple of fabric -- it sounds like she’s in bed too, she sounds drowsy. “What’s up?”

“Did I wake you up? It’s not urgent, I can call you back tomorrow --”

“No, it’s fine, I was just reading. What’s up?”

He spares the time to wonder if it makes him some type of asshole to fuck Madelyne just for purposes of experimentation, then decides if it does, then they’re well even, because she already admitted to using him as a means by which to lose her virginity. It’s a set precedent between them.

“Well, I was going to be forward and ask if you’d like to invite me over,” Erik says, propping his head up on one hand, the pillow half-folding under his arm. 

Another rustle, and this time she sounds more awake, surprised more than anything as she says, “Sure, if you want. You know you can always come over, the butler would just let you in any old time. Everything okay?”

He’s not entirely convinced she’s followed exactly what it is he’s offering, so he says, giving up on subtlety, “I’m asking if you want to have sex tonight.”

“Oh!” A long pause, and another rustle, the sound of her breathing, in and out, then, “Sure, come over. I don’t have condoms though, you’d need to bring them. I’m … kind of surprised. I didn’t think you asked people yourself.” 

“There’s a first time for everything,” Erik says, sitting up properly and kicking back his duvet. “Same parameters as last time. No strings, no expectations.” There’s a little bit of a question, there; he realizes he’s changing the game a bit by propositioning her, and he doesn’t want her to think that means anything more than what it is at face value. 

“I assumed,” she says, bedsprings quietly creaking in the background, then the sound of a door opening -- her closet, by the way he hears drawers opening, then the quickly-stopped sound of the music box she keeps her make-up in. “How long will it take you to get here?”

“Half an hour; I’m down in the Village.” He finds his clothes from the previous day in the hamper and tosses them onto the bed. “I’ll see you then.” They make their good-byes and he hangs up, changing into his clothes and exiting Hank and Raven’s apartment via the fire escape.

He spends a total of three hours at Madelyne’s. It’s easier the second time around, and they both feel more comfortable expanding into practices not as strictly vanilla. That part, Erik thoroughly enjoys -- but he can’t escape the feeling, either, that there’s something not quite right about it. Maybe it’s that she’s a girl, or maybe it’s something else; he can’t figure it out, but he’s also not convinced that feeling isn’t _normal._ Maybe that’s how it is for everyone. He certainly got off, and more than once, which ought to mean something.

But if anything, he goes home more confused than he was when he left.

*

_Charles_

Charles is sitting in bed with the newspaper and the remains of breakfast when his phone rings at eleven on Saturday morning, the buzz of it vibrating on the bedside cabinet causing him to jump and almost spill his tea. Setting down the cup Charles picks the phone up and looks at the screen -- then looks again, a double-take, because it’s Erik calling, a photo of his laughing face on the screen as the cell rings and rings.

They haven’t spoken in the past week since Erik called him late at night after a bad dream. At the time Charles wasn’t awake enough to worry about it, but he’s had plenty of time since. It was just so … normal, which shouldn’t be worrying but it is, given how determined Erik has been to make it clear that things are not and never will be normal between them again. Charles hesitates.

But the phone keeps ringing, and so after a few more rings Charles swallows hard around the thick lump of his half-chewed toast, like swallowing a bone, and picks up.

“Hi,” he says, a little hoarse.

“Hi,” Erik says back. “What are you doing today?”

Charles looks down at himself, the rumpled blankets and his creased college t-shirt, the detritus of breakfast and the pile of unlaundered clothes at the bottom of his bed. “Nothing much,” he says cautiously. “Why?”

“Good.” Erik’s voice sounds pleased, brisk and alert. “Then you can come over to Raven’s and help me. I’m moving back in today.”

What?

“What?” Charles asks, blinking, too stunned to have a reaction; this was not at all what he was expecting, and he feels rather taken aback, unsure what he’s supposed to say. “Did you and Raven have a fight? Is everything okay?” God, what if Raven is kicking Erik out, that would be terrible for him, Erik has enough issues with abandonment and parental figures as it is --

“No, everything’s fine,” Erik says. On the other end of the line, Charles hears the sound of water running, on for two or three seconds, then off. “But I’ve been away long enough. I’m ready to come home.”

“Oh,” Charles says. Feeling is starting to come back -- first worry, then pleasure, then more worry, just thinking about -- it should be better for Erik to be away from him, safer, a more appropriate environment, without all of the baggage that now lies between them. Even though Charles knows Erik doesn’t have the kind of relationship with Raven that he had with Charles before things went to hell, he can’t help but feel … “Are you sure?” he asks, picking his tea mug back up to have something to do with his free hand. “I mean, you can, of course you can, but … it was a bit … stifling here, for you, before.” Understatement.

“I’ve already decided, Charles,” Erik says, his tone matter-of-fact, and of course they both know that once Erik has made up his mind he doesn’t tend to change it easily, if at all. At least Charles has never known him to be impulsive; he can’t imagine impulsivity and strong Dominance working very well together. “Unless you don’t want me to come back …?”

“It’s not that,” Charles says, though he’s not entirely sure that it’s not. It’s true that he’s not … done so well … at managing his own life since Erik left, but that’s depression, and he’s doing better than he was. It’s just … with Erik gone, it’s painful, like having a vital organ ripped from his chest, but it means he doesn’t have to worry about watching himself all the time, making sure he’s perfect all of the time, every minute of every day. “I just want to be sure you’re doing it for the right reasons and that things will be better for you now, that’s all. You can come home whenever you want. Even if it’s just to visit. You don’t have to move back in all at once if you want to test the waters first.”

Erik’s silent for a moment, but then Charles hears the sound of a door shutting; he must have left the common spaces and gone into the guest room for privacy. “I miss you,” he mutters at last, voice low even with the door between him and Raven and Hank. “I need things to be how they were again. That’s all.”

Charles shifts, a tentative, awkward feeling growing inside him. “It’s okay,” he says, leaning back into his pillow. “You can move back, I’m happy to help in fact, but we need to be clear that how things were needs to be from before Christmas break, before things changed. You know that, right?”

“I know.” Charles can practically taste Erik’s satisfaction, his relief, even at this distance. “If you come over now I can be home in time to cook you lunch. Deal?”

It’s all so sudden. Charles feels totally at sea, but there’s no time to think about it. “All right,” he says, distracted by thoughts of booking a car service to bring them back and whether or not he has any food in the apartment that Erik will be able to cook. “I’ll get dressed and come over. Does Raven know?”

“Mm. I told her this morning, but it was earlier; I assumed you’d still be asleep.”

Given that Charles is still in bed now, that was more than likely. “And what did she say?”

“Ah, well, she’s not exactly _thrilled_ , but she knows it’s my decision. You can make all the standard reassurances when you get here, make her feel better.” Charles hears the sound of bedsprings creaking as Erik drops heavily onto a mattress. It’s … distracting, and Charles swallows, deliberately stops that train of thought before it can get started.

“Okay,” he says again, getting out of his own bed and well away from memory lane. “I’ll see you in an hour, then. Is that okay?”

“Sounds good. See you then.” Erik hangs up and Charles is left staring into his closet for a few long seconds before he can make himself put the phone down and grab some clothes.

It’s not a long trip across town to Raven’s place, but it feels long; by the time he arrives Charles has talked an imaginary Erik out of moving back, then into it again, and out of it a second time, and he can’t help but feel flustered as he takes the elevator up to Raven’s floor, steeling himself for seeing Erik -- and for what Raven will say.

He knocks on the door and stiffens his shoulders, straightens up, lifts his chin, deciding that whatever else happens, he is going to be the adult in this situation.

“I’ll get it,” he hears Erik’s voice call almost immediately from within the apartment, and a few seconds later the door is pulled open, revealing Erik standing there just on the other side. Their gazes meet, and Erik -- doesn’t smile, but his lips part for just a second, for two heartbeats, before he says, “Hey. Come in,” and steps aside.

Charles very distinctly felt Erik’s flush of pleasure at seeing him, and it makes him hesitate, taken aback by his own surprised warmth in response; he steps inside, not letting himself reach out to Erik -- though he wants to, the feeling of attraction in his own belly something he can’t suppress no matter how hard he tries. There’s something about seeing him like this that will probably always speak to Charles in a visceral way, like having a string tied from Erik’s finger to Charles’ insides, tugging at him and reminding him of this hot, animal feeling of want, something he can’t talk down or wish away.

He ignores it as best he can and asks, “How are you?”, following Erik inside and turning to smile at him, folding his arms, his battered old leather jacket creaking at the elbows. The good one is at the cleaners, spattered with mud from an inconsiderate taxi cab’s wheels.

“Good,” Erik says, and he takes a half-step back, still looking at Charles all the way up until the moment he turns and starts walking away, toward the hall that leads to the bedroom. “I’ve already packed,” he calls back to Charles. “I’ll just be a moment.”

Charles finds himself standing awkwardly in the living room, unable to follow Erik -- God, no, bedroom is a bad idea -- but with nothing to do or be doing when Raven comes in from the kitchen and gives him a dark look, one eyebrow rising.

“So,” she says, leaning back against the doorframe and crossing her arms. Charles can hear her disapproval loud and clear, her concern warring with the urge to demand Charles tell Erik he can’t move back in, half-formed mental images that she pushes away before they can take shape -- things she doesn’t want to happen, doesn’t want to see.

“So,” Charles says. Things are silent for a moment, long and awkward. “Erik called me. Thanks for looking out for him, Raven, I really appreciate it.”

Her mouth purses, and Raven gets up and comes across the room to stand by him, looking up at Charles with her head tilted to one side. “I love you, you know that,” she says quietly, touching his elbow, “but no more funny business, okay? I get a whiff of it going on and I’ll have to do something, Charles, I won’t sit on it for you again. It’s not okay, and Erik is a pretty messed up kid to begin with. Don’t fuck him up worse, all right?”

“I’ll try,” Charles says, and smiles at her, sad but real, before giving her a hug. Raven is warm and tense and tough in his arms, but she hugs him back, and Charles sighs, laying his forehead against her shoulder and wishing he could just have her take care of everything for a while longer, so he wouldn’t have to pull himself together all over again.

Erik emerges from the bedroom, his bags slung heavy over one shoulder; Charles catches him looking at him and Raven, but all Erik says is, “Good, the two of you have made up,” as he drops one of the duffels onto the floor near the front door. 

“We weren’t fighting,” Raven says, detaching from Charles and rolling her eyes. “I went over there and tidied up after him before you did, Florence Nightingale, I get more brownie points than you do.”

Erik grins. “Well, had I known it’d get as dire as it did, I would never have left.” He pulls on his coat, looping a scarf once around his neck. “Thank you again, Raven, for letting me stay. I appreciate it.”

“Any time,” she says, and if she puts a bit more emphasis on the phrase than is normal, Charles can’t really blame her. He steps over to take Erik’s dropped bag -- it’s heavy but manageable, and he slings it over his shoulder, settling it so it doesn’t throttle him.

“Come over for dinner this week,” he says to Raven, since avoiding her is only likely to make her worry more rather than less. “Both you and Hank. It’ll be nice.”

“Sure,” Raven says, and smiles awkwardly. “Okay, go, before I change my mind.”

Erik touches the back of Charles’ arm lightly, then steps out the door ahead of him, shifting his own bag higher up his shoulder and, presumably, calling the elevator with his power, because by the time they’re down the hall the lift is arriving, the doors sliding open for them. 

“So,” Erik says once they’re inside, shut away from Raven and the rest of the world. He’s leaning back against the wall of the elevator, his face tilted toward Charles and his brows lifted slightly. “What sort of condition should I expect the house to be in? Better to warn me now.”

It stings a little, but Erik didn’t mean it to hurt him and Charles knows he deserves it, so he just says, “It’s fine, it’s better than before. I just got a bit behind but you caught me up, so it’s fine.” He wraps his fingers around the strap of the duffel bag, watching the numbers go down. “We might need to order out for lunch though, unless you want to run to the store.”

“Ordering out is fine,” Erik says, and the doors ping as they reach the ground floor. “Maybe we can do Indian? Hank doesn’t like spicy, so we never had any while I was there. I’m in withdrawal.”

“Sure,” Charles says, giving him a tentative smile. “We’ll call from the car.”

The driver is waiting for them on the sidewalk, and for a few minutes while they deposit the bags and get themselves sorted inside things are easier -- there’s no room for discussion or awkward silences, just efficiency and seatbelts. Until they’re in, the engine rumbles into life and they pull away from the curb, and then it’s just the two of them again, alone in a small space with no buffer.

Charles can hear Erik thinking, quiet self-contained thoughts, both pleased to be going home and a little nervous, more apprehensive now that they’re here in the car stewing in their own awkward silence, the seconds stretching out long and empty between them. It’s … awful, really, to think of how close they used to be and compare it to now, the way things are so tense and weird.

“I saw Kurt at the mansion this week,” Charles says finally, since he needs something to say, even though it’s the last thing he was going to mention to -- well, anyone. “He was squatting there. I had to go there to check a few things and he was just sitting there smoking in the library.”

That certainly gets Erik’s attention. “What?” Erik says, looking over at him, his lips pressing into a thin straight line. “What did you say to him? Did you call the police?”

Charles shrugs. “I told him to get out, and when he wanted to threaten me into complying I made him leave. It was … it was a pretty short thing, really. Over very quickly.” There’s no point in going into the unpleasantness in the middle, it would only rile Erik up. “I was more surprised than anything else, I haven’t seen him in years.”

“He threatened you?” Erik says, and a darkness flits over his expression, his eyes going sharp and narrow. 

Oh, damn. “Not effectively,” Charles says hurriedly, holding up a hand between them, wishing he’d never raised the subject at all. “He’s a bully, Erik, you knew that about him already. He remembers me as a submissive kid he could tell what to do without argument; I proved to him that things are otherwise, so it’s all fine, he left.” His heart is pounding in his chest, the anger in Erik’s mind only growing. “It’s all fine, I took care of it.”

“I see,” Erik says, but he doesn’t believe Charles. He doesn’t consider telling Kurt to leave to be _taking care of it_ at all. In fact, he’s thinking about tracking Kurt down and --

“ _No,_ ” Charles says very firmly, turning further in his seat and glaring at Erik, his brows drawing down in a deep frown. “Erik, he is not worth any of that effort, let alone the jail time. I took care of it, he is my unwanted baggage not yours, and I am an adult in charge of my own life. Leave it be.”

“You would do the same for me if it were Shaw and he weren’t already looking at life in prison,” Erik says, his voice low, wary of the driver overhearing. “You know you would. And it wouldn’t be any effort at all; I could find him tonight, he can’t have gone far, lure him to the city --”

“It is not at all the same,” Charles says, furious with himself and with Erik for thinking this is in any way appropriate. “For one thing I would not lure Shaw in and murder him in cold blood, because I am not a murderer. I would defend you in case of an attack. And for another Kurt is by no means on the same level as Sebastian Shaw. He’s a bully and a disgusting specimen of humanity but he is not worth your time, Erik. Killing him won’t help anything, it won’t erase history and I would never forgive you.” If Erik chooses to do something like this on his own, without the abuse and the mental gymnastics imposed on him by Hellfire, then Charles will truly have failed him, and he could never stand that.

Erik’s still scowling, deeply displeased with Charles’ verdict, but he doesn’t push the issue, at least -- just leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fine, suit yourself,” he says. “Just let me say well in advance of this coming back to bite you in the ass, that I think it’s a bad idea.”

“Noted.” Relieved, Charles mirrors Erik’s posture, though he lays his hands down in his lap, the fury running out of him. “I’m sorry I brought it up. I didn’t mean to sour your homecoming.”

“It’s fine,” Erik says, and one of his steel ball bearings slips out of his pocket to start spinning over Erik’s ring hand, his long, elegant fingers flicking occasionally as if to keep up its orbit. He keeps his gaze on that, not on Charles, as he says, “You can take care of yourself, of course. But I still wish you hadn’t had to see him.”

“Me too,” Charles says, with a wry twist of his mouth. He lets his head tip back against the headrest with a sigh, feeling the road passing by underneath them, minds moving past, a big blur of thoughts he doesn’t listen in on, just hears in the background like white noise. “It’s strange, it’s been years since he would have had any chance of controlling me and yet I was still afraid when I first saw him. There is nothing that man can do to me but he still frightens me. It’s aggravating.”

Erik hesitates a moment -- Charles can feel it, a tiny catch in the tenor of his thoughts -- but then he reaches over and tugs one of Charles’ hands out of his lap, lacing their fingers together on the seat between them, safe, nearly-platonic. Charles’ stomach lurches, nonetheless. “Maybe you aren’t afraid,” Erik says after another second. “Maybe you just remember what it was like being afraid, and you remember it so keenly it’s hard to tell the difference.”

Charles squeezes back, looking at Erik sideways, in case giving him his whole expression gives away the surge of want inside of him. “I’m conditioned to be afraid of him,” he says, keeping his voice calm. “It’s a real fear, even if it’s based on punishment he can no longer dish out. And I understand that, I know why I feel this way, but I hate it anyway. Then again, if the mind were logical I’d be out of a career.”

Erik huffs out a soft, amused sound and tilts his head back against the seat cushion, his thumb moving on the back of Charles’ hand, a slow warm friction. “Well, you don’t have to see him again. If you ever have to go back there, I’ll come too, do a sweep first to make sure he’s well and truly gone. And I promise not to kill him unprovoked.”

The touch is hypnotic, and Charles finally disengages, tugging his hand gently back and laying it in his lap. “All right,” he says to offset the tacit rejection, though he could very easily sweep the house himself if he had a mind to -- had noticed Kurt on the way up the drive, long before Erik would have been able to tell. But it’ll make Erik feel better. “At least we can be sure he’s not upstairs in the apartment.” They’re pulling up now, and Charles sits up straight, ready to get out. “Come on, we forgot to order the food.”

Erik follows him out of the car and upstairs, opening the front door with his power so they can carry the heavy bags inside and drop them near the stairs in the gallery. “Do you want the same as usual, or are you branching out?” Erik asks him, floating his phone out of his pocket even as he strips off his coat to hang it up in the closet.

“My usual is fine,” Charles says, folding his jacket over his arm. “I’ll take these upstairs.”

“Oh -- no, I’ll bring those up later.” Erik waves Charles away from the bags and starts dialing the restaurant, heading across the gallery toward the den, looking around -- probably trying to gauge whether Charles’ cleanliness has been up to his standards in his absence as he puts in their order. Charles knows it won’t be, but then Erik would probably be disappointed if it was.

He stands and watches for a moment, trying to reconcile Erik being home again with the way things have been, working him back into the fabric of things -- it’s both easier and harder than it ought to be, Erik slotting back into his vacant space a little too comfortably. And yet --

\-- Charles is happy, deep down inside where he can’t do anything to control it, relieved and pleased and anxious all at once, like he’s treading a tightrope, and as long as he keeps his balance everything will be perfect all over again.

*

It lasts until the Monday, when Charles is on his way out of the building and is confronted with a man standing on the sidewalk wearing a board that reads, **LOCK UP LEHNSHERR - MURDERERS BELONG IN JAIL**. There’s another sign in his hand, with another message, but Charles is too busy looking at the striped jersey the man has on, and there’s -- there’s a _ball and chain_ clamped around his ankle chaining him to the street sign, like something out of a cartoon. Charles comes to a jerking halt on the steps of the building and just stares, until the man notices him there and stares back, defiant, his lips drawing back to bare his teeth in a silent growl.

Probably this shouldn’t be surprising -- in fact, what’s more surprising is that it’s taken so long for this to happen, a little over three years after Erik came to live with Charles. And yet Charles is taken aback anyway, his heart thudding hard in his chest. After a minute he steps forward, moving closer, until he’s standing in front of the man, folding his arms across his chest.

“What do you think you’re going to achieve here?” he asks, keeping his voice calm, neutral. “Other than to upset an abused teenage boy? This is not the time or the place.”

The man’s lip curls. “Teenage boy? He’s a murderer,” he spits, and he gestures with the sign in his hand, drawing Charles’ attention to it. It’s a photograph of a young girl, perhaps seven or eight years old, smiling at the camera as she poses in her ballet costume; across the bottom of the sign the word **MURDERED** is written in bold, red letters. “Dr Xavier, I have no problem with you, I’ve seen you on TV, you seem like a good kind doctor but you’re trying to unrot a bad seed. That Lehnsherr can’t unkill my Katie no matter how hard you try to fix him.”

The image of the little girl is so clear in the man’s mind that Charles feels his pain like a stab in his own heart -- her playing, laughing, chattering, then still and cold and dead on the funeral home pillows, carefully posed to hide the damage. 

“Mr Jacobs,” Charles says, having to push down his own empathy to make sure he sounds firm, “Erik is not a bad seed. He was much younger than Katie was when evil found him, and he had just as little choice in being on that plaza as Katie did that day. Sebastian Shaw manipulated and abused him, he didn’t hurt people by choice.”

“I don’t care,” Mr Jacobs says, just as fiercely. “Rabid dogs get put down, that’s all there is to it, and you don’t bring a kid back from that. You can’t bring Katie back neither. If the government won’t do anything about him, and I’ve tried every way to get them to, then I’m going to make my feelings heard the only way I can, because I’m not a murderer. But if I was I’d shoot that boy and have done with him the way he had done with Katie.”

They’re starting to get attention from passersby, the murmur of their minds taking on a strange timber when they’re directed toward him specifically. Charles ignores them, though, in favor of the man in front of him. “If Katie were the one who was taken, abused, forced into terrible acts, would you still be calling for her blood, for her to be locked away for being a victim?” he asks, and he can feel Erik upstairs noticing Charles’ watch is still outside, the first twitch of curiosity. _Stay there,_ Charles says silently, since all he needs is for Erik to come down and get angry -- or worse, hurt.

 _What’s happening?_ Erik sends back instantly, that curiosity something else now, even as Mr Jacobs says, “We’ll never know, will we, if Katie would have made the same choices,” his hands in fists at his sides. “She was a good girl, she’d never have done those things.”

 _It’s fine, I’m handling it,_ Charles says. “Mr Jacobs, please. Multiple assessments of Erik and his mental state have been made by the government, by accredited professionals and by the security services, saying he’s no threat now that he’s out of Shaw’s grasp. What good does this do you, or Erik, or Katie for that matter? All you’re doing is -- you’re taking an abuse victim and rubbing his face in his abuse, like telling him he was at fault for being forced into that situation. This doesn’t help anyone, least of all your daughter’s memory.”

“If he’s such a non-threat, why isn’t he allowed to leave the city?” Jacobs comes back at him, and Charles only now notices that many of the onlookers are filming their interaction with their phones and cameras; it’ll be on the cloud already, and on youtube before Charles could so much as get to the subway. “If he’s so harmless, why do they got the FBI and CIA and the army I don’t even know what else guarding him to and from that sham of a trial?”

And -- fuck, but Charles can feel Erik’s decision as he makes it, and when Erik grabs the ball bearings off the coffee table he’s not seeing them as toys, but as weapons, halfway down the hall to the elevator already.

 _No,_ Charles sends to him, firmly, and to Mr Jacobs he says, “Because people want to harm him and to see him as a threat, like you do, sir -- you are in so much pain, and it’s easier to feel that if you could just get Erik put in jail you would feel better, but you won’t, because Erik is not the root cause of your pain, the loss of your daughter is. But hurting Erik won’t bring her back. I’m very sorry for your loss, it’s a terrible tragedy and a crime, but don’t lay this at Erik’s door when Sebastian Shaw is the real culprit here.” It’s hard to maintain his calm, but Charles manages with years of public speaking and training, knowing that how he reacts will determine how the world reacts to this confrontation. “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind. Erik has done nothing wrong since coming into my care, away from that toxic violence.”

And hopefully Erik isn’t about to make him eat his words; he’s ignored Charles’ direct order, predictably, is in the elevator and nearly to the ground floor, having used his power to push the lift more quickly down the cable than it was meant to go. _Don’t, Erik,_ Charles says, and he uses his telepathy to make it a command, but Erik immediately retorts with a Dominance-laced order of his own: _Take it back._

Charles fights it, but there’s nothing he can do; his command collapses, and Erik bursts outside behind him just as Mr Jacobs is half-shouting, “He should be punished for what he did!” and pointing angrily at Charles, brandishing his sign -- he’s so outraged that he doesn’t even see anything but Charles as he continues, wild-eyed, “He can’t be let to just walk about like he never did it, he murdered my Katie!”

“Calm down, sir,” Charles says in a loud, firm voice, and holds up his hands to block the finger, inhaling and ready to argue back, when Erik manages to shoulder his way through the mass of people gathered around watching -- you can practically see the exact moment the people Erik’s pushed out of his way realize who he is, the wave of interest-anticipation-excitement-fear that rocks through their minds, the crowd as a whole flinching back to give them space, as if just standing within reach of Erik’s arms is dangerous in itself. 

“What’s going on?” Erik asks Charles, with Dominance in his voice, already angling his body between Charles and Mr Jacobs, but he’s answered the question for himself a split second later as his gaze drops to take in the words on Jacobs’ posters, lingering on Katie’s photo as a tiny surge of shock and nausea and recognition lights up his mind. 

Charles puts his hand on Erik’s upper arm, trying to press him back. “Go back inside -- ”

“You shouldn’t be free,” Mr Jacobs says, blunt and fierce, staring at Erik like his eyes might bore holes right through him, like he wishes he could set Erik on fire. “You should be in jail rotting for what you’ve done, or put down, like a badly-reared beast. Monster.”

Erik doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t retaliate, either -- doesn’t just fall back on his anger the way Charles had expected him to. He’s just silent at first, Mr Jacobs’ shoulders heaving with the breathlessness of his own grief and rage, that silence somehow louder than the roar of the city all around them, and then after a long moment he bows his head slightly in a gesture of submission. 

“Maybe,” he says, before he straightens his neck again to look Jacobs back in the eye. “You’re right. Your daughter’s death is my responsibility, and there’s nothing I can say or do that is going to bring her back.”

Mr Jacobs stares at Erik, tears starting to roll down his face, and finally he says, in a harsh voice that sounds like it’s been ripped from his throat, “Do you even remember her?”

“Erik -- ” Charles starts, uncomfortable and wishing Erik had listened to him to stay inside, but Erik ignores him, his attention fixed entirely on Jacobs now.

Erik glances back again at the photograph, the little girl’s smile locked in time. “When did she die?” he asks, and Jacobs says, “February 2015. She was in Flatiron Plaza. She was -- she was on a field trip.” He doesn’t need to say anything else; everyone in New York remembers the destruction of the Flatiron Building, and that a twelve-year-old boy turned out to be the Hellfire agent responsible. The site itself is still mostly rubble; they’re finding body parts even now, four years later. 

Erik hesitates for a long second, and then shakes his head, and Charles wonders if he’s the only one who notices the way Erik’s hands have clenched into fists at his sides. “No. I don’t remember. I’m sorry, there were ... too many people.”

“Of course not,” Mr Jacobs says, and he spits on the ground. “I hope they haunt you.”

“Let’s go,” Charles says to Erik, squeezing his arm, and he tugs at Erik, trying to pull him away. This is too much, too raw -- Erik has to live with what he did, but he doesn’t have to confront it like this, so violently shoved in his face. “Mr Jacobs, I have immense sympathy for your loss. I’m sorry about your daughter.”

Erik lets himself be dragged away, pushed down the sidewalk and back through the glass doors of their building even as the news vans are finally starting to show up, the blur of excitement in the reporters’ minds like that of sharks who have caught blood in the water.

“I told you to stay inside,” Charles scolds, though he’s wrapped his arm around Erik’s back as he hustles them over to the elevator, entirely focused on getting them upstairs and only in passing thinking about how close this puts them -- this is not one of those moments where Charles can be distracted. “You shouldn’t have to deal with that. I’m sorry, I should have made him leave.”

“No,” Erik says, and his voice sounds off, like someone else’s. “He has every right to be there.”

“That doesn’t make it okay,” Charles says, as the elevator doors open. “Are you all right? You shouldn’t go to school today, it’ll be a circus out there.”

“I need to get upstairs,” Erik tells him, his gaze sliding to meet Charles’ and Charles feels the swell between them of Erik’s quick-building anxiety, his racing heartbeat and a dizzy uncertainty. Charles recognizes the signs immediately -- Erik is having one of his attacks.

“Come on, we’re going upstairs right now,” he says, and draws Erik against himself, hugging him close in case that helps, which it sometimes does; a kind of physical reassurance that’s entirely platonic, more animal kindness than animal nature. The elevator shudders into life and they start rising through the building, the other minds falling away. “You’re safe here, nothing bad is going to happen. Concentrate on your breathing and on my breathing. Make them match.”

Erik presses his brow against Charles’ shoulder and Charles can feel him trying to obey, his fingers digging into Charles’ back as the elevator rises floor by floor, Erik’s body shaking in his arms, a fine tremor that grows more pronounced with every second that passes as all of Erik’s muscles tense up. Charles strokes his hair, and gently, quietly, tugs loose the threads of Erik’s building panic as they try to knot up into something, loosening their grip and unmaking the snarl even as it forms.

The doors ping, and Charles ushers Erik out into the small atrium and through their open front door into the apartment.

“Let’s sit,” he says, pressing them on towards the den.

Erik makes it as far as the sofa even on his trembling legs, thankfully, and Charles sits beside him, still unpicking the knot as it resists him -- stopping the attack cold turkey would be too startling, but this spares Erik the worst of it.

“You’re all right,” he says, suddenly feeling a little awkward about offering another hug, remembering … well, the last time they were on this couch together, this close. Erik tips his head forward to rest it on his hand, propped up with his elbow against his juddering thigh, the stutter of his body making Charles a little motion sick just to see it, and Charles can hear him trying to regulate his breaths, long and slow and deep, his mind wiped almost clean of thoughts entirely, so caught up in the storm of fear and dread. It’s several minutes, though, before the tension starts to drain -- as much on its own as it is a result of Charles’ interference, the panic having exhausted itself. 

“Can I have a glass of water?” Erik says after a little while, pushing his fingers back through his hair a little bit too roughly.

“Of course,” Charles says, getting to his feet; it’s easier for him to breathe, too, further from Erik and the immediate crisis, and by the time he gets back from the kitchen he’s calmer again, can hand the glass to Erik and sit down a little further away, enough for complete control without rejecting Erik. Charles doesn’t say anything, just lets the quiet settle, soothing things down.

Erik drains half the glass then sets it down on the coffee table, leaning back at least against the sofa cushions. “Thanks,” he says, tilting his head toward Charles, still looking pale but, for the most part, calm.

Charles needs to call his office, call his patients, rearrange things yet again -- but he stays sitting, watching Erik carefully, heartsick at the memory of the man outside. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks, keeping his voice low, not pushing. “We don’t have to, but it might help lance the wound to do it quickly.”

“I don’t know what there is to say.” Erik isn’t meeting his eyes. “He’s right. I did kill his daughter. I’ve killed tens of thousands of people. That’s my responsibility.”

“You’re not wrong,” Charles says, pulling one leg up onto the couch so he can face Erik more fully. This -- this is an issue they’ve discussed before, but it’s never felt so immediate, so difficult, as it does now, confronted with one of the victims of Erik’s past. “I could lie to you and pretend that’s not true, but we both know it is. What you do need to take into account, however, is that none of those things were of your own instigation even if at the time they were of your own volition, although I would dispute that they were even that. You would not have been in those places, or thought of doing those things, if the Hellfire Club hadn’t put you there and told you what to do.”

Erik glances sidelong at him, at Charles’ knee angled toward him, and Charles catches Erik’s fleeting desire to reach out and smooth his hand along Charles’ thigh -- _that’s_ surprising. But Erik doesn’t give in to the urge; he stays where he is, his hands on the sofa next to him. “I did enjoy it, though. It felt good, having that kind of power. I always thought -- maybe if I’m good _enough_ , I can be an officer one day, even though I’m just a sub. And that felt good, too.”

It’s painful to hear; Charles can feel his own expression crumpling, sorrow and regret coming to the forefront despite himself. “I suspect it was less about the power and more about wanting to please Shaw and the others, though, am I right?” he asks, already sure -- hoping he was sure -- of the answer. “The power would make them love you, it wasn’t an end in and of itself. It was a means to that end.”

“I don’t know. The power was just ... how it felt, to use my mutation on something that expansive. Metal always feels good, the more of it the better. And there was a lot of metal in those structures.”

Charles nods. “But was it that stretching yourself felt good, using your mutation, or that using your mutation to hurt people felt good? Taking Shaw’s reactions out of things, did you enjoy hurting people?”

“No,” Erik says, a little sharply. “Of course not.”

“Well then,” Charles says. “There’s nothing you can do about the past, Erik -- it’s been and done and no-one I know has the power to undo that. But the important thing to remember here is that while yes, you did some terrible things, you didn’t do them to hurt people, you did them because Shaw set you up to hurt people, in a system that was rigged against you from the start. You weren’t old enough to refuse, and we both know that if you had he would have hurt or killed you.” Charles lays his hand on Erik’s shoulder, makes himself stay calm and not think about whether it might be misunderstood, whether it’s appropriate. “I’m not absolving you of all guilt, but you can take that guilt and lay a lot, if not most, of it at Sebastian Shaw’s doorstep.”

Erik’s gaze flickers down to Charles’ hand, then back to Charles’ eyes, and he gives him a tiny smile. “Thank you,” he says, his mind pulsing warmth toward Charles, gratitude and appreciation. “And believe me: I do.” 

He shifts under Charles’ touch, shuffling closer across the seat cushions until he’s leaning against Charles’ chest, his head tilted onto his shoulder and his brow pressing warm against Charles’ throat. Charles swallows hard, and surely Erik can feel it -- can maybe hear Charles’ heart beating faster, his body all too aware that the body against his has made it feel good before when in close proximity. It’s entirely inappropriate, but the difficulty of it is -- it would be equally inappropriate for him to move away, to deny Erik comfort if he needs it, because Charles is supposed to be his parent, to make him feel better when bad things happen.

Gingerly Charles places his arms around Erik and holds him there, trying to relax and willing away the warm reaction inside of him. They’re just -- cuddling sounds bad. He’s just comforting Erik, that’s all.

“It’ll be all right,” he says, because it will be and it’s something to say, after all.

“I know,” Erik murmurs, and his breath is a hot gust against Charles’ neck; Charles concentrates on not thinking about his lips so close to that sensitive skin, and all the times Erik’s kissed him there, licked him. “You’re here.”

Charles swallows again, biting the inside of his lip, hard, before finally saying, “I should call my office. And the school. Could you get the phone please?”

Only Erik doesn’t move, just nods against Charles’ chest and a second later he’s lifting his hand to catch the phone as it zips across the room into his grasp. He passes it to Charles silently, and Charles dials the school first to explain what’s happened. The principal is very straightforward about the whole thing -- probably, given their student demographic of rich families and politician’s children, this sort of thing is not so very unusual -- and Charles calls his office next, asking the receptionist to call his patients to reschedule. It’s by no means unprecedented there, either, though it’s only Charles it seems these past few years who can’t keep his appointments. He’s lucky his patients like him otherwise he might not have a practice left, the way he has to keep rearranging things around Erik’s upheavals.

Throughout his conversations Erik is a warm, heavy weight against his front, unmoving save for the rise and fall of his breathing, soft and deep. It oughtn’t to be so distracting, but Charles … he has to fight hard to maintain his concentration, to keep his mind on the narrow path he’s set for himself.

“There,” he says once he’s hung up on the office, and he sets the phone down in his lap.

Erik makes a soft, wordless sound, and leans back just enough to turn his head to look Charles in the eye. He’s close enough Charles can see where grey and green bleed together in his irises, like watercolors. “So,” Erik says. “What are we going to do with the rest of our day?”

“I thought you might want to hide out, until the furore outside dies down,” Charles says. His stomach twists with a traitorous mix of anxiety and inappropriate anticipation. “Do you -- need to talk some more, or process, or anything?”

“No,” Erik says, looking down as he turns Charles’ hand over in his lap, rubbing the pad of his thumb against the underside of Charles’ wrist. “But you’re right. We should stay here. We can order in food, or I can cook. We can play a game on that chess set I got you for Christmas, if you like.”

It sounds suspiciously like a date, to Charles’ mind, but there’s nothing to do about it now, so he says, “That sounds good,” instead, and pulls his hand away -- what is this obsession Erik has with his hands and wrists? “I’m going to go change out of my work clothes, then. We’ll probably need to speak to Moira at some point as well to see what the official take is, if there is one.”

“Mmm. All right.” When Charles stands from the sofa Erik tips forward to claim his emptied space, stretching his body out across the cushions and stretching both arms over his head, arching his back a little; it makes the hem of his shirt ride up, exposing a thin slice of tanned bare skin. “I suppose I’ll need to text Madelyne for the work I’m missing,” he says, relaxing his arms again and lacing his fingers together, hands resting on his stomach. He still has his head tilted back enough to hold Charles’ gaze. 

It’s the perfect dousing of cold water -- Charles remembers with a sudden pang Erik’s interludes with Madelyne, and he manages a smile for Erik even as his body gets a hold of feeling miserable instead of hot under the collar, tucking his thumbs into his pants pockets. “There’s a basket of clean clothes for you in the laundry room. I’ve taken mine upstairs already,” he says, taking a step backwards, towards the door and escape. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and he turns on his heel, heading up to his bedroom where he can have a short time to himself.

It’s harder, so much harder than he remembers it being, to ignore his attraction to Erik and just -- be normal, think normal thoughts, act normally and not clingy, or touchy, or strange. Charles gets changed in a kind of funk, distracted and far away outside of his own head, calming himself down from the edge of a panic. When Erik wasn’t here it was easy to tell himself that he would be fine, that there wouldn’t be this undercurrent of past sexuality to everything, but it’s impossible not to remember, not to -- to smell Erik’s shampoo or deodorant or skin, when he’s curled in that close, and not to bring up body memory, to be unmoved.

As a form of self-defence Charles puts on his oldest, most ragged, unattractive sweater and some very old jeans, worn out at the cuffs but nowhere sexier than that. Not, of course, that Erik is attracted to him -- that, at least, Charles can use to keep himself on planet Earth where he belongs. But these clothes should make it very clear he’s not thinking about sex.

He’s only just done up the fly of his jeans when there’s a knock on the frame of his door -- not shut, he’d left it cracked ajar, and now Erik pushes it open to step inside Charles’ bedroom. He’s not wearing a shirt.

Oh. Charles _wasn’t_ thinking about sex _before._

“Did you not find the laundry?” he asks, coming to a halt in the middle of his bedroom, as if holding very still will help with anything at all. Erik is -- he’s still toned and fit, his skin sleek and golden in that very young way, other than the scars, which Charles does not really see because he is not looking at Erik, he’s folding his work shirt so it can go back in the closet.

“No, I did,” Erik says, stepping further inside, closer to Charles, for all the world as if he has no idea how carefully Charles is avoiding looking at him too keenly. “But I couldn’t find my green sweater. The one you gave me for Purim last year. Did you hang it up somewhere to dry?”

“I don’t think so,” Charles says, glancing up briefly before looking back down at his shirt and picking it up along with his jacket and pants, to take into his closet. In there he’s further away from Erik, which means he can say, casually, “You can wear another sweater until it turns up. It’s probably just in the wrong basket or in your room already. Besides, it’s only me seeing you, anyway.”

“You think I don’t dress to impress you?” Erik says from behind him, sounding amused, and Charles shrugs, putting the shirt down in its place and picking up the hanger for his suit.

“I think the effect is rather lost on me. Familiarity breeds contempt and all,” he says, straightening his jacket’s shoulders on the hanger.

“I don’t know,” Erik says. He’s a lot closer now, in the doorway of Charles’ closet; leaning there against the frame when Charles looks around, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. “Has that proven to be true in your personal experience?”

Charles keeps his eyes high, though he knows there must be a slight flush to his face -- Erik is pushing it now, and he knows it, Charles can hear him wondering how far he can press things, whether Charles will bolt. “It can do,” he says out loud, trying for neutrality. “Why don’t you go look in your basket again and I’ll check mine to see if your sweater is in there. If not I’ll take a look in the laundry room in case I missed it.”

At least Erik takes the push for what it is, stepping back out of the closet and nodding. “All right,” he says. “Thank you.” Charles hears him leave the room, and he lets out a rough breath, before going through his own laundry to make sure the sweater isn’t there -- though he’s fairly certain it was the top item in Erik’s own basket when Charles left it downstairs earlier.

He calls Moira while Erik is cooking lunch, settling against the side table so he can keep an eye on Erik and Erik can hear at least half the conversation.

“I’m concerned that he might inspire others to join him, that’s my primary concern right now,” Charles says, crossing his right ankle over the left. “When it’s one man it’s manageable, once the press has died down, but if it becomes a bigger protest then that’s worrying, especially if they rile each other up. There’s only so much that building security can do.”

“I won’t lie to you, Charles, we’ve had our own concerns over here, as well,” Moira says. “We’ve intercepted a number of threats, most of which can be traced back to Humans First and related splinter groups. I was planning to call you if it got any worse, but it sounds like the situation is escalating on its own. Perhaps it’s time we assign some of our own agents to you and Erik, for your own safety.”

Charles frowns, an immediate urge to refuse flaring up that he has to batter back down -- Moira is the expert, after all. “I’d rather not,” he says instead, more measuredly. “Having additional people around all the time is likely to be stressful for both myself and Erik for different reasons. Is it really that bad? I wish you’d told me sooner, I’d have been more vigilant myself.”

He can hear the rustling of paper on her end, then the clicking of a pen. “Not so bad as all that, not really, though I’m concerned that the sentiment might bleed out of Humans First and the isolated protester into the mainstream consciousness. Sometimes all these people need is the slightest sense of public approval to act.”

“I’d really rather hold off on getting bodyguards,” Charles says, glancing at Erik, who is stirring a saucepan with a wooden spoon, his focus entirely on Charles’ conversation; Erik lifts an eyebrow and Charles makes a face at him, then turns his attention back to Moira. “If things get worse then of course we’ll defer to your advice, but for now if we could try to persuade Mr Jacobs to leave peacefully then that would solve the immediate issue.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Moira says. “Peaceful protesting is legal, but it’s possible we can make the case this constitutes harassment, since it’s outside your place of residence and Erik is underage.”

“Thank you,” Charles says sincerely. “Let me know if you need anything from me.” They make the requisite pleasantries and he hangs up, setting the phone back in its cradle to charge, before turning to Erik and saying, “We’re keeping as-is for now, but Moira says there’s been a lot more noise from Humans First lately and that if the situation worsens we may have no other option but to have some of her people assigned to a security detail.” As little as Charles likes the idea on an instinctive level, he can’t help but think that having law enforcement professionals around all all times of the day and night would help to keep him honest -- perhaps he should have agreed after all.

Erik grimaces, and the knife that had been chopping kale on the countertop lowers itself down again, Erik transferring the greens by hand into the cookpot. “Absolutely not. We’re two omega-class mutants, one of us a telepath. If we can’t protect ourselves, no one can.”

“It would be better legally to let the government do it for us,” Charles says, coming into the kitchen proper and taking a seat at the table. “No matter if it’s self-defense or not, with your history with Hellfire and mine with that gunman a couple of years ago, it’s better if it’s not us.”

“Better, maybe,” Erik says, “but not more effective. The raid on the Brooklyn safehouse is the only time in recent memory that the feds have been anything but laughably incompetent.” He drops the last of the kale into the pot and reaches for the spoon again, stirring. “Charles, bring me a tablespoon of butter from the fridge, please.”

Charles starts up from the table then frowns, hovering over the seat of his chair. “I’m sure you can fetch it yourself,” he says, sitting back down again. It’s a little too close to being ordered around for him just to obey, not wanting to get back into that habit.

“I’m stirring this,” Erik says, tapping the edge of the spoon against the saucepan and giving Charles a pointed look over his shoulder, lips tilted down. “You’re just sitting there. If I’m going to cook your lunch, you can at the very least contribute.”

“Then ask me, don’t order me,” Charles says, folding his hands on the table. “Could I fetch you some butter would be more appropriate.”

Exasperation rises off Erik’s mind like steam from the pot. “It wasn’t an order. I even said ‘please.’ But we can live the rest of our natural lives in a state of heavy paranoia if that’s what makes you happy.” One of the cast-iron skillets pulls itself off the rack over the stove, clattering onto an open burner a little too loudly.

Charles considers staying where he is until Erik asks him politely, but it strikes him as being rather too passive aggressive -- he’s made his point, so he gets up from the table and fetches a spoon from the drawer, then the butter, bringing it back to Erik where he’s standing over the stove.

“Here,” he says, offering it to Erik.

“Thank you. Could you please, maybe, if you are feeling so inclined, put a tablespoon of butter in the skillet, _possibly?_ ” 

Charles’ hand has moved before he even thinks about it, flicking the butter into the pan with a snap of the wrist -- Erik’s put Command into the seemingly polite question, making it an order despite the wording, clearly making a point. Charles shoots him a sidelong look even as the butter starts to sizzle, elbowing Erik in the ribs. “You ass.”

Erik just grins at him, wide and showing too many teeth, and elbows him back. “How obliging of you,” he drawls, and passes Charles the wooden spoon he’d been holding as he heads over to the pantry for more ingredients.

“And just what am I supposed to be doing with this?” Charles asks, standing there holding the spoon with eyebrows raised; he doesn’t want to risk ruining whatever it is Erik’s doing by stirring the wrong pot. “Anyway, in regards to the agents, they can be witnesses to self-defense if nothing else. You have to acknowledge that would be useful.”

“Send mutant agents to solve a mutant problem, is my opinion,” Erik says, emerging with his arms full of more vegetables, which he dumps onto the counter. With one hand, he reaches over and guides Charles’ wrist, dipping the spoon back into the same pot as earlier. 

His fingers are long and firm around Charles’ arm, and there’s something undeniably erotic even about Erik taking this simple liberty. It’s the kind of casual, intimate Dominance that can’t be faked … and can’t be ignored, either. Carefully, Charles tugs himself free; it’s difficult to keep pulling away without being rude, but Erik doesn’t seem to get the message that this kind of touch is not okay any more. 

Erik continues on, oblivious. “I won’t be very happy being babysat by the usual incompetent dregs of humanity.”

“I’ll make sure to tell Moira to send the unusual incompetent dregs, then. Anyway, I’ve told her to hold off for the time being unless things get worse, which hopefully they won’t, so there’s nothing to worry about for now. All right?”

“Mmm.” Erik’s back to chopping now, handing cut onions from the cutting board to the skillet and holding the back of his hand up to his eyes, wincing. “All right.” He sounds dubious, but at least he drops the subject for the time being.

It’s weird the rest of the day, Charles feeling too aware of Erik’s presence and his potential to give orders while at the same time feeling like maybe he is being too paranoid -- after all, Erik isn’t likely to jump him if he knows it’s not what Charles wants, since Erik doesn’t want Charles that way anyway. But it’s difficult to remember that when Charles is laying in bed that evening staring at the ceiling and trying to ignore Erik at the other end of the apartment, touching himself and experimenting with thinking about different things, like he’s suddenly discovered independent arousal. It’s torturous to hear him thinking about fucking someone, about being fucked, and recognizing little snippets of memories from times they were together, made faceless and nameless now, just skin and bodies and sweat in Erik’s mind used as fodder for his fantasies.

It’s good, of course, that for whatever reason Erik is finally discovering his own sexuality and his own sexual appetite -- Charles hadn’t been sure Erik ever would. But he’d never expected it to be rubbed so thoroughly in his face, either, and so in the end Charles shuts his mind down and withdraws until he can’t hear anything from anyone, and doesn’t wonder who the lucky beneficiary will be once Erik finally figures things out.

*


	28. Twenty-Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No cw this chapter. <3

_Erik_

Erik pulls his cock out of Frank’s mouth, the tip trailing a bead of come caught on Frank’s lower lip, his heart still racing from the thrill of pleasure, exertion, and Dominance. He has Frank’s jaw grasped in one hand, his thumb pressing hard against the bone of Frank’s chin, and he uses his grip to forcibly twist Frank’s head to one side, exposing his throat; Erik holds him there for a moment, looking. But even though Frank is on his knees, blindfolded and with his body still trapped under the weight of Erik’s last order, the gesture still doesn’t entirely manage to look submissive on him.

“You can finish yourself off,” Erik decides, and he releases Frank’s head, taking a half-step back and watching as Frank’s hand stutters to obey, the muscles in his forearm fighting themselves as he does as ordered and wraps his fingers around his own cock, jerking himself hard and fast. His teeth are bared, defiant, even as he comes, like he’s doing it to spite Erik instead of please him.

“Next time I’m going to pin you down and fuck you ‘til you scream,” Frank groans at last, his stomach twitching with the last of his orgasm, semen spattering his fist.

Erik smirks, reaching back to tug off the blindfold. “Good boy,” he says, condescending just to rile Frank, and offers him a tissue from the box on Frank’s desk. Frank snorts and gives him the finger, blinking in the sudden light, his eyes watering a little; his other hand takes the tissue, though, and he starts wiping himself up, no shame in him at all, still kneeling there on the floor with thighs spread, naked and sweat-sheened.

“You feeling like the big man?” Frank asks, smirking up at Erik and cleaning between his own fingers. “You never Dommed me like that before.”

“Haven’t I?” Erik says lightly, even though they both know he hasn’t. He’s never dared, before now. He never had the desire to. But as little else as he’s learned from these sexual experiments, he’s figured out one thing: the want isn’t going away. 

For a little while he worried it would become too much, that it’d start to color everything he perceived the way it seems to for everyone else -- and Erik would rather not want sex at all than let his desire for it sculpt and shape him the way it does for some people. He refuses to become the kind of Dom he used to deride, those Doms Erik could manipulate so very easily with a certain type of daring smile. 

But it didn’t, and he didn’t, and he finds himself tentatively thinking … he doesn’t mind living like this. It has made him slave to no one. He hasn’t even slept around -- for the past four days, the only person he’s fucked has been Frank. Four days. Less than a week without having a stranger’s dick in his mouth might be an unusual feat, but for Erik it’s a record.

“When’s your call?” Frank asks, finally getting to his feet; he chucks the used tissue into the garbage and stretches his arms up over his head, his fingertips brushing the ceiling. “As much as I’m sure you’d love having me stretched out naked beside you on webcam like some Roman love slave, I should probably get dressed.”

Erik glances down at his watch for the time. “Five minutes,” he says. “We’re cutting it close.” 

He finally heard back from Professor Braden-Newell earlier this week, asking if Erik would be willing to chat over Skype before he flies out to the Netherlands for the next session of the Hellfire trial. Erik agreed, and then immediately texted Frank to invite him to secretly listen in; Frank idolizes Braden-Newell, and Erik’s pretty sure he’d return the favor if their positions were reversed. 

Erik does up the fly of his jeans with quick fingers, power aiding him just a little. “Mind if I steal your desk?” he asks, reaching for his satchel with his laptop.

“You already stole my virtue, have at it,” Frank says, picking up his own pants and stepping into them. “Don’t forget to put a shirt on. More professional.”

“You don’t think Braden-Newell would appreciate my assets?” Erik says in mock-offense, and decides to pretend to himself as well as Frank that he hadn’t, in fact, forgotten all about that; his shirt is in a ball at the corner of Frank’s bed, and he shakes it straight again before tugging it over his head and combing his fingers back through his hair.

“He loves you for your mind,” Frank says, scratching at his belly before casting himself down on the other bed, the one his long-forgotten roommate never took up. “Don’t be nervous, dude. You’re doing him a favor, not the other way around.” He flops down onto his back, folding his arms behind his head. “If I fall asleep and start snoring just kick me.”

“Just kill you? All right.” Erik grins, but he still hasn’t convinced himself Frank isn’t right, that he’s not at least a little bit nervous. Well, ‘nervous’ might be overstating it, but _apprehensive_ , certainly. As much as Frank might have a point that it’s Erik doing Braden-Newell the favor, the fact remains that Braden-Newell is much older than Erik, has seen and experienced far more of the world than Erik has, even with all of Erik’s traveling as member of Hellfire. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, either. Plenty of people reach fifty without apparently having learned a damn thing about themselves or anybody else.

Erik boots up his laptop and turns on Skype. It’s only a minute before he sees Braden-Newell sign on, and a second longer before Skype rings at him with an incoming call.

Erik clicks ‘accept’ and the screen widens, displaying a low-res video of Braden-Newell in his office all the way in California, a smaller box in the lower right-hand corner displaying the feed from Erik’s own webcam. He resists the urgent desire to fix his hair, which he only just realizes is still traitorously tousled.

“Good afternoon, Erik,” Braden-Newell says, his voice as calm and dry as it was the last time they spoke. “I trust you’re well?”

“Yes, thank you,” Erik says, looking at where Braden-Newell’s eyes are on the screen and deciding that’s going to be as close as he gets to eye-contact for this call. Better decide now than spend the first ten minutes switching his focus from there, to the camera, to the image of himself in the corner. Braden-Newell doesn’t immediately respond, and Erik quashes the creeping sense that he ought to say something just to fill the silence; this _is_ Braden-Newell’s call, after all. He’ll let him guide the discussion.

“Thank you for agreeing to speak with me, I do appreciate it,” Braden-Newell says, glancing down at some papers he has on the desk in front of him, then back up at the screen. “Do you mind if I record our discussion? It saves me taking notes.”

“It’s fine,” Erik says, and leans back in Frank’s chair, taking the opportunity while Braden-Newell is turning on his recording device to glance sidelong at Frank; he’s still lying on his roommate’s bed, but he has an attentive expression on his face, even as he stares at the ceiling. After a moment he notices Erik looking and makes the ‘okay’ symbol with his thumb and forefinger, nodding encouragingly.

“I thought we might start at the beginning, then,” Braden-Newell says, tapping the device and then looking back up at Erik with a thin-lipped smile. “Obviously your arrest and subsequent … fostering … is well-known, but had you had any run-ins with the criminal justice system before you came into the CIA’s hands?”

“As you might imagine, Hellfire made efforts to keep out of the reach of human law enforcement,” Erik starts, and he goes on to discuss the few exceptions that had been made to that rule -- times Hellfire members had fatally encountered police, either accidentally or because Shaw decided they’d be of more use as martyrs killed by human cops than as freedom fighters. Or members like Janos Quested, who was liberated from an Argentinean prison. Associates they’d positioned in various local and federal law enforcement agencies as spies.

Frank shifts on the bed, then stills when Erik looks at him, holding up his hands in silent apology, but wriggles his eyebrows, clearly trying to communicate surprise.

“Of course,” Erik says, as a veiled response to Frank rather than for Braden-Newell’s benefit, smiling at the computer screen, “we had associates in all walks of life. People whose only job it was to infiltrate different organizations, learn what they could, then fake their own deaths and get out. For all you know, one of your own grad students could be a Hellfire mole, Professor Braden-Newell.”

Braden-Newell laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I hardly think Sebastian Shaw would bother to keep it a secret from me if he wanted to send someone to learn in my department. I’m not a member, but I have a reputation I think he would approve of.”

“Perhaps,” Erik says evasively, his smile feeling more forced now. “Has he contacted you, then?” Not that he expects Braden-Newell to give him an honest answer, but it doesn’t hurt asking.

“No, no,” Braden-Newell says, shaking his head. “I sincerely doubt they let him contact anyone but his lawyer. I’ve asked permission to visit and interview him but to no avail so far.”

Erik hadn’t necessarily meant recently. Whether Braden-Newell knows that and is trying to simply avoid the question is impossible to determine, though, so Erik just nods and says, “You wouldn’t be able to trust anything he told you, anyway. He’d mislead you to protect the Hellfire cells still operational.”

“I’m sure he would, and understandably so, but there’s a lot to be gleaned from information that’s of no use to anyone now but of great interest to scholarly pursuits.” Braden-Newell shrugs. “In any case, your first true exposure to the criminal justice system then was when you were arrested, I presume.”

“Personally, yes,” Erik qualifies. Braden-Newell has him explain about the process of their arrest, how they were restrained, the suppressor bands, the security details. He is particularly interested -- and rightfully so, Erik thinks -- in Homeland Security’s determination to either use Erik as witness or have him locked up with everyone else, with no regard for possible shades of grey. 

Even under the lizardlike scales covering his face it’s easy to see that Braden-Newell’s brow is furrowed. “It’s shocking that they didn’t take your age into consideration,” he says, folding his hands tightly together. “There was no talk of a juvenile center, or other arrangement? Simply compliance or imprisonment?”

Erik shrugs one shoulder. “They told me that under the Patriot Act, I had no rights. I was a suspected terrorist, which meant essentially that they could play without a rulebook.” 

He can tell that Frank is listening from across the room, even if he hasn’t moved or spoken; Erik can feel his gaze on him, prickling at the side of his neck.

“Fortunately, Charles was able to convince them of the utility of keeping me in foster care and giving old-fashioned psychotherapy time to work. He had contacts within the CIA who were cooperative with that.”

Braden-Newell nods, and there’s something different about the set of his shoulders, like he’s affected by hearing about it. “I’m sure.” The words are neutral, utterly empty of opinion. “Charles always has been a white knight -- you’re lucky it worked in your favor, he’s forceful when roused and especially so for a submissive. It’s not often he doesn’t get his way.”

Erik tilts his head down so Braden-Newell won’t catch the way one of his brows flicks up despite himself. He reaches a hand back to scratch the back of his neck, pretending that’s all this had been about, and schools his face into neutrality before he looks up to meet Braden-Newell’s gaze again. 

“That’s right,” he says. “I forgot you knew Charles. Remind me how you met, again.” 

He doesn’t put Command into it, even though he dearly wants to; he can’t risk offending Braden-Newell, and just banks on the trend of some submissives unconsciously interpreting anything _phrased_ like an order as having the same compulsion behind it when coming from a Dom.

“Oh, didn’t he tell you? Dr Xavier was my grad student when he was studying for his doctorate at Berkeley, not so very many years ago. I was, still am, I suppose, his academic father.”

Well, _that_ certainly wasn’t what Erik expected to hear. He only just manages to keep his surprise from showing on his face through force of will, but he can’t help the way his heart is beating a little faster now for it. “Strange choice on his part, then. The apple certainly fell far from the tree.”

Braden-Newell snorts, an odd, papery sort of noise. “Oh, not so very much at the time. This was before my views changed so drastically -- I was a neutral when he applied, and I had students who fell on both sides of the fence. That’s not to say we got along, we tended to butt heads.”

That’s probably putting it mildly, if Erik is to judge from the intensity of Charles’ negative response to hearing about Erik going to meet Braden-Newell the first time. But he can appreciate that there’s a certain political game to academia even if he doesn’t have to deal with it personally, and so for Charles’ sake he keeps his mouth shut on that account. 

He finds himself wondering what things would have been like if it had been Braden-Newell the CIA called in to assess him instead of Charles. It’s obvious why they wouldn’t make that choice, considering Braden-Newell’s opinions on the human criminal justice system’s treatment of mutants, but even so…. Would Erik have ever rejected Hellfire? Or would he simply have abused Braden-Newell’s position, his trust, to afford himself a thin patina of legitimacy as he delved back into the underground?

“I can imagine,” Erik says at last, and resents himself a little for having to be so infuriatingly diplomatic.

“Still, it was lucky for you that he intervened,” Braden-Newell goes on. “Dr Xavier is a force to be reckoned with; there’s not many the government would have listened to in that situation. Did you find that their treatment of you changed once he became involved -- once someone influential was holding them accountable?”

“Not appreciably,” Erik admits, and he gives Braden-Newell a tiny grin. “They did move me out of the cell with Shaw and into my own, but it was still a prison cell. And when they spoke to me without Charles’ presence it was mostly threats -- how they didn’t need me to agree to testify to _force_ me to, how everyone has a breaking point. Though I’d had enough personal experience with torture that I’m sure my breaking point was far beyond anything they could have done to me.”

“And did it ever go further than threats? Did they ever follow through?”

Erik shakes his head. “No. If they had, there’s no way they could have kept Charles from finding out about it, and even he isn’t so loyal to the humans that he wouldn’t go to the press if they tortured a thirteen-year-old boy.”

“Of course. So how did things proceed once you’d been taken into his custody?”

Erik tells him about his first foster home, then the group home he stayed in before moving in with Charles. He keeps the discussion mostly limited to points of importance to Braden-Newell: the interviews he had with Gabrielle, for example, and the regular trips to the CIA headquarters for debriefing and further medical examinations. 

“Recently they’ve relaxed their restraints somewhat,” Erik says at last. “They allowed me to visit Charles’ family home with a military escort, and now they’re saying that due to my cooperation I’ll be allowed to attend college outside New York on probation.”

“How very generous,” Frank mutters under his breath.

“Are you in touch with any of your old circle?” Braden-Newell asks, his head tilting a little to the side, inquisitive. “Of course this would be in the strictest confidentiality.”

It’s been a year now since he met with Victor Creed -- not that Erik plans to tell Braden-Newell about that, either. Skype isn’t exactly a secure line. “No.”

“Not unexpected, though I suppose Shaw might have somebody undercover studying you,” Braden-Newell says, with a dry laugh. “Never mind that, of course Dr Xavier would know if that were the case. Now, is there anything we haven’t discussed that you can think of that might be of use? I do appreciate your time, you’ve been both forthcoming and very helpful and I thank you.”

“It’s no trouble at all, and no, not at this time. I’ll be in touch though if anything happens that might be of interest for your research,” Erik says, already sure that the trial session approaching this weekend will provide plenty of fodder for that. “Good-bye, professor.”

He clicks to end the call and pushes the top of his laptop down with his power, tilting the desk chair back on two legs and letting his head tilt toward the ceiling. “I doubt I told him anything he didn’t already know,” Erik says, his eyes shut and his metal-sense curling idly through the latent thrum of electromagnetism all around.

“I’m sure you gave him plenty, the anecdotal stuff’s what sells people on those sorts of books,” Frank says. “You’re a famous case, that makes people sit up and listen.”

The chair clatters back onto all four legs and Erik opens his eyes, looking over to where Frank is stretched out on the bed, arms folded over his muscular chest. “Maybe,” he says, and reaches for his laptop, slipping it back into his satchel and getting up from the chair. “I should get going. It’s past dinner time, and if I’m not around to stop him Charles will just stuff himself full of bad take-out.”

Frank pauses, a long and tangible silence. “You’re back with him, then,” he says finally, one eyebrow rising, though he doesn’t move otherwise, even his tone not giving away what he really thinks. “Not surprised, I guess -- he letting you back on top again?”

Somehow, Erik had just assumed Frank would know -- strange, but an effect perhaps of spending so much of his time here. Or perhaps just of being around Charles so much, and expecting Charles to know everything he thinks and does. 

“No,” Erik says, pulling his coat on over his shoulders. “Not yet.” It’s where Erik still wants them to end up, of course -- no matter what Charles said, Erik really did feel more like Charles’ equal when they were lovers, like Charles was his partner rather than his parent, and that isn’t something he’ll give up easily. But it doesn’t feel imperative in the way it did before, either. Charles hasn’t left him, he hasn’t stopped loving him, and while there’s a part of Erik that still keeps expecting the other shoe to drop, he can almost let himself … accept this. At least for now.

“Huh,” Frank says, and he still doesn’t get up, even though normally he’d at least see Erik to the door. Erik has his hand on the handle before Frank finally says, almost nonchalant, “You know, he’s right about you being lucky. Charles gave a shit even though you were a stranger. He pretty much pulled your ass out of the fire. My old man wouldn’t have paused between business deals to do anything other than spit in my general direction and keep going.”

Erik looks back over his shoulder; Frank hasn’t moved from where he was, his eyes closed now, as if he could have been asleep. For a second, Erik doesn’t know what to say -- Frank so rarely tells him anything about his life before Columbia. Erik knows he’s from Dallas, knows his father’s some kind of oil tycoon, but that’s about it. 

“Family isn’t always who raises you,” Erik says at last. “It’s people who choose to love you when they don’t have to.”

“Family’s people who have type-matching transplantable internal organs,” Frank says, but his mouth is quirking into a grin now, covering whatever else he’s feeling. “That’s the really valuable stuff. Kidneys and livers and so on.”

“I don’t know, there’s a thriving black market for that kind of thing,” Erik says, and he mimics Frank’s grin even though Frank can’t see him. “So maybe family’s just a source of unmarked, untraceable cash.”

Frank snorts. “Oh, Daddy’s cash is traceable all right. It comes with strings attached,” and he lifts his hands by the wrists, mimicking a puppet, before flapping one of his limp hands at Erik. “Go on, get out of here and save your Charles from the Chinese delivery guy.”

Erik goes, although he can’t quite get himself to stop thinking about it all the way home. On impulse he pulls out his phone halfway across the park and Googles ‘Frank Holloway’ but all he finds is some football player, a doctor in Detroit, and a fictional police officer from an Australian TV show. Not that he’s surprised, not really; Frank isn’t much for how everyone has an online presence these days. He doesn’t even keep an active Facebook profile.

By the time he gets home he’s already decided to put that knowledge away and not think about it. If Frank wants to talk about it, he will, but Erik knows better than anyone the reasons why personal familial histories might be a touchy subject.

Charles is in his study, but he doesn’t look like he’s doing anything; he’s just staring off into space, and he doesn’t react when Erik comes to stand in the doorway, doesn’t even move.

“Charles?” Erik says softly, and Charles says, “Hmm?” -- still not turning around.

Erik steps closer almost tentatively, his own concern a swelling chill in the pit of his stomach. He rests one hand on Charles’ shoulder and Charles startles, jerking like he’s been shocked and flinching hard, twisting to stare at Erik with his hand half-lifted, ready to move. After a few seconds he seems to recognize Erik, and says, “Oh -- sorry.”

“Are you all right?” Erik says, but he thinks he already knows the answer to that. 

“Sorry,” Charles says again, and his mouth twitches into a tentative smile, hardly hiding the still-startled look in his eyes. “I was a million miles away. I’m fine. How was your call?” He lifts his hand to his hair to run his fingers through it as if that were what he intended all along, and turns a little further in his chair to face Erik properly.

“It was fine,” Erik says, but it’s impossible now to think about that -- his mind is still turning this over, the way Charles looked when Erik came in, the pallid hue of his skin. “I didn’t mean to shock you. What were you thinking about?”

“I don’t remember,” Charles says, and smiles again, a second attempt. “Never mind, I’m sure it’ll come back to me if it was important. I’m glad your call went well. Did you arrange a follow-up?”

“No.” Erik holds his hand out toward Charles, gesturing for him to take it and let Erik pull him up -- Charles does, after a moment, though he steps free as soon as he’s back on his feet. “Not for now, anyway. You never told me he was your grad school adviser.”

“Ugh,” Charles says, and pulls a face. “Don’t remind me.” He follows, at least, when Erik leads him out into the den and through to the kitchen, gesturing for Charles to take a seat at the table as Erik opens the fridge to collect the tupperwared leftovers from last night.

“It can’t have been that bad,” Erik says, stacking the container of asparagus atop the one of Greek marinated chicken. “If it were, you would have switched advisers.”

Charles takes out a chair and sits down. “It’s not so much that it was terrible at the time as that the association haunts me to this day. Whenever it comes up it’s always so funny and interesting and bizarre that my advisor was so separatist when I’m so integrationist, and wasn’t that hard, and how did that come about, and am I secretly a separatist pretending to be an integrationist to infiltrate the movement, and it’s just exhausting. It’s easier to pretend I sprang from the head of Zeus fully formed without the grad school part.”

“Wisdom and _justice_ , Charles?” Erik says dryly, the classical reference not lost on him, and Charles laughs, though it sounds rather more tired than usual.

“It seemed apt,” he says, waving one hand while propping his chin on the other. “Anyway, yes, Professor Braden-Newell was my advisor. He was less militaristic in those days, more willing to listen to both sides of things. Nowadays he’s only interested in violent conquest. It’s a shame, he was a far greater academic when he took both views.”

“Well, I think you can understand why he changed,” Erik says. He plates the chicken and vegetables and slides them into the microwave to reheat. “He got taken out of the academy and into real life. Neutrality is all well and good in the ivory tower, but when you’re the one wearing suppressor bands and staring at the same four prison walls day after day, the rose-colored glasses tend to come off.”

“I’m not arguing that what was done to him was righteous, but an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world gumming at a tennis ball thinking it’s an apple,” Charles says, his chair shifting on the tiles. “Lord alone knows I’ve seen enough just in the time since getting involved in your case to give me nightmares, but I still earnestly believe in integration and that it is possible. I hope you don’t think me stupid for doing so.”

“I don’t,” Erik says, “but ‘an eye for an eye’ isn’t what separatism is about, so you’re setting up a straw man.” He turns around to look at Charles and leans back against the kitchen counter as the microwave hums overhead. “All we say is that humans can’t properly judge, legislate, and lead a mutant population, and we recognize that the oppressors have inherent privilege over the oppressed. That’s complicated by the fact that some mutants have strong and potentially-lethal abilities, which makes the humans feel threatened, which makes them feel they need to register and control and suppress us and our abilities. And where integrationists think that means we need to work together to live in harmony, separatists recognize that may not be possible.”

“We’ve had this discussion before,” Charles says, and unlike every time they’ve talked about it before this time he sounds … disconnected from it, switched off, and his eyes close, his breath coming out of him in a silent sigh. “I think I’ll go to bed early tonight. I’m pretty tired.”

The microwave beeps behind Erik’s shoulder, but he doesn’t reach for it, too focused again on trying to read the lines of Charles’ face and the slant of his shoulders. “All right,” Erik says after a moment, knowing Charles won’t respond to being prodded. He gets the plates out of the microwave and carries them over to the table along with the silverware, sliding one in front of Charles, who is still shut-eyed, his head tilted slightly downward. 

On impulse Erik bends down, slipping one hand around to the back of Charles’ head and pressing a soft kiss to his cheek, close to his mouth but not there, not daring, his fingers curling in the warm locks of Charles’ hair. He breathes in a shallow breath and smells Charles’ shampoo, the slight edge of his cologne nearly worn-off this late in the day, and Charles sighs again, then turns his face away, lifting his hand to tug Erik’s away from his hair, though he clasps it for a moment, squeezing, before letting go.

“Please don’t,” he says, opening his eyes and giving Erik a rueful look, the corners of his mouth downturned, his eyes sad. “I’m trying so hard, Erik, but you insist on making it difficult, and I feel bad pushing you away but I have to if I’m going to keep myself balanced. I’m sorry.”

Erik feels the heat rising quick and immediate in his cheeks, but he refuses to look away, fighting the shame that threatens to twist in his chest. “I’m not trying to make this harder for you,” he says, his heart clenching. “I just -- wanted to.”

Charles’ head is still low, his breath a sigh. “I know,” Charles says, reaching up and squeezing Erik’s hand again, tightly. “And it’s -- thank you, because that feeling is lovely. But it is difficult. I’m trying very hard to give you what you need from me and not to fall off the wagon. If you could -- try to be conscious of that, then that would be appreciated.” He looks pale, washed out somehow, like he’s been worn out, and Erik feels a pang inside, like a little thorn tugging at his heart.

He lets out a breath, and shifts to kneel down on the floor instead of leaning over like this, clasping Charles’ hand between both of his now, his thumb rubbing against the backs of Charles’ knuckles. “I won’t let you fall off the wagon,” he says, and he didn’t realize he’d decided this until now, as it comes out of his mouth, wouldn’t have believed he’d actually _mean_ it. “I can’t pretend it didn’t make you miserable, the way things ended, and I hated seeing you like that. I’m not going to let you fall back into bed with me, all right? I promise. If anything ever happens between us, it’ll be because you decided that’s what you want, not because you gave into a moment of weakness.”

He won’t say that he doesn’t want more, because he does, even if he can’t identify what it is he wants or why. But if Charles doesn’t trust himself to be able to hold himself back, then Erik will just -- take care of it. Charles shouldn’t have to feel like he’s the only one working to keep them afloat, especially since Erik … Erik clearly can’t entirely help it, either, that the things he wants from Charles right now are the very things Charles can’t bring himself to give.

Charles’ face does something odd, unreadable, and then he snorts, leaning forward to rest his forehead against Erik’s, the weight of his head heavy, his hair brushing Erik’s skin. “Okay,” he says, resting there, eyes closed. “It’s a sorry kind of promise for you to have to make to me, but I’ll take it. Now, shall we eat before this goes cold?”

“Sure,” Erik says, and he swallows the strange thickness in his throat, rising back to standing and pulling out his own chair from the table. “Let’s eat.”

He guides the topic of conversation onto something neutral, but all through dinner he can’t help wishing there were something more he could do to smooth out the wrinkles on Charles’ brow and lift the weight from his shoulders. When Charles goes up to bed Erik is left alone in the empty downstairs, ineffective, because while the role of child is what Charles needs from him it’s the very role which makes it so impossible for Erik to help.

*

_Charles_

“So, how’s it going?”

Charles glances up at Raven over his soup, raising an eyebrow. “How’s what going?”

“Oh, don’t give me that,” she says, flapping her hand at him. “You’re a telepath, you know very well what. You and Erik. It’s been what, two weeks since he moved back in? How is that going?” She gives him a pointed look, and tears off another piece of bread.

They’re back in the mom and pop place near Charles’ office again, this time for dinner -- the better, Charles thinks, for her to interrogate him over three courses rather than a paltry one at lunch. Everything is lit with a warm yellow glow of dimmed bulbs and candles stuck in wine bottles, the tables covered with checkered cloths, the place noisy with evening diners and the staff buzzing around industriously. Outside it’s raining heavily, pedestrians dashing along with umbrellas and coats and newspapers held over their heads, trying to keep at least a little dry.

Charles isn’t sure how to answer Raven’s question; it’s hard when things are so nebulous, and he’d take a cue from her mind to see what she’d like to hear but she’s not sure herself, mixed up between good and bad, what she expects to hear versus what she’s afraid to hear.

“I don’t know,” he says finally, tearing off a piece of his own bread and dipping it in the soup. “It’s fine. We’re not -- it’s not like it was before, you don’t need to worry about that.” They’re not sleeping together, which is the important thing. The fact that Erik has started -- that Erik keeps thinking about it, imagining things the way he never has before, is having sexual fantasies that sometimes star Charles, is by-the-by and none of Raven’s business. “It’s fine.”

“Mmhmm,” Raven says, lips pursing. “Are you getting along?”

“Of course we are,” Charles says, a little exasperated, and picks up his spoon. “Raven, it’s … it’s never going to be comfortable, I can’t pretend that it’s not tense sometimes, but it’s okay, really. We’re not … we’re platonically, familially, cohabiting. Erik is going to school, he’s not drinking to excess or taking anything he shouldn’t be, he’s limited his sexual partners down to just two regulars which is a vast improvement, and it’s fine. He’s looking forward to that mutant education dinner thing next week, we’re going together.” He puts the soup-soaked bread in his mouth and chews, pointedly scooping up more soup with his spoon.

“I notice there was nothing about you in there,” Raven says. “A lot about Erik. How are _you_ doing, Charles? You were pretty down when I came over that time. I can’t pretend that I’ve not worried about you since then. When you get down you get … well, really down, and I hate seeing you like that. How are _you?_ ”

Charles takes another spoonful of soup, then a third, but Raven doesn’t move along. She just sits there opposite him, her caucasian-clad arms resting folded on the tabletop, blue eyes watching his face, reading his face; hesitation, lethargy, anxiety, secretiveness, all flit through her mind as she glances over his expression, noting the shape of his mouth, the cast of his gaze, the way his hand moves. Eventually Charles sighs and says, “I’m all right, Raven. It’ll pass. It always does, doesn’t it?”

“So far,” Raven agrees, and picks at her bread again.

The waiter brings them their main courses and takes away Charles’ tepid, half-eaten soup. His steak smells wonderful, and Charles concentrates on cutting into it, slicing out a bite-sized piece to start with. “I’ll be all right,” he says finally, conceding to Raven’s silence the point she’s pointedly not making. “It’s probably just -- chemical, mostly. I got used to living with a Dom who could Dominate me, and it’s difficult when that doesn’t happen any more. I’ll have to eat some more dark chocolate, bring my serotonin levels back up.”

“Uh-huh,” Raven says, and eats a forkful of her ravioli.

The conversation turns elsewhere after that; Raven hasn’t heard anything further from Kurt after Charles’ run-in with him, and so they talk for a while about what to do if he does come back, what to do about the heirlooms that are still in the house and potentially vulnerable. Hank apparently knows a man who does security systems, so Charles agrees to have that arranged, and they talk about Hank for a little while, too, since Charles hasn’t seen him since Christmas.

“He’s been very good about not asking what happened,” Raven says, polishing off the last of her pasta. “I told him you and Erik had a falling out, and he’s left it at that. I do think we should all do something together though, soon, to get back on track. Maybe we can have a movie night.”

“That sounds nice,” Charles says, with a flicker of a smile. “I’d like to see Hank, it’s been too long.”

“Yes,” Raven says, but can’t stop the reflexive thought, _your own damn fault if it has_ , and winces when she sees Charles’ half-stifled flinch. “Sorry.” It’s for the thought, not the sentiment; that, she is not guilty for.

Charles waves it away with a dismissive thought, dispersing it like smoke. After all, it’s nothing he doesn’t deserve. “Let’s order dessert,” he says instead, and holds his hand up for the waiter.

*

The next week goes by slowly, almost normal in the way they settle into their routine together again, the way it becomes normal for Charles to ignore Erik thinking about him, pretending everything is just as it should be, as it always was. Charles can’t relax, but he doesn’t have to tense up quite so much, either, which is why it’s so embarrassing when he gets himself into a right mess the night of the benefit dinner.

Try as he might, Charles can’t solve the problem himself, and so with chagrin he has to resort to his last and least favorite option.

“Erik? Could you come in here please?” Charles calls with a raised voice, struggling to free his hands; they’re all tangled up in the fine cords, and he can’t get himself loose. “I’m in my room.”

“Hold on,” Erik’s voice says from down the hall in his room, and it’s a minute before he hears Erik’s footfalls approaching. Erik’s still only half-dressed himself when he steps into Charles’ room, freshly-shaven and wearing his dress shirt untucked, the Dominant-styled tie hanging loose around his neck. He pauses there briefly, his gaze flitting down to Charles’ predicament. When he finally speaks it’s slowly, almost carefully: “What is it that you needed, exactly?”

Charles can feel his face flushing, but he decides valiantly to ignore it. “Firstly, don’t laugh,” he says, “and secondly, if you could untangle my hands, I got a bit tied up trying to lace up the corseting and I’m embarrassed enough as it is.”

It’s bad enough to have to ask Erik into his bedroom at all -- something Charles tries to avoid at all costs -- but a corset-related issue is the last thing Charles wanted to involve Erik in. Any time he goes to one of the big benefit dinners he occasionally has to attend Charles puts on the full submissive’s formalwear -- close-cut suit, low collared shirt, tightly corseted waistcoat -- but it’s been a while since he last wore this corset and he’d forgotten how slippery the cord was.

“I had no desire to laugh until you told me not to,” Erik says, cracking a grin; Charles twists his neck to keep an eye on him as Erik steps back behind to start untangling the cords, but it’s impossible to maintain. “All right, hold still.” Erik’s long fingers start deftly unknotting, guiding Charles’ own hands until he’s got first the left, then the right free, his grip lingering for a moment before finally slipping away. There’s a sensation of -- Charles can feel Erik’s interest, the image of Charles tangled still vividly in the front of his mind, and Charles swallows down the urge to read into it, feeling his flush deepen.

“Thank you,” he says awkwardly, bringing his hands around to the front so he can massage some bloodflow back into his fingers. He glances down at the midnight blue brocade of his waistcoat, considering it ruefully. “If I can’t even tie it up I probably shouldn’t wear this tonight. I’d better find something else. Thanks.” 

“I can do this up for you,” Erik offers almost immediately, and he tugs on the cords as if to demonstrate. “There’s no reason you should have to change.”

“Oh,” Charles says, swallowing again, and he half-turns to look at Erik, whose expression is … carefully neutral, his gaze lifting from where it had been lowered, looking at Charles’ lower back and the first criss-crosses of the cord, to meet his eyes. Charles knows he should say no, because it’s so cliché romance novel, it’s practically scripted -- and yet somehow he finds himself saying, “Okay,” and turning his back to Erik again, folding his arms across his chest to keep them out of the way. “Do you know how to lace one of these?”

“Mmhmm. I used to wear one every day, remember?” He’s jostled a little bit when Erik hooks his finger below the first lace and tugs, drawing the cord tight. One of Erik’s hands presses against his shoulder, hot like a brand, holding him still for leverage. “It looks better on you than it ever did on me, of course.” That rings sincere, too, reverberating truth across the telepathic bond between them, and Charles breathes in, then out, trying to make more room for the corset to pinch in.

It’s difficult, with Erik standing close behind him helping him with something like this, something so traditionally submissive, not to imagine this as a relationship -- to think about what if Erik were older, if they’d met another way, if they were going out together as a couple and Erik was corseting Charles up, binding him in -- pulling the boning tight around his ribs --

“Breathe,” Erik says, his fingers skipping down to the next loop, and pulls it _tight_ , the fabric closing in around Charles’ ribs, straightening his spine. Charles bites the inside of his lip and ignores the heat inside himself, the way his belly feels flooded with warmth and longing. Erik is helping him, nothing more, is his ward, nothing more. This is merely an exercise in how Charles needs to pick his wardrobe more carefully in future.

Erik’s making his way lower, bit by bit, and when he nears Charles’ natural waist he nudges him forward with one hand, says, “Brace yourself against the wall.”

“All right,” Charles says, his voice throatier than he’d like, and he steps in to place his palms against the wall beside the closet door, leaning into them a little for leverage. Erik’s standing close behind him now, the heat of his body radiating into Charles’, and he’s pulling firmly enough now that Charles is unavoidably tugged back at each loop, his ass shoved one, two times against Erik’s hips as his waist is cinched in tighter and tighter, Charles’ breath catching in his throat. He feels entirely helpless, like a toy, utterly manipulable, and Charles gasps, fighting against the urge to submit as every cue tells him he should. The wall is smooth under his palms, slipping under them even as he knocks into it over and over, trying to brace himself as Erik tugs on him from behind.

“I need to be able to eat something later,” he manages, then bites his lip after one particularly vicious yank.

Erik laughs, the sound unexpectedly soft and low, but he does relax the force of his draws somewhat. He tugs on the next lace down, bracing his hand against the middle of Charles’ back, and he’s thinking -- oh, _God_ , he’s thinking that he wants to fuck Charles like this, with Charles trussed up in a tight corset under Erik’s control, pushed against a wall with his pants around his ankles as Erik pulls him back onto his cock by the reins --

Charles reflexively tries to inhale but it’s badly timed and the air is driven back out of him on the next pull, he’s caught between Erik and the wall and Erik is, Erik is turned on by this -- Erik has never -- Erik never wanted Charles on his own before, it was always -- no, Charles thinks, frozen by indecision as Erik starts tying off the laces, and he stares wide-eyed at the wall, trying not to give himself away. No, this is just -- Erik is starting to find things sexy, he’s been experimenting with himself and with Maddie and Frank, and this is just -- this is just a thing, a teenage thing, like seeing your teacher bend over to pick up a pencil and getting a hard-on. It’s nothing real, it means nothing.

“How’s it going back there,” Charles asks weakly, trying to sound less breathless and lost, less like his cock is stirring in his pants, starting to fill.

“Hold on a second, almost done,” Erik says, sounding distracted -- he _is_ distracted, Christ, and by Charles’ ass of all things! -- as he knots the cords a second time and tucks the tails up into the laces so they won’t hang out beneath Charles’ jacket. Charles swallows, hard, and makes himself not move. “There.” 

He steps back, and Charles just … breathes, for a few moments against the wall, in and out, until he’s sure he’s got his face under control, and only then does he turn around, unsteady on his feet, his face flushed. “Thanks,” he says, tugging down on the bottom of the waistcoat to settle it properly. He feels restrained, confined, in a way that ought to be standard for these sorts of parties but instead feels charged, as if the act of Erik doing the laces has changed it entirely from black tie to lingerie. “I can never do it this tight on my own.”

“It looks good,” Erik says, gaze turning down again to Charles’ waist, reaching out like he wants to span it with his hand but thinking better of it at last second, his hand hovering there before it drops back down to his side. “I think you lost three or four inches total.”

“I didn’t need my spleen anyway,” Charles says, hesitating, not quite letting himself shift his weight the way he wants to. “Let me take a look,” and he sidesteps out from between Erik and the wall, then into his closet where the full-length mirror hangs, so he can see.

Erik’s right, it does look good -- the color suits him, the dark blue with its gold embroidery against the crisp whiteness of his shirt, and his waist cinched in tightly to give his stocky frame more shape, emphasizing the broadness of his shoulders. Charles looks at himself for a long minute, wishing away the pink coloring his cheeks and pretending to fuss with his hair.

“Thanks,” he says again, without turning, not entirely sure he wants to see Erik’s expression, and casts around for a safe topic of conversation. “Do you have much left to do to get ready?”

“I’m nearly done,” Erik says, his voice even despite the fact that he’s guessed now what Charles has read from his mind, all his surface thoughts now carefully-neutral. Charles hears the rustling of fabric behind him, Erik doing up his tie. “I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.” 

Only he doesn’t leave, not immediately; he’s still standing there just outside the closet, as if there’s nothing going on here, and Charles decides -- to hell with it, he can pretend, too.

He comes out of the closet and walks blithely over to his bed where his jacket is laid out, shrugging into it with quick, efficient motions, tugging the cuffs down over his wrists. “Did you need help with anything?” he asks, glancing over at Erik.

“No.” Erik’s gaze isn’t quite holding Charles’ own; it keeps dipping downward, as if drawn to Charles’ waist. “Thank you.” A long pause. “Five minutes.”

Finally Erik breaks away, disappearing back down the hall toward his own room, and it’s as if all the oxygen comes back into the room -- his presence lifting like a blanket from Charles’ mind, one that could either smother or comfort.

Charles spends the five minutes gathering his things with single-minded focus, picking up his cards, his wallet and handkerchief, and situating them all perfectly in his pockets with such minute attention to detail that even his mother would have had to approve. It’s an easier way to regain his composure than actively thinking about trying not to think about Erik fucking him from behind like that, but somehow the image keeps creeping in anyway until finally Charles has to lock it away in one of the back vaults of his mind just to keep it from popping up at the wrong time.

When he gets downstairs Erik is already waiting with their coats folded over his arm, and Charles gives him a quick smile before taking his own -- deftly removing the possibility of Erik offering to help him with it. “Shall we go, then? The car’s downstairs.”

“After you,” Erik says, opening the front door for Charles with his power, and he keeps his thoughts to himself as they ride the elevator down to the ground floor.

It’s not far to The Plaza Hotel where the benefit is being held; it’s only down on Fifth Avenue, but still it would be rather gauche to arrive on foot, so they arrive only a few minutes later to step out onto the sidewalk, the car door held open by one of the hotel staff. “Thank you,” Charles says, a little distracted by his cufflink, and heads for the front doors, which are also swung open for him by the doorman.

“Good evening, Dr Xavier,” the man says, and Charles smiles and nods, heading inside where he’s greeted by another staff member only to be interrupted by the concierge, who says, “Dr Xavier, how wonderful, I hope we might see your sister also?” and greets Erik with a polite, “Mr Lehnsherr, good to see you with us tonight.”

“Someone’s popular,” Erik mutters, stepping in closer to Charles and giving him a sidelong look, one brow lifting.

“I’m currently the third richest person in the building, it has its side-effects,” Charles murmurs, though it feels a little rude to bring it up. “Just thank your stars I’m not number one.”

“Why, what happens if you’re number one?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Charles says, with a wry twist of amusement, and nods at the next staff member to approach them, allowing himself -- and Erik -- to be drawn further inside the hotel and towards the ballroom where the benefit is to take place.

Inside the ballroom is all golden decadence, soft lighting and a buzz of conversation from the guests, all of whom have congregated in the bar area; Charles can immediately see and sense at least five people he had much rather avoid, and a further two whom he had until now believed were dead. “Do you see the gentleman with the red bowtie?” he asks Erik, flicking a mental snapshot to Erik to make sure he knows which one Charles is referring to. “Don’t let him follow you out of the room, he’s a notorious groper. Very unpleasant man. And his wife claws anyone she catches him with, she has talons.”

Erik laughs, and accepts two glasses of champagne from a passing server, handing one to Charles. “I’ll keep that in mind.” His attention is still out on the crowd, though, scanning faces; even now, after three years, Erik is wary in crowds, always looking for people he recognizes from his old life.

“If you see anyone, let me know,” Charles says, and clasps Erik’s elbow for a moment. “All right. Time to dive in,” and they step into the crowd, carried on the eddies between groups and into the conversations.

“Charles! Do come over here,” a woman calls almost immediately, and he turns to see Mrs Greenwood waving at him, gesturing for him to join her group. “My dears, do you all know Charles Xavier? Of course you do. Charles, do you know everyone?”

Charles smiles as he draws close enough to see who ‘everyone’ is; they’re all people he’s met at least in passing before, and he nods at all of them, holding his glass a little higher in greeting. “Of course, we’re all old friends. How are you, Mrs Greenwood?”

“Oh, do call me Daphne, and I’m very well, very well,” she says, hooking her hand into the crook of Charles’ elbow, and then looking over his head at Erik as he comes to stand on Charles’ other side, her thoughts peaking to a higher pitch of interest. “Oh, Charles! You’ve brought your ward! I’ve been dying to meet him for years, have you been hiding him in a cupboard?”

“I had to let him out sometime,” Charles says, and steps aside a little to let her see Erik properly. “Daphne, this is Erik Lehnsherr; Erik, Mrs Daphne Greenwood, an old friend of the family. Her daughter was in the year above you in school -- do you remember Jane Greenwood? She’s a firestarter.”

“I do,” Erik says, and the smile he gives Mrs Greenwood is perfectly charming. “I always found pyromancy fascinating; you must be very proud of Jane.”

“Very proud indeed, she’s planning to join the fire brigade once she’s graduated college and work her way up to fire marshal,” Mrs Greenwood says, practically glowing despite the fact that society tended to frown upon the adoption of any kind of manual trade. “I understand you’re metallokinetic yourself? That could be rather useful in all sorts of occupations, I’m sure.”

Charles catches Erik wincing internally; he hates his mutation being represented as nothing more than power over metal. It doesn’t show on his face, though, which keeps the same crafted expression as he says, “Electromagnetism, yes. I’m interning at Stark Industries at the moment, and it certainly seems to come in handy there.” 

“I’m surprised Tony Stark hasn’t died of jealousy,” one of the others says, a Dominant male called George Clancy -- pharmaceuticals conglomerate, if Charles recalls correctly. George grins. “Before you know it he’ll have adopted you instead of Charles so he can have permanent access to your mutation.”

Erik laughs, and is still smiling when he takes a sip of his champagne, but Charles can read that there’s a part of him still waiting for the other shoe to drop: no one has mentioned his past with Hellfire, and that’s made Erik far more suspicious than relieved.

 _These are society people,_ Charles says silently, even as he picks up the thread of a conversation that had fallen when they’d come over, about the mutant centers’ curriculum and how it can be improved upon. _They’re so used to scandal that they don’t even think about it. Besides, none of them would dare say anything unpleasant to anyone in the Xavier family circle. It’d be social suicide. Never mind that I’m not a society creature, they remember my mother well enough and most suspect I learned a thing or two from her._

 _And did you?_ Erik asks.

 _I have an eidetic memory, I remember everything I see and hear,_ Charles says, and laughs at one of George Clancy’s jokes.

They circulate around the room, making small talk and discussing human politics; Erik, thankfully, mostly keeps out of that, though Charles can hear him thinking irritably that they should be focusing on mutant issues at a mutant benefit. They’re seated with some of Charles’ particular acquaintances for dinner, and these people at least are less interested in taxes and statutes and more in mutant rights. Charles takes part at first, but as things continue Erik gets more and more animated, and then there’s a certain kind of pleasure in sitting back and listening to him debating with Martin Hale about specialist provision for mutant patients in healthcare institutions. 

Charles sips at his drink, and feels … warm, proud of course of how articulate Erik is, but also a little as though he wants to lay his head down on the tablecloth and just listen to Erik talk like this all evening, not even the words but the tone, strong and commanding, measured so as not to push too hard but determined to put his point of view across. It’s not until Charles glances away from Erik’s face to look at Martin and his sister Leanne that he realizes Erik is practically exuding Dominance, unwittingly using it to lend weight to his argument and drawing in his audience. There are people on the next table over listening in, too.

 _Calm down a little, you’re influencing people,_ Charles says, stretching out his foot under the table to nudge his toe against Erik’s. _Rein it in._

Erik loses his train of thought, the ideas fracturing in his mind as he’s refocused onto Charles’ voice in his head. _What?_ he says, before realizing a beat later what Charles means. He manages to dial it down a bit, then, but even with the best of intentions it’s impossible for Erik to undo the magnetic draw of his personality, his Dominance, as if his presence is slowly but inevitably becoming the brilliant sun around which the rest of the room must orbit. Charles feels like every time he blinks he’s a little more honeyed, drawn in just like everyone else, susceptible to Erik’s influence.

“I’m just going to freshen up, I’ll be right back,” he says, sliding his chair back from the table and laying his napkin aside, leaving the conversation behind.

The bathroom is quiet and empty when he gets there, and Charles is so relieved -- he leans against the sink, both hands clasping the cool porcelain, and just stares back at himself, making himself breathe in and out, steadyingly. He’s half-hard, not enough to really show under the black pants but enough to be a little uncomfortable, and even here he can hear the faint strains of the music out in the ballroom, can imagine the feel of Erik’s Dominance stroking the back of his neck, trying to cajole him back in. There’s a part of him that would like nothing more than to go in and kneel at Erik’s side, lay his head on Erik’s thigh and just rest there, give in, let it all wash over him.

Charles splashes some water on his face instead, and uses the facilities for their intended purpose, pinches himself hard on the thigh and goes back out there a more composed man, back, he hopes, in control of himself.

“We should go after dessert and coffee,” he says to Erik, since leaving any earlier would be rude, but if they stay too long Charles is rather concerned Erik will find himself fielding off (or worse, accepting) propositions left and right, or even in a fight with some other Dominant riled up by Erik’s commanding presence.

“All right,” Erik says, more congenial than usual, likely an effect of the response to his Dominance, and his eyes when he looks at Charles are too bright, his lips curving into a smile as he reaches over with his fork to steal half of Charles’ amuse-bouche.

“I was going to eat that,” Charles protests, and eats the rest before Erik can take that as well -- there’s hardly enough to taste it, with half of it gone. “Eat off your own plate.”

“Oh, but mine has walnuts in it, see? Grotesque.” Erik pushes his own smallplate over toward Charles, offering, and Charles rolls his eyes but takes it, anyway, ignoring Martin Hale thinking _old married couple_ with dry amusement on the other side of the table.

“So, Erik,” Leanne says, sipping at her drink, “Are we to assume you’ll be running for president in a few years’ time? You certainly have the drive to change things up.”

Erik’s a little caught off-guard by that, judging by the slight lift of his eyebrows, but he doesn’t miss a beat before saying, “Being a partisan figurehead? Where’s the fun in that?” and matching Leanne’s responsive smile.

It’s not a million miles off the mark, though, Charles thinks, suddenly speculative, watching Erik continue the chatter. Erik could be a wonderful politician, or a lobbyist, if he set his mind to it. It’s something to think about, and Charles considers it throughout dessert even as he plays up his own part in the conversation, laughing and arguing with Martin over the best methods of mutation education being used in schools right now.

By the time they finally leave Charles is feeling giddy and a bit tipsy, though it’s hard to tell how much of that is from the alcohol and how much from Erik’s Will being exerted so strongly across the room, like a thick scent, intoxicating and heady. It’s enough that Charles doesn’t shrug off Erik’s arm when it drapes over his shoulders as they head outside to wait for their car to pull off, simply lets the warm weight of it rest there against the back of his neck, Erik’s hand loose and relaxed where it hangs against the top of his arm.

“Society suits you,” Charles says, breathing in the cooler outside air, trying to let it clear his head a little after the stuffiness of the ballroom.

“I don’t know about that,” Erik says. “Madelyne just has me very well-trained.” He nudges his shoulder against Charles’ a little, smiling at him, and Charles smiles back, though a little more quietly, now, thinking about Erik and Madelyne together. It’s -- he shouldn’t feel jealousy over it, he should -- it would be creepy to be proud that Erik is treating her well, from the little Charles has let himself see, that Erik is being careful with her.

“Where is that car?” Charles murmurs, wishing it would just arrive, so he can go home and try to think about something else.

“Here,” Erik says, tilting his face toward where their driver is finally pulling up along the curb, his arm dropping from Charles’ shoulders as he heads down the steps, beating the driver to open the back door for Charles.

“Such a gentleman,” Charles says in a gently mocking tone, with a false little simper that makes Erik grin, and slides inside, where the car is warm and dim and he can look out the opposite window at the city and think about nothing at all.

*

"I have people coming over in an hour,” Erik says the next day as Charles is writing a new blog post, and Charles startles, his distant distraction brought back to Earth with a bump.

He makes himself turn, changing the tab on his computer screen, and looks at Erik where he’s standing in the doorway, shaking off the feeling of disconnection, making himself be present. “Who's coming over?" he asks, raising an eyebrow.

"People for a class project. Madelyne's going to stay the night." 

"Oh." It's not so much that Charles minds -- Madelyne is a nice girl, and all of Erik's friends have always been very respectful on the few occasions Charles has met them -- but it feels strange that Erik didn't mention it before, or think about it when Charles was listening, and stranger still that so soon after their reconciliation Erik would invite people into their space at all.

Charles is suddenly rather more alert, pulling away from his laptop, and he bites the inside of his lip for a moment before he makes himself turn entirely to face Erik. "If people are coming over in an hour then I should get properly dressed for company." Shower, and shave, and put on respectable adult Dr Charles Xavier, not whoever he's being this morning.

Erik straightens in the doorway, his weight resting back on his palms flat against either side of the doorway; it silhouettes his lean form distractingly, but Charles won’t look at that, won’t pay it any mind. "All right," Erik says slowly. "I'll order in lunch; there's no time to cook now."

There's a small, quiet worry in Erik's mind, startled at Charles' sudden withdrawal; there's a louder voice, though, saying he's reading too much into it, and so Charles decides to leave well enough alone, getting to his feet. He stretches his arms up over his head then glances back at Erik, and simply says, “Okay.”

Charles ducks his head, walks past Erik out into the gallery, and goes upstairs to get ready for Erik's study group.

*

By the time the other students arrive Charles is fully washed, dressed and presentable in jeans, shirt and an old blue cardigan, having taken receipt of Erik's food order while Erik was setting up in the library and now gathering plates and cutlery for what are sure to be ravenous teenagers.

“Your friends are here. Do you need anything else?” Charles asks Erik, as he stacks glasses and carries them through into the library to set them down at one end of the table; Erik is at the other end, laying down coasters. He's obsessed with them, something that Charles has never understood. It's an antique table, that means it's known hard wear. "I think we'll be fine," he says, meeting Charles' eyes across the table, his hand resting atop the stack of handwritten notes where presumably he will sit, tapping one finger against the paper. "Thank you."

Well, someone will have to let Erik's friends in, then, if Erik’s not going to. "All right," Charles says, and heads back out to greet them. Even if their presence makes him uncomfortable.

There are four of them, and Charles divines the names of those he doesn't know quickly from their minds -- Evan, Petra, Rob -- and of course Madelyne is there as well, chatting animatedly to Petra for the moment before she spots Charles and flushes hot red.

Her thoughts are a hubbub of _Last time I saw him I -- oh shit he's a telepath -- does he know I’ve been sleeping with Erik? -- well shit he does now -- God this is embarrassing,_ and Charles manages a kind, neutral smile for them despite the telepathic background noise, tries to remember that to these young people he's an adult, albeit a mildly interesting one, given his mutation and appearances on television. "Hi," he says, and steps aside out of the library doorway. "Erik's just inside. Go on ahead, there's lunch too."

"Thanks Mr Xavier," Petra says politely, and Evan says, "It's _Dr_ Xavier, idiot."

"Thank you for having us," Madelyne says, then looks over Charles' shoulder and blushes again.

From behind Charles' shoulder, having emerged from the other room, Erik says, "Hey.”

"I'll just get out of your way," Charles says, and he can't help it if he's glad to escape the sight of Madelyne pink-cheeked and bright-eyed, her red hair loose around her heart-shaped face and short skirt flicking around her thighs, the very image of age-appropriate American submissiveness.

"I hope you like Chinese food," Erik says, and they all disappear off to the library, where they're a constant low-level hum of concentration and discussion for the next four hours, punctuated occasionally whenever one of them emerges for the bathroom or to get a soda from the fridge.

Charles spends his afternoon trying not to pay attention to what's happening in the library and instead focusing on boring but necessary jobs, like filling out paperwork and managing his accounts; it's difficult, though, when he's so hyperaware of other people in his space, something that is normally rare. And now that he's also so sensitive to the way people see him and Erik interact it's ... almost excruciating, thinking to himself every ten minutes, _Is this what Erik's guardian would look like, what he'd be doing, how he'd sit, if he had never had sex with his ward, didn’t want to have sex with him? Should I be doing something else, look some other way?_

It's a kind of self-awareness that makes him deeply uncomfortable, and he can't seem to focus long enough to make sure all his number columns add up. In the end he decides to leave it alone until he can think more clearly and picks up his novel instead, settling into his armchair and blocking out the rest of the world.

After a while, near dinner-time, the group exits the library; Charles can hear them all chattering away in the gallery, making plans to meet up again later on to finish their assignment, and then they leave as a cluster, their voices cut out of earshot as the front door falls shut behind them.

A few seconds later Madelyne and Erik cut through the den, empty Chinese cardboard take-out boxes stuffed into plastic bags slung over their wrists. Charles glances up briefly, but he thinks -- would Erik's guardian be this interested in watching them? -- and looks back down at his book, the awkwardness of it all making him feel cold inside, like all of his organs are cringing.

"What do you want for dinner?" Erik says when they return from the kitchen, looking between Charles and Madelyne from where he settles himself on the sofa, one arm slung out along its back and his legs stretched out along the floor in front of him, easy and Dominant without even trying. "I can cook, or we can go out."

"I don't mind," Charles says, managing a small, casual smile for the both of them. "Don't let me intrude, I know it's been a while since you two had a chance to catch up."

"It's so weird to me that you do all the cooking," Madelyne says, half-turning on the couch so she's sitting sideways-on to Erik. "I mean, it's awesome that you can cook, but it's still weird. You're the teenager."

"I burn water, apparently," Charles says, mouth tightening a little, and looks down at his book again.

"It's easy, with my mutation,” Erik says. “I don't have to juggle as many tasks at once." Out of the corner of his eye he sees Erik's body shift toward Madelyne's, turning like a leaf seeking sunlight -- and no surprise, since they’re sleeping together. Erik’s body probably knows where she is at all times; Charles remembers what it was like to be a horny teenager all too well. "What do you think? If we eat here, we should start now, before it gets late."

"I'd like to see you cook," she says, and hops up to her feet. "Watch the animal in its native environment. Come on, I can cut things up for you."

Erik gets up, making some wisecrack back, but Charles deliberately isn't listening -- they go into the kitchen and he concentrates on his novel.

It's not -- the thing is, he's not jealous, at all, because he knows how Erik feels about him, and he knows how Erik feels about Madelyne, who was the first person to reach out to Erik that didn't have to, who values his friendship enough to give him shit about it when Erik falls down on giving back, and with whom Erik has no-strings-attached sex at least twice. It's not jealousy. It’s just that Charles can’t stop himself thinking about it, either, how perfect she would be for Erik, if Erik would let himself have more than just sex with someone.

Charles sighs and shifts in his chair, tries to banish the ridiculous feelings, loathing himself for having them, but like always trying to ignore them just makes the little voice in the back of his mind, the one that's all him, more persistent.

"Dinner's ready," Erik's voice says, and when Charles looks up he's standing behind the sofa nearest Charles. "Come join us." His tone is light, but that doesn't make it not an order.

Charles gets up and follows Erik through to the kitchen where dinner is laid out on the table -- Madelyne is just putting glasses down for them, and she smiles at Charles as he comes in, says, "Can I get you a drink, Dr Xavier?"

Charles winces. "Just call me Charles, please," he says, "and that would be lovely, thank you. I think there's some soda still in the fridge if you'd like some too."

"Okay," she says, and fetches three cans, then takes her own seat between them at the round table, tugging up her chair with a squeak of wood on tile.

"What's for dinner?" Charles asks, as Erik steps up to serve.

"Rosemary chicken with roasted potatoes," Erik says, transferring a juicy golden breast to Charles' plate, followed by a pair of potatoes still steaming in their skins, olive oil glistening on the tines of the fork. "Salad, as well, but that's nothing complicated." He serves Madelyne as well, her gaze lingering overlong on Erik's hands as he pushes the meat off onto her plate.

"Well, thank you very much for cooking, Erik," Charles says, keeping his hands politely folded as Erik finishes dishing out the food. "It all looks lovely, as usual. I knew there was a reason I kept you around." He smiles, pressing down all the feelings that would make this not-normal, determined to be casual. "Madelyne, did he let you help at all?"

"Nope," she says, and laughs. "Far too particular about the angle the potatoes were cut at to let me help."

"Details are important," Erik says, but he grins as he sits down in the chair next to Madelyne, reaching to pour himself a glass of lemon water. "I don't trust Charles in the kitchen either."

Madelyne smiles, picking up her own fork. "Maybe you should become a chef, Erik, then you could cook and order your minions around all day."

"The minions are the important part. I don't have to be a chef to have those."

Charles shakes his head, and takes his knife to the chicken, lifts a bite to his mouth. _Honestly, Erik. You could just say you want to hold a managerial position,_ he says to both of them, infusing it with fond exasperation, carefully moderated for Madelyne's benefit. _Most people don't appreciate being called minions._ It's funny to think of Erik three years ago, afraid of ordering his own shadow around, now wanting to have minions.

Erik's grin widens, and Charles feels the shudder of intense affection that rattles through his mind when their eyes meet across the table, so strong that for a moment Charles worries Madelyne will sense it somehow, like an electric current snapping through the air. 

"That felt strange," Madelyne says, and though she's still smiling there's a quaver of nervousness in her mind nonetheless, unused to telepathy and trying to pretend it doesn't phase her. "It must be useful, being able to talk with your mouth full without being rude."

Charles swallows down the fear that she’s noticed the moment -- she hasn’t, is thinking entirely about telepathy, but still -- and he smiles back. "At times, yes."

The conversation mostly dies off as they eat; Charles relaxes a little throughout the course of the meal until he feels almost normal, can joke and ask questions and interact like there's nothing on his mind at all. Later Erik and Madelyne watch a movie while Charles reads, and later still Charles begs off and heads upstairs to bed.

He takes his time over it, needing to unwind a little before he'll be able to sleep. His bedroom is dim and warm, drapes pulled; he changes into t-shirt and pajama pants and brushes his teeth, washes his face, all while trying not to be aware of Erik and Madelyne, of her mind asking -- _are we gonna do it in Erik’s room, with Dr Xavier down the hall? That seems weird. At least my room is further away from Mom and Dad’s._

The worst part is when Charles is getting into bed himself with his book, and he hears them come upstairs and get ready to sleep, and when they climb into Erik's bed together the way they always do for sleepovers -- and Charles does feel worried, nauseous, jealous, then, in the most horrible, self-loathing sort of way, because -- God.

Charles' hands clench into fists in his blankets and he rolls over onto his belly, tugs the covers up around his shoulders, and closes his telepathy down until all he can hear is his own breathing and the soft thud-thud of his own pulse in his ears.

*

_Erik_

Sleeping next to Madelyne is nothing like sleeping next to Charles used to be. It's strange, to feel the weight of another body in the bed without rolling toward it, tangling their bodies up into one object. Without feeling the tide of her mind washing up against his own in slow, steady waves. After a while he turns onto his back, lacing his fingers together atop his stomach and letting the breeze from the ceiling fan beat down on his face and throat, cool. 

Madelyne shifts next to him, still on her side, facing him. "So," she asks quietly, her voice low, as if she's trying not to wake someone. "The trial is coming up again, isn’t it?"

Erik is silent for a prolonged second, and then his eyes blink open, gazing up overhead. "This weekend," he says, and it’s incredible how steady his voice is able to sound, how … unaffected, when just thinking of it makes him feel all-too-conscious of the raw, live thing inside of him that is his memories of Hellfire, the way they twist in his gut.

She makes a soft noise in her throat, and her fingers touch his upper arm. "You don't have to pretend to me," she says, shifting closer. "If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine, but say 'I hate it, I don’t want to go' or 'yeah it sucks, let’s forget about it', don't just pretend it doesn't matter. It matters to me, okay?"

"It isn't as bad as that," Erik says, and turns his head on the pillow to look at her, her eyes wide and near, familiar now. "I’ve done it before. I survived. I can do it again. You don't need to worry about me.” He makes his tone easy but inserts a little bit of Will into the words all the same; he has to be careful not to overdo it -- she isn't Charles, who needs force to respond. 

"Mmm," she says, her mouth twisting, but she relaxes against the bed all the same, her head dimpling the pillow. "I just want you to be okay. You're my best friend, dumdum. And that Shaw is seriously skeevy. I wanted to scalp him last time. What a skeeze. He looked really skeevy. I bet he stinks like eau de cologne all the time."

"'Skeevy?'" Erik echoes wryly, not entirely able to disguise his amusement, and turns back over toward her, resting one hand on the bed between their bodies. "What does that mean?" It sounds like it might be related to having scurvy, or like it's a term for one of those large shiny black insects with antennas that scuttle around old buildings in the city in summer.

"I don't know, right, like, it means creepy," she says. "He has these creepy dead fish eyes, doesn't he, like he's all rotten and gross inside and if he touches you then he'll get you all slimed up, and he likes leaving slime on people. Skeevy."

Erik snorts, because the image in his mind now is -- well, just to say, if a Hellfire telepath had caught him thinking this way they would have actually let him keep it a secret rather than tell Shaw and see what happened. "Maybe," he says. "I never thought of him like that." Essex, maybe. Erik always felt dirty after Essex touched him, even if innocently. But not Shaw. Being around Shaw was like being in the presence of a god: magnificent and terrifying, all at once.

At least she can't see the way it makes him feel sick inside, thinking about her and everyone else he knows -- everyone else _everyone_ knows -- watching the news and hearing about everything that happened in all its sordid detail. And the kinds of things Erik himself will have to admit to doing.... It can't be a surprise to anyone at school, considering Erik's fucked his way through most of the Dom population there, but having to put it into words is … undignified. 

"He’s just a cockroach," Madelyne says, propping herself up on her elbow. “I wrote him a letter, you know. The giant freak.”

"What? What did you say?" Erik can't imagine it, what anyone might want to say to Shaw, that they would voluntarily invite his attention, put criticism in words and sign their _names_ to it --

Madelyne shrugs. "I said he was a massive fucknugget and that he should be ashamed of himself for doing all that shit in the first place. And if he had actual balls rather than play-dough in his pants he'd own up to it like a big boy. And that you're awesome and I hope he enjoys getting the same things visited on him in jail that he did to you, because he's going to have a loose asshole by the time he's been there a week and have to tie a bucket to his ass to collect all the shit that falls out of him. I also suggested he gets one for his mouth since I hope they’ve already got started on him there. I was really mad."

Erik pushes himself up on his elbow and stares at her, his heart beating faster for some reason he can't identify. "You really shouldn't have said that. What if he's acquitted?"

"He'll hire me as his press secretary," Madelyne says, flapping her hand. "You're my best friend, idiot. Nobody gets to talk shit about you. Even Fish-eyes McTerrorist."

Erik lets out a slow breath and lies down again, looking back up at the fan blades cutting through the air, moving so quickly he can't pick them out one by one. "Every time I think I understand you, you do something like this," he says. Perhaps he should stop assuming there's any practical limit at all to the things Madelyne will do if she's motivated -- or angry -- enough.

"Something awesome, you mean," she says. She rolls over further and then she's reaching her arm across his chest, curling into his side, warm and heavy and -- she's not Charles, smells different, _feels_ different, strange, cuddled up to him like this, her head tucked in against Erik's shoulder. "Nobody gets to do that to you. Okay? You're mine now. I defend my stuff. Shaw can go suck it."

"I'm yours, am I?" Erik says, uncertainly, and he shifts enough to unpin his arm from beneath her weight, settling his hand on her shoulder instead, a loose embrace. He’s not sure what the appropriate response is, to someone who’s not your subfriend but you have slept with in the past. It seems rather more strings-attached than they’d initially agreed. "I think Charles might fight you on that one."

He can see enough of her face to see her blush, and though her words are strong her voice has lost its brash edge. "I'll pee on you if I have to," she says, without moving. "I'll let Dr Xavier have a little bit. He can have your toes."

“Giving him the best part, I see,” Erik says, smiling a little, but it feels forced.

“If that’s your thing.” Madelyne gives him a wry look, tipping her head back, then frowns, shifting again onto her front, leaning her elbows on his chest so she can look Erik in the face. Her breasts are squished up against him, too, pressing against his arm. “What’s wrong? I’m sorry. I should have asked you about the letter first, shouldn’t I.” She looks so contrite, it’s utterly at odds with her strident tone when she was telling him about it before.

“No,” Erik says, and looks her in the eye, hesitating only a moment, trying to choose his words wisely. “I’m your friend, but you know we aren’t together. Don’t you?” Erik had been quite clear on that point, but that doesn’t mean Madelyne hasn’t convinced herself of just the opposite, somehow. Never mind that they haven’t had sex since the second time, when Erik was trying to decide if he was into women or not.

She pauses for a second, then says, “Well, yeah. I was the one who said it wasn’t a thing in the first place, Erik. It was kind of my suggestion. You’re still my biffle, though, that gives me some rights. That’s all I meant. No penis involvement without prior consent.”

Erik can’t pretend to himself it isn’t a relief to hear, but he thinks he manages to keep that from showing anywhere Madelyne could see. “Just checking,” he says, relaxing back down against the pillow and settling the tips of his fingers onto her back between her shoulder blades. “I meant to talk to you about the sex thing, anyway.” He closes his eyes, a little too tired to keep them open still. “I think I’m malesexual. It’s nothing to do with you; it’s not like you turned me off vagina, just that I don’t think I was very into it in the first place.”

“Oh,” Madelyne says, and her face shifts through a few different expressions -- disappointment, resignation, acceptance, a gentle sort of frustration -- before she says, “That’s okay. As long as it was okay for you, that is. It’s a shame, because I thought it was pretty good, but I’ll deal.” She shrugs, smiling. “At least I got a couple of times out of you before you made your mind up. I was feeling left out, since the rest of the school already had a turn.”

Erik rolls his eyes against his shut eyelids. “Well, then. If anyone asks, make sure you tell them I was amazing in bed. A veritable prodigy. _Godlike._ I have a reputation to maintain, you know.” And then he cracks his eyes open to peek at her, grinning a bit, to make sure she takes the joke.

“I’ll tell them my vagina was so awesome you knew you’d never be able to find another you liked as much, and so you retired while you were still ahead,” Madelyne says, lifting her arm so she can dig her elbow into his chest, sharp and pointed -- Erik laughs even as he squirms. “And if you kiss and tell any details I’ll cut you. I’m a badass, I sent Sebastian Shaw hatemail and I’m not even scared.”

Erik tousles her hair with his fingers and says, “The more foolish you.” 

“So … ” she says, finally, settling again, apparently still entirely comfortable where she is, laying all over him in just her nightgown. She looks a bit nervous now, for the first time, and she bites her lower lip for a moment before finally saying, rather fast, “How was I? You know, um. I figure we’re close enough I can ask you for feedback.”

“Oh,” he says, a bit surprised, but electing not to let that phase him. “You were fine. I don’t think that’s something you really should be worrying about at this point. You’ve only had sex twice.” Considering she had a choice about it, focusing on whether or not she was good in bed seems like a misplaced worry to him. It’s not like she had a cohort of Hellfire officers encouraging her to be porn star-perfect the whole time. 

She frowns at him, displeased. “You are the only person I can ask for this kind of feedback, Erik. Like, do you … ” she pauses again, then continues, “do you think I'm too pushy, for a sub? I don't mean to be, but I know I’m kind of full-on, sometimes, when I relax around people."

"What? No," Erik grips her shoulder, squeezing in a way he hopes is reassuring. "You're fine. It's certainly -- " How to put this? "You should do what makes you happy," he says at last. "And what makes your Dom happy. Plenty of Doms like bossy submissives." Erik being a perfect example; half his sexual fantasies of late have involved some nameless, faceless submissive being disobedient on purpose, flirtatious and wanting Erik to punish him. Wanting _Erik_ , and not being ashamed to admit it.

"I don't have a Domfriend, or anyone interested," Madelyne says, still frowning. "And I know it's not because I'm not pretty. Maybe I am too bossy. Do you think I'm pretty?"

"Of course," Erik says, and relaxes his grasp again, smoothing his hand up and down her shoulder. "Any Dom would be lucky to have you. If they're blind to that, then they don't deserve you." 

It's a worry Madelyne's had before, back when Erik was still presenting as submissive -- everyone at Trinity is obsessed with appearance, and with looking fresh and expensive, but effortlessly so. He remembers watching her take hours to do her hair in a way meant to look like she just rolled out of bed. She told him once that she hated him because Doms paid attention to him and he didn't even have to do anything for it. Erik's not sure that was true. Fucking them isn't nothing.

But Madelyne's the kind of girl who would be beautiful even if she wasn't wearing hundred dollar lipstick. If Erik were interested in women he'd probably find her very attractive. It's not disingenuous to say as much.

"Good," she mutters, though it's half-hearted at best. "You'd better think so if you want to keep both your nipples."

Erik snorts and closes his eyes. "Now go to sleep," he says. "If we stay up much longer, we'll wake up later than Charles tomorrow. Embarrassing."

"Doesn't he mind us sharing? Since you're a Dom and I'm a sub?"

"He's a telepath. He knows we aren't fucking in here, so there's nothing he needs to worry about." Though Erik can't imagine Charles being nearly so understanding if it were Frank in this room with him.

He pats her on the back twice and feels her sigh against his chest, breath hot even through his shirt. Madelyne doesn't say anything else, and after a while Erik feels her body go lax in sleep, resting easily against his. She seems smaller when she's sleeping, like her personality makes her larger than she really is. It's a long time before Erik's able to fall asleep, distracted by the closeness of her body, feeling strangely like he wishes it could be Charles there instead.

*


	29. Twenty-Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter

_Erik_

In his dream Erik sits in the witness stand, the computer monitor blank in front of him. There are no judges. No lawyers. No witnesses. Behind the darkened window he senses the roll of cameras, capturing every moment. It's silent but for the tick of the clock on the wall and the sound of footsteps behind him. He should look. He doesn't. He's frozen where he sits, unable to turn, unwilling to see; he can feel something gripping his chest, squeezing the air out of his lungs. Breath, hot on the back of his neck, and someone's hands curl around his upper arms, holding him there --

Erik snaps back to reality, eyes flying open to stare across the darkened room at the digital alarm clock sitting facing him atop the nightstand, red light flashing 4:53 AM. His heart races in his chest; he forces himself to take several deep, shaking breaths, even as his stomach twists and clenches, a feeling like seasickness slicking the back of his throat. 

How could they have left him alone there, with _him_...?

No. Was it a dream? Erik can't remember -- it felt ... _real_ , like a memory, and he can't untangle it from right-now, which also feels real but could still be a dream, the thick comforter too-heavy and too-hot above him. He hears a soft noise, a creak overhead; Erik's heart leaps into his mouth and he goes still, very still, holding his breath in his chest and staring at that clock until the time switches over: 4:54 AM. 

Hotel. He’s in a hotel. That's real. He's awake, and he's ... _sixteen_ , and in the Hague, in Europe, and he's lying in this hotel bed, alone. No one is here but him. The trial’s tomorrow -- no. Today.

Erik twists around in the bed, rolling over so he can’t see the angry numerals of the digital clock flashing at him, staring at the blackness of the opposite wall. The room is big, and he can feel the space around him, vulnerable and open, can sense all the unfamiliar metal in the building, nothing familiar, nothing to anchor himself in reality, to convince himself he’s really awake.

 _Go back to sleep_ , Erik tells himself, tries ordering himself, even though he's not sure it works that way. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe even breaths, let his mind drift back to the blank and grey, but he can't seem to fall over that edge. His stomach twists, anxious and queasy, and Erik finds himself kicking back the duvet and clambering out of bed, sweat-damp skin shivering in the naked air. 

Charles’ room is adjacent to his in their suite, the door cracked ajar. Erik pushes it open as quietly as he can. Charles is a dark lump huddled up underneath the sheets of his bed, hair a black stain against the white pillowcase, just his forehead and the bridge of his nose visible over the edge of the blankets. Erik draws closer, expecting Charles to wake at the sound of his footsteps or the press of his mind, but when he comes around to a better angle Charles is dead to the world entirely, his face plastered against the pillow and his mouth hanging open. 

Erik feels like he’s going to be sick. He won’t be, he knows that much, but he _feels_ it. He lingers there for a moment, uncertain, then thinks -- better, if he just sleeps here the rest of the night. He doesn’t have to wake Charles, but it’ll be better just to be here with him, safe.

Slowly, quietly, Erik climbs into the empty half of the bed. Empty quarter of the bed, more like, with the way Charles’ thrown-out arm claims most of the mattress. Under the sheets is warm from Charles’ body heat and it smells like him, like Charles and hotel detergent. Erik’s heart races even as he lies there, still, his eyes shut and his face turned toward Charles, half-expecting Charles to speak and demand that he leave. “Don’t wake up,” Erik whispers aloud, makes it an order, and either Charles hears him and obeys or doesn’t, but he doesn’t wake, either. Instead Charles makes a grumbling noise, like half a growl, and then his mind is curling around Erik's, surrounding him and tugging him down into sleep like a particularly petulant wave.

The rest of the night is half-finished memories and dreams, mixed together like a potent drug, poison running through his veins. He's holding that little boy down while Essex fucks him, and later he carries the little blood-drained body to the kitchen to wrap it up in a black garbage bag. He remembers how the boy felt boneless, how easy it was to make him small and not-like-a-corpse, how surprisingly heavy the load was when Erik brought down to the big dumpster at the end of the street and tossed it in. 

For some reason, in the dream, the little boy is Erik's brother, even though Erik never had a brother. In the dream, Erik loved him. 

He dreams that he's at the beach, sitting with his legs outstretched and the water crashing over his ankles, his elbows propped up against the sand and the sun blindingly bright overhead. Shaw stands on the dock with a fishing rod with Emma Frost, who is smoking a cigarette under a parasol with a book held in one pale hand. 

"I always get sunburn," the boy sitting next to Erik says, skipping a rock across the water, one two three bounces. The skin on his nose is already getting red under his freckles, and his brown hair is tousled by the wind, whipped into a rough sea-salted shape. "I don't know why Emma always wants to come here. She doesn't tan either."

"You don't have to be here if you don't like it," Erik says, digging his heels further into the sand, creating little pits for the water to flood when it slips over his legs again. "You can stay home with Azazel and be boring. No one made you come."

The boy sighs and flops down onto his back with a whumph of displaced sand. "But you're here," he says, matter-of-fact. "And I love you best. So I have to come."

Erik smiles, squinting out across the sea. "We can swim," he says, "if you aren't afraid of sharks."

Another shift of sand. "Shark'd have to be pretty stupid to mess with Mr Shaw. He wouldn't like it if I got eaten before the next mission," and when the boy sits up Erik sees the white scar on his thigh, even paler in the sunlight than the rest of him, like a starburst on his skin.

Erik pokes it. "When did you get shot?"

"You remember. Cain got angry with me for using my telepathy at home. Mr Shaw rescued me and brought me here to be with you, to be his sub instead."

He's dreaming, Erik realizes suddenly. This didn't happen. The boy keeps looking at him with blue eyes and Erik says, "You aren't his sub, you're _mine_ ," and on the dock he sees Shaw turning to look at them and wrenches himself away, pushing that dream down, down, until it is eaten up by darkness and the beach and the boy are both gone. Erik's vaguely aware of the bed beneath him, but he feels nauseated, doesn't want to wake up and be in his own body -- he scrabbles for something new, grasping at the half-formed wisps of thought as they drift past.

"We find the defendants," the judge says, "Azazel Rasputin, Janos Quested, Jason Wyngarde, Emma Frost, Nathaniel Essex, and Sebastian Shaw, not guilty on all charges."

"I should have known from the start," Charles says beside Erik, and his voice is one of disgust. "You were lying the whole time. Don't bother coming home."

The alarm goes off.

Erik lurches back to wakefulness all at once, but it's like his mind moves faster than his body, and at first he can't do anything, paralyzed. He swallows, hard, over and over again, and finally manages to make his arm lift and reach past the bed to hit the snooze button on the alarm. The red numbers say 7:00 AM.

"No," Charles says beside him, clearly and distinctly, with a tone of great disgruntlement.

"We have to get up," Erik says, and he makes himself sit, ignoring the ocean that churns inside his stomach. The comforter weighs down his legs, and his mouth tastes like cigarette smoke. He turns and nudges Charles' shoulder. "The trial starts in two hours."

Charles rolls over and gives Erik such a baleful look that for a moment Erik is flung back into the last moment of his dream -- and then he frowns, drowsy and confused, and says, “Why are you here? You weren’t here before. I’d remember that.” Charles looks down at himself, his hair all askew and mussed, creases on his face from the pillowcase, and plucks at his pyjama shirt; then he looks back at Erik and his face softens into concern, even as it becomes more alert, the sleep falling away from his expression. “Oh -- bad dream?”

“Sort of,” Erik says, and the part of him that wishes he could take advantage of being in Charles’ bed is overruled by the rest of him, still too sick and anxious to care about anything else. He feels frantic in a way, like he needs to get out of here, to escape, only he knows what he’d be escaping to is far worse. “Get up please.”

“Wait,” Charles says, lifting a hand to Erik’s forehead and brushing his hair out of the way, like he’s taking his temperature. “Calm down. It’s okay. It wasn’t real.”

And it wasn’t, of course; part of it was memory but the worst was that which _wasn’t_ \-- the horrible way Charles looked at him, the boy on the shore. “I know,” Erik lies, and after a second he leans back again, slowly lying down on the bed with his head on the extra pillow, the back of his throat too dry. It’s strange to be here, with Charles, to feel the weight of him in the bed and the way the sheets pull when Charles moves, real and grounding, to feel the warmth of his hand. Erik continues after a long and silent moment, turning his face into Charles’ hand, “It’s just … today.” The thought of seeing all of them again, and worse, of them seeing _him_ , makes him feel sick down to his very core.

“You could have woken me up, that would have been okay,” Charles says, stroking Erik’s hair now, his thumb caressing Erik’s forehead like he’s smoothing the dreams away. “I wouldn’t have been angry.”

Erik nods at the ceiling. When he tilts his head to look at Charles, Charles is watching him, leaning up on his elbow. 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Erik says. “I don’t know why. But I don’t want to go.”

“Well,” Charles says, “Unfortunately we do have to. But I’ll be there the whole time, and so will an awful lot of armed guards ready to put down any trouble. Just remember that you’re stronger than they are. Nothing they say can hurt you unless you let it. Okay?” He glances down between them, and there’s a fleeting look of worry on his face before Charles shifts sideways and away, making more space between them. “Come on. We should get up.” 

“Yeah,” Erik says. “Yeah. All right.” It’s still a moment before he can make himself move away from Charles, forcing himself to get out of the bed and onto his own unsteady-feeling feet. “I’ll … meet you, in twenty.”

He goes back to his own room, flipping on the overhead light. The bedsheets are in a tangled knot near the foot of the bed, his suitcase open on the floor. Erik sits down at the end of the bed, eyes shut, and tries to think of nothing at all. Instead of -- instead of what they must be doing right now, somewhere in this city. Are they eating? Dressed? Still in handcuffs, or restrained only by suppressor bands and the presence of guards? But sooner or later, they will be in the courtroom, close enough that if Wyngarde wore too much cologne Erik would probably smell it. 

He pushes up again, and paces, back and forth, back and forth. Every time he catches his own gaze in the mirror over his dresser he doesn't recognize himself. The person he sees there looks too old and too Dominant. He's masquerading as a stranger. All this playing at power .... Nature can't always win out over nurture.

He pauses at the dresser, grasping the edge of the top shelf, and for a moment his reflection looks green and wild-eyed, and he thinks he might vomit, every muscle in his back and stomach tensing -- but he doesn't, after all, just sucks in several shaking breaths and tries to balance himself in his sense of the metal in the building all around him. 

Whatever he might feel, he will have to ignore it. Even if it's all pretend, he refuses to get on the stand and let them all see, once more and for good, the terrified little boy he really is.

*

_Charles_

Erik looks wan and hollowed out when he finally steps down from the stand after cross-examination, and Charles wants nothing more than to go to his side and put his arms around him, to tell the defense attorney where and how unpleasantly to go fuck himself -- but he can’t, of course. It’s awful watching Erik walking slow and alone across that empty space in front of the audience like it’s some kind of walk of shame, his shoulders a little bowed.

Though they’d done hours of prep with Gabrielle, Erik hadn’t been able to avoid the defense walking him into their traps, all the awful implications and insinuations that don’t so much prove anything as they make his character questionable. When asked if he ever seduced any members of the Hellfire Club, though Charles sat there thinking -- no, say no, we’ve talked about this and that is not the same question that you think it is, Erik said _yes_.

Charles doesn’t know whether to kill the defense attorney or to cry. It doesn’t help having the damn suppressor on; it feels like he’s suffocating, like he can’t offer any support to Erik this way, and when Erik finds his seat next to Charles he takes it quickly, furtively, clasping his hands in his lap to hide the way they're shaking now, like dead leaves.

"You did fine," Charles murmurs, reaching over and wrapping his hand around Erik's, squeezing gently. It feels so paltry, but it’s all he can do. "The judges all look like they hate the defense lawyer."

"Well, they can't make a ruling based on hatred," Erik mutters back, and sinks into his seat with a heavy creak of wood, his head bowed. 

Charles keeps his hand on Erik’s, hoping it provides him with at least a little comfort, but says nothing further. Anything that would be of real use will have to wait until they’re alone later, when he can be candid and forthright in a way inappropriate for public; for the time being Charles wishes they could take a recess, but that’s put paid to when the damned attorney opens his mouth and says,

"The defense calls Mr Sebastian Shaw to the stand."

Beside Charles Erik's eyes fly open and he straightens in his chair almost immediately; Charles follows his gaze to where Shaw is standing with a slow and deliberate dignity, his hands clasped almost penitently in front of him in the thick handcuffs that circle his wrists. He looks noble, the way he carries himself, except for the glance he sends in their direction, a sidelong, sly look that Charles wishes he could read, his stomach feeling like it’s boiling inside of him. Shaw climbs the three steps up to the witness’ desk and swears the oath, hand on heart, all with that pious look on his face. Charles wishes he could slap it off him.

"Mr Shaw," the attorney says. "Please describe for us the nature of your relationship with the Hellfire Club."

Shaw settles into his seat, giving the man a benign smile. "I am its founder and its patriarch. I created the club and its members are like my children; I care for them and guide them."

He doesn't seem to be denying his involvement altogether -- from what Charles has read of the past transcripts from Shaw's testimonies, he even conceded that Hellfire engaged in violent terrorist tactics. What on earth is he trying to portray himself as? Charles can’t quite make it out -- at one moment he seems to think of himself as Malcolm X, and at another, the mutant version of Jesus Christ. It’s impossible to fathom.

"What would you describe as the purpose of the Hellfire Club?"

"To defend mutant rights," Shaw says. "You may be too young to remember, my boy, but I am older than I look, and I established the club to make sure human interests did not bury mutants alive before our species could truly be born. The Hellfire Club defends our kind who cannot defend themselves."

"Even with the kinds of violent methods we have seen demonstrated over the course of this trial?"

"Do you really think there is any other way to make a point in this troubled world?" Shaw asks, raising an eyebrow. "There is not a civil rights movement in the history of mankind that did not win through judicious use of tactical violence. People like to pretend otherwise, but that is a lie. The only way to gain freedom is through brutality against those who would brutalize us. I take no pleasure in it; these are merely facts."

"And yet there are other crimes of which you are accused, Mr Shaw," the defense attorney says, pacing slightly between the judges and Shaw's seat. "We've all heard Mr Lehnsherr's testimony." At this, the man gestures toward Erik, and Charles squeezes Erik’s hand, tight, stares back at Shaw with fierce determination not to give in.. "Can you describe your relationship to Mr Lehnsherr, specifically?"

"Ah," Shaw says, and at this he pauses, seeming troubled; he winces, then says, as if it pains him, his eyes narrowing and his mouth downturned, voice hesitant, "I am afraid that although I should love to say simply that Erik is to all intents and purposes my son, I must instead confess that I am ... well. I, like so many others, am one of his victims."

Oh.

Oh, _fuck_ no.

Charles stares for an entirely different reason now, aghast, as beside him Erik stiffens in his seat and a murmur starts up in the room; Shaw just … _sits_ there, his face slightly lowered in profile, his hands clasped respectfully in his lap and his dove grey suit stretched taut between his shoulders. It’s awful, just -- the _ludicrousness_ of what he’s saying, and Charles hisses, "What the bloody hell are they playing at?" even as the defense attorney asks, "What do you mean by that?"

Shaw smiles tiredly, bravely.

"As we all now know, Erik is a 7D. And as we all know, there is a certain sexual magnetism that comes with that," Shaw says, his voice still just as sad, just as hypnotic in its careful timing. He looks towards Charles and Erik in the prosecution seats for a moment, then away, as if looking at Erik pains him. "Though I love the boy dearly, the way in which he influenced the rest of us into some rather ... distasteful acts, haunts me to this day."

"He can't do this," Charles whispers, his hand clenching hard around Erik's, almost painful. "I won't let him."

"How old was Mr Lehnsherr when these incidents began?"

"In hindsight? It began right at the very beginning," Shaw says. "He was always a very demanding child, needed constant love and attention. And if he didn't receive it ... well. It made me wonder, later, if he had been exercising his power over people before he even came to live with us. Perhaps even over his birth parents."

"And how old was Mr Lehnsherr the first time one of your group had sexual relations with him?"

"Difficult to say, as we did not have a birth certificate. Perhaps two, two and a half years old."

Charles can feel himself bristling, the hatred rising up in him like virulent bile in his throat, until he’s not sure if he wants to speak up, object, or to run, or throw up, or all three at once. Erik is gripping his hand back now, until it’s hard to imagine either of them being able to let go. Charles only just manages to keep from baring his teeth, his every muscle tense with holding still.

"Describe that incident, please," the attorney says, blithely continuing on as if this is nothing at all.

Shaw looks thoughtful, and pained, before he finally says, "I was in the kitchen preparing coffee when Erik came in and started demanding that I play with him outside in the snow. Despite being told to wait, he persisted, and I grew irritated and instructed him to go to his room. However Erik refused, and so I took him there myself. When I got there I was overtaken ... excuse me." He takes a drink of water, slow swallows, eyes hooded. "I was overtaken by the need to put him in his place and to have sex with him. I proceeded to do so as if this was perfectly normal. Afterwards I left the bedroom and was not even perturbed by it until I was out of Erik's orbit and felt a sudden horror come over me when I realized what I had done."

"I see," the attorney says, and Charles is finding it hard to breathe, now, he’s so angry. Charles tries to imagine Erik as a demanding child, tugging at someone's pantleg, begging to be taken out to play -- as a normal toddler, wanting affection and love but getting Shaw instead, monstrous and abusive. God.

"Did you ever try to put an end to this behavior?" the attorney asks.

"Oh, many times. But somehow whenever we tried to deny him we ended up repeating the same acts again," Shaw says. "It was a vicious cycle. The more we struggled, the more Erik induced us to further molestation."

"What do you think was the purpose?" the attorney asks. "Surely Mr Lehnsherr cannot have enjoyed being injured thus at such a young age, prior to the sexual urges of puberty."

"Of course, no," Shaw says, and he sounds even more sorrowful, now, as he looks at Erik again, sympathy etched into every part of his face except for his cold, reptilian eyes. "It wasn't Erik's fault, it was just biology. He didn't know how to control himself."

Shaw’s gaze slides away from Erik, and this time fixes on Charles, Dominant somehow without even saying a word, and Charles can’t hold Shaw’s gaze, no matter how hard he tries -- he hates himself for it, knows that without the suppressor on he would … but he can’t, he can’t, his eyes dropping submissively, and he can almost feel Shaw’s glee, knows he’s imagining it but knows it’s real, too, that Shaw is probably revelling in it.

The attorney lets out a little cough. "Mr Lehnsherr's medical examination revealed numerous healed and unhealed fractures, and evidence of multiple surgeries to correct internal injury. What was the cause of these?"

"Many were caused by training," Mr Shaw says, and Charles can feel it when Shaw looks back at the attorney, the weight of his Dominance lifting along with his attention. "We hold rigorous sessions to prepare for missions; Erik, being so young, was the perfect blank canvas to train into the ultimate mutant warrior for justice. We did not always remember that he was clumsy when going through growth spurts. And, regrettably, a young child’s body is too small to stand up to the kind of sexual practices Erik was making us engage in with him. Erik required medical intervention multiple times for injuries sustained during sexual intercourse."

Charles’ stomach turns just thinking about it, even though he read the results of Erik’s medical examination at the hands of the CIA himself, has had Erik outright tell him just how many days he used to spend in hospital before he was yet five years old, the way the Hellfire Club used to bring him balloons and stuffed animals as gifts, paltry band-aids to heal wounds that went far deeper than the physical.

"Mr Lehnsherr himself described in testimony just a moment ago that he remembers personally seducing yourself and the other members of the Hellfire Club,” the defense says, as if every word out of Shaw’s mouth is perfectly reasonable. Regrettable, but reasonable. “Can you give us an account of one such case, from your perspective?"

"Hmm. Yes. Erik is a voracious reader, and we would often run out of materials to give him. Mr Rasputin, as you know, is a teleporter, and so able to fetch more at his whim; Erik would trade sex in order to get new books brought for him. On one such occasion Erik came into the living room where I was sitting, along with Mr Rasputin and Miss Frost, and asked for a new book, but Mr Rasputin did not wish to go and fetch one. Denied his prize, Erik knelt and fellated Mr Rasputin into compliance in front of myself and Miss Frost."

It’s awful, listening to Shaw talking about Erik as if he were a favored but badly-behaved son, and Charles grits his teeth and does not let go of Erik’s hand, concentrates purely on the pain of that tight grip and barely hears the other questions the attorney asks until the man finally says, "That's all for now; defense reserves the right to recall Mr Shaw at a later date." It’s as if it comes from across a great distance, echoing and far off.

It’s Gabrielle’s turn, then, to cross-examine Shaw. She asks for explicit details about the causes of some of Erik’s injuries, and produces medical records to undermine his responses when it’s clear Shaw is being disingenuous. For the most part, though, Shaw is surprisingly candid -- “Pain was often the only way to ensure compliance from Erik, and I needed to be certain that in dangerous situations he would obey me without question or hesitation, knowing the consequences if he did not” -- as if beating Erik unconscious for minor slights was merely done in the effort of saving Erik’s life. Fortunately Gabrielle doesn’t let him get away with that, since the threats to Erik’s life in the first place were entirely due to Shaw’s design.

“Why did you tell Mr Lehnsherr his DS score was, incorrectly, -1S?” Gabrielle asks after some time, pausing again near the front of the room. “Once more, I remind the judges of the evidence presented earlier regarding Mr Lehnsherr’s DS test scores, which say that he is 7D, and the defendants’ own admission that they misled Mr Lehnsherr in this matter.”

Shaw lets out a sorrowful sigh. “Ms Haller, given that Erik was already misusing his Dominance to negatively influence the members of the Hellfire Club into these so-called sexual abuses, I deemed it unwise to allow him to understand how much power he held at so young an age. Teaching him control and discipline was the only way I could see to rein in such a dysfunctional young boy. Whether or not the court agrees with my reasoning, I cannot influence, but I was trying to save the boy from going down a far darker path than my own.”

Even Gabrielle’s carefully-held calm fractures a little at that, and she says, “Mr Shaw, do you really expect the court to believe that Erik Lehnsherr, who was only a year and a half old when you kidnapped him, was so precociously aware of the sexual and dynamic politics of the adult world to deliberately use his Dominance to manipulate you and the others into sexually compromising positions?” She’s frustrated, incredulous, and Charles finds himself wondering if she’ll even be able to see the cross all the way through -- or if she’ll have to give it up to one of the other prosecutors on her team.

“Ms Haller, in a world full of mutants with magnificent and incredible powers, how can we truly believe anything is impossible?” Shaw asks, and his tone is so mild butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

It’s paramountly clear, even to Charles, that Shaw is well aware of how ridiculous all his claims are. He isn’t trying to convince the court. He isn’t trying to be acquitted. He is simply trying to insult and manipulate Erik even now, to capitalize on all of Erik’s secret fears, the lies Shaw himself fed him -- likely from the first time he ever touched him -- that made Erik believe he had earned every bad thing that ever happened to him. It’s simple, and cruel, and Charles wants to punch that faint smile from Shaw’s disgusting mouth.

"We'll break now for a brief recess," the lead judge says when Gabrielle finally relinquishes her right of cross-examination, "resuming court in thirty minutes."

Charles drags in a loud and shaking breath, swallowing hard before he can make himself lift his gaze to Erik’s face. Erik is already looking at him, and Charles feels ashamed that Erik has caught him bowed, cowed, by Shaw, feels the embarrassment painting his cheeks. "Come on," he says. "Let's go get some air. There's a courtyard we can use."

Erik follows Charles out into the hall, and down to the open-air patio as if in a daze, drifting alongside him as if he's walking through a dream, untethered to reality. Charles sits on a wooden bench and Erik joins him after a moment, sitting down with strained, jerking motions. 

"Well," Erik says. "We're going to lose."

"Don't be silly," Charles says, trying for reassurance -- though whether for himself or for Erik, he doesn’t know. "There are mountains of evidence against them and Shaw only has venom to fight with. I have plans for him, don't you worry."

"Weren't you listening?" Erik says, turning to look at him, despair painted all over his face. "Shaw knows. He wouldn't have said all of that if he didn't know. They're going to ask you if you've fucked me, and you'll say yes."

Charles swallows, hard, the breeze rippling through his hair and mussing it, something he’ll need to fix before going on the stand. He won't have a choice but to say yes if asked directly, not if he doesn't want to perjure himself -- and Charles isn’t sure he’d even be able to tell a lie, not while wearing the suppressor, not if asked by a Dom.

"Shaw is a disgusting, twisted old snake," he says finally, making his mouth firm, his voice strong, despite the way he feels inside. "Firstly, he doesn't know anything, because he's not a psychic. He's trying to paint you in a bad light, that's all, and you're paranoid because he was once in a position where he had ultimate power over you, which is entirely understandable but no longer true. And secondly,” Charles takes a deep breath, keeping his voice measured, “they can't ask me that, because I'm an expert testifying on my area of expertise, not a standard witness. My testimony is not about myself and it would be inappropriate for it to become about myself."

"You're testifying as my guardian," Erik says, "not just a psychologist; you're a character witness, as well. You can't know they won't ask. What if they _do?_ " Erik looks down at the ground, glaring at the crack between the cobblestones, his free hand fisting at his knee.

"You've -- we've -- known all along that was a potential outcome," Charles says, his voice softer now, but no less certain. "I don't think they will, Erik, but I can't lie. I did do those things."

There’s a long silence, broken only by the wind blowing through the garden, rustling the leaves.

"He's telling the truth, isn't he," Erik says at last, pulling his hand away from Charles’ and pressing it back behind him, out of Charles’ sight. "I really am ... like that."

"Shaw deliberately made sex the only bargaining chip you had to get things you wanted, then despised you for being the way he made you," Charles says, shifting on the bench, putting his hand on Erik's shoulder, resting it there gently. "You didn't choose this, Erik, and when I get up on the stand I'll testify to that. Okay? His is not the only voice, and it's certainly not the one you should choose to believe. Whose opinion do you value more, mine or his?"

"Yours," Erik says, and he manages a small smile, though it doesn’t reach his eyes.

"And which of us has a degree in psychology, me or Sebastian Shaw?" Charles asks, squeezing Erik's shoulder. "His opinion is nothing, Erik -- it's just the scum he scraped off the bottom of his shoe and threw at you to make you feel bad. Sebastian Shaw's opinion is worthless, okay? He is not right about you."

The problem is ... the problem is, Charles knows that Erik doesn't believe him. Erik has never really believed anything that Charles has said about why all of this happened in the first place -- why it's Erik, in particular, this kind of thing always seems to happen _to,_ that it’s a combination of Shaw’s megalomania and Erik’s seeking people out to continue the pattern, and as much as Charles would love to deny it -- as much as he hates to think it, as sick as it makes him feel, like he could vomit out all of his internal organs and keep on going -- as different as Charles and Shaw might be, they do have something in common. 

"Why did you want to fuck me, Charles?" Erik says at last, his gaze fixed out at some spot across the patio, almost seeming calm, only he isn’t, of course; Charles doesn’t need his telepathy to know that.

Oh. Charles’ gut clenches, hard, and he glances around the courtyard again, half expecting to find an audience listening in, feeling the blood draining out of him, his head swimming, face cold. "I'm not sure this is the place to have this conversation," he says, his voice surprisingly even.

"I need to know," Erik looks around at Charles now, leaning in closer where Charles can’t help but look at him, Erik’s arms crossed around his own waist and his nails digging into opposite elbows. His voice is low and rough, his cheeks flushed with horrible color, but he holds Charles’ gaze, grey-green eyes blazing. "I need to know if it's like Shaw said. If it's because I'm a 7D."

Charles swallows, and ducks his head, and unlike that time in his office, where he’d tried to leave, fought against answering, this time he finds himself giving in. "I was attracted to you," he says, quietly, his hands coming back into his own lap to fidget. "I ... I don't think there's a way to divorce being attracted to you from being attracted to your Dominance. They're intrinsically linked. And you were ... I don't know. You loved me. Even if it wasn't the same way."

"So Shaw could have felt that, too. I was -- what? Two years old? Younger, even. I depended on him for everything. I must have loved him. I know I did. Maybe he ... couldn't help it. I made him." There’s a note of finality to Erik’s words, and a grotesque smile twists Erik’s lips, contorting his face entirely.

"It's not the same," Charles protests. "I'm a telepath, and I -- don't make me do this now."

Erik just -- looks at him, his eyes hot and burning, that smile still pasted onto his lips like a mask. "It's fine," he says. "I already have my answer." He unfolds his arms slowly and gets up, dusting off his trousers. "Come on. If we stay out here, we're going to be late."

Charles shakes his head, staying sat where he is, his own hands curling in the fabric of his suit, wrinkling it. "You're not listening," he says, forcing himself to calm -- his face is an exercise of twitches as he pulls it back under control, he must look mad, or palsied, and he hates it, hates talking about this. "I'm a telepath. I feel how other people feel about me. You loved me and that felt good and I haven't -- had much of that and I'm pretty much -- I have my own issues. Whereas Shaw is a sociopath who feels nothing. I feel everything. It is not the same."

"Then why did he do it?" Erik says, frustrated. "He's not Essex -- he isn't a pedophile. He doesn't get off on fucking little kids."

"No," Charles says, and gets to his feet, wrapping his arms around his own chest. "He gets off on power, and exercising it on other people. He liked that he knew you were a 7D and you didn’t know, and he liked that he could fuck you to show how much stronger he was. That's why. I am not a magic eight ball but I do know what I'm talking about. I've met the man. And I would never lie to you."

"I know," Erik says. He sounds like he’s being honest, and he looks it -- but Charles knows him well enough to know that what matters to Erik is what he thinks this proves about himself, and Charles can’t honestly say ... no, it wasn't like that, I wasn't mysteriously drawn to you against my will, I never wanted to fuck you despite my better instincts, I never felt trapped in your orbit. 

His excuses for fucking Erik are the same as the ones Shaw is giving now. There’s nothing true that Charles can say that will dissuade Erik, or make him see sense, and Charles feels desperately, terribly ill.

"You're a good person, Charles," Erik says finally, sounding like he’s trying so hard to make _Charles_ feel better, the stupid boy. "Too good, sometimes. That's what I like about you." He reaches out and touches Charles’ upper arm, very lightly, his touch skimming down past Charles’ elbow before it drops away.

Right now Charles wishes he could just die, and have done with this whole thing for once and for all. It would be less painful.

"Come on," Charles says, trying for a normal voice, and offers Erik his hand, but is unable to meet his gaze, ducking his head away. "We need to go back inside."

He leads and Erik follows, but when they reach the courtroom Erik takes his seat alone, and Charles is led up to the desk to be sworn in, a short figure beside the gangly height of the court official.

Here, at least, confronted by other people who do not know him well enough to see under his skin and winkle out a true reaction, Charles can use his mother’s training to ensure that there's no sign of his upset on his face. He replaces it carefully, building a mask of deep and solid calm before he turns his back to Erik and settles into his seat, folding his hands down out of sight.

"Dr Xavier," Gabrielle says, stepping forward towards him with a friendly nod, silent reassurance. "You are testifying as an expert witness in your role as Erik's psychologist. We heard from Erik earlier today, and last trial session, when he gave testimony on the Hellfire Club's violations of the Rome Statute, in addition to their violations of his personal autonomy. The court is particularly interested in your assessment of Erik Lehnsherr, and the consistency of his allegations. Do you understand?"

"I understand," Charles says.

Gabrielle is standing slightly to his left, giving him a perfect view of the judges. "Dr Xavier, how did you first meet Erik?" 

It's an easy question, one he and Gabrielle had practiced in advance. There will be time to talk more to Erik later, but for now he needs to focus on the task at hand, and so he says, in a polite, measured tone, "The CIA requested that I consult on Erik's case when he was first taken into custody as a result of the raid on the Hellfire Club's New York safehouse, and I was assigned at that point as his psychologist due to my expertise in mutation-related cases."

"Can you describe your impression of Erik upon this initial visit?"

Charles nods. “It was immediately clear to me that Erik was a very troubled boy, and that he had suffered considerable abuse at the hands of those who had raised him, which I discovered through conversation with him -- during which it became clear that he believed such treatment was normal for submissives -- and which I observed in the form of his extreme submissiveness, which was not at all typical of a -1S submissive, which he claimed to be. He was unwilling to make any decisions for himself, and viewed any and all adults, Dom or sub, as threats. Through discussion it became increasingly plain that he believed himself to be obligated to be sexually available to any Dominant who was interested in him, regardless of his age or feelings on the subject.”

"Why did Erik come to live with you?"

God. How short a time has passed since Erik first came into his life, and Charles does not allow himself to think about how short a time it has been since they ended up in bed together. "Erik was initially placed in foster care," he says, carefully, "but it became almost immediately obvious that any environment with a Dominant authority figure was not good for Erik in light of his past trauma and behavioral issues. As a result I suggested that Erik come to live with me for a time, given that I lived alone and am a submissive, this bypassing Erik's problems with Dominant authority."

"In what way was the environment with a Dominant authority figure not good for Erik?"

"Erik felt that he needed to make himself sexually available to the Dominant of the family he was placed with, and reacted poorly when his advances were rejected," Charles says. He's glad that he can't see Erik, to see what effect his words are having. "Following that, when they attempted to make him remove the collar the Hellfire Club had made Erik wear, he reacted violently and injured the submissive foster parent. I judged that any home with a Dominant adult would pose the same problems."

"Is it possible that Erik might have tried to make himself sexually available to the members of the Hellfire Club as well, in the manner described by Mr Shaw?" Gabrielle asks.

Charles' mouth tightens. "Yes, as part of his abuse Erik was trained that in order to be safe, and fed, and to get basic necessities or things that he wanted, he had to offer sex to the members of the Hellfire Club. This would not however be a cause of his abuse, but rather a symptom."

"The prosecution would like to enter into evidence the files Dr Xavier has on Erik Lehnsherr's case; they are available in Appendix E on your digital folder. Dr Xavier, Erik told us that he had -- in his words -- _seduced_ at times the members of the Hellfire Club. Why would someone who has been abused like Erik has _choose_ to invite further abuse?"

It feels like he's answering Erik, now, even though he's looking at Gabrielle, and it's so important to get the words right -- to make Erik believe him, this time -- that Charles almost feels nauseous with the responsibility of it, of trying to say it properly. He leans forward a little in his chair. "I think the first thing to consider in cases such as this is that the abused person, when abused from such a young age, perceives the abuse as normal. It is not a violation, the way you or I would think of it -- this is part of their everyday life. It is standard operating procedure. This is a concept that would have been in Erik's psyche from early childhood -- not that he deserved the treatment, because there was no need to deserve it. It was simply what happened.

"Furthermore, Erik's safety and wellbeing was entirely dependent on these adults who abused him, and refusal to comply would have resulted in severe injury -- did, on several occasions, and sometimes even when he did comply. It is very, very common for children who have been both sexually and physically abused to instigate further abuses in order to avoid being hurt, because this is how they have learned to manipulate their abusers to prevent further physical harm. By inducing the Hellfire Club to have sex with him Erik avoided further brutality. It is perfectly logical, if horrifying."

It's simultaneously liberating and awful to have said all of that aloud, to have had to be so blunt about it with Erik sat listening, especially after their highly charged conversation outside. Instead of trying to look at Erik Charles looks at Shaw, and the sight of that bland, _interested_ expression puts the fire back in him, makes him want even more to win, to defend Erik from Shaw's noxious fumes.

"Thank you, Dr Xavier," Gabrielle says, almost gently. "The prosecution rests."

She looks at something over his shoulder, and it's only when the defense attorney steps forward, toward the front of the room, that Charles realizes it must have been he whose gaze she met. He's a tall, slim Dom with black-rimmed glasses perched on the end of his nose, his blond hair streaked with premature grey.

“So, Dr Xavier,” the man says, glancing down at his own notes, then back up at Charles, his face utterly mild. “Please talk me through your diagnoses of Mr Lehnsherr’s psychological condition as outlined here in your files.”

The defense spends a good twenty minutes from there trying to get Charles to imply any measure of shame or blame on Erik’s part for his promiscuity, talking around and around the subject as if he might be tripped up if they ask the same question often enough; it’s aggravating in the extreme, and Charles keeps his calm only because every time they do he comes back with a reasonable tone that makes the attorney’s eye twitch, irritated that Charles isn’t playing his games. 

"How is it possible, in your professional opinion, that so many of these older Doms would be interested in one young boy?” the man asks finally, frustration seeping into his tone now. “These statutory rapists you mention, and allegedly, the defendants in addition to unnamed dozens of their confederates.... Was Mr Lehnsherr _exceptionally_ attractive, despite his young age?"

Charles raises an eyebrow. "Sir, one in five submissives in this country has been raped at one time in their life. We live in a society which deems rape culturally acceptable, where if a submissive dresses in a way that shows skin or flirts with a Dominant then it is deemed understandable if that Dominant then chooses to rape them. When a submissive is outright offering himself to every Dom who looks at him, then there will be a percentage who take him up on that offer, regardless of the legality of it, just as there will be a percentage who do not. It is simply a matter of volume. As for Erik's attractiveness, I do not believe that is covered within the remit of my psychology degree."

"And yet," the attorney goes on, as if he has barely even heard Charles’ rebuttal, "Mr Lehnsherr is a 7D. A case study on a 7D -- included in Appendix F -- showed that this individual's orders were impossible to disobey even for Doms as strong as 5D when full weight was put behind them. The defendants -- Miss Frost, Mr Rasputin, Mr Quested, Mr Wyngarde, and Mr Shaw -- are 3D, 3D, 1D, 2D, and 5D, respectively. If Mr Lehnsherr felt so inclined, could he force any or all of them to bend to his Will?"

Charles takes a breath in, then lets it out. Calm, calm, calm. “Given my experience of Erik’s behavior, attitudes and abilities upon meeting him,” he says, “then my answer is -- at that age, no. Erik was trained to offer himself submissively, but not to exert any form of Dominance over any other person in any way shape or form, for fear of terrible and violent punishment. As everyone in this courtroom will be aware, Dominance is not an innate skill but one that must be learned and honed; while most Dominant children begin experimenting with Command at the age of eight or so, Erik did not even attempt to command me -- the submissive he lived with and was most comfortable with -- until he was sixteen years old, and then clumsily enough that I could have resisted had I chosen to quite easily. It is not possible that he could have exerted such pressure on the defendants.”

"And yet we have observed a clear pattern of sexual aggression in Mr Lehnsherr far before the age of sixteen," the defense says. "Mr Lehnsherr himself testified during cross-examination about his promiscuity since coming to live with you, and we all heard his perspective on the incidents that occurred while he was living with the defendants. There is also no denying that high degrees of Dominance are associated in the scientific literature with promiscuity, high libido, dark triad personality traits -- that is to say, narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism -- as well as generally increased criminal aggression and violence. Isn’t that true, Dr Xavier?”

“It is also true that studies which show such associations also show strong associations with the individuals in question having been abused,” Charles says, his mouth drawing tight. “Although there is hardly enough data in any of these studies to be called conclusive, given how few high Dominants were available to study. Most 6D and 7D Dominants tend to go into the armed forces, politics, or law enforcement, all of which are roles aimed at helping others, rather than self-interest.”

“Why, Dr Xavier, I had no idea one could tell so much about an individual’s personality based on nothing more than career choice! I would have thought that would be a factor of socialization as much as anything else.” 

“Objection,” Gabrielle says, “the defense is not a psychologist.”

“My apologies,” the defense says smoothly, before one of the judges can respond. “Quite right. Dr Xavier, are you familiar with Hadley & Sherpa, 2009, or Xing et al. 2004, or perhaps with Pollack et al. 2014?”

“I am,” Charles says, his lips pursing; the papers being quoted are ones he reread before the trial, suspecting that this might come up. “All of these are studies based around high Dominance and its effects on social interaction. While I accept that the findings of the papers in question, that higher-level Dominants are more popular and more sexually attractive, are relevant to the defense’s earlier questions about whether or not I think Erik Lehnsherr is pretty,” he says, startling a laugh from someone among the judges, “these studies involved participants who were adults of legal and biological maturity and did not include pre-pubescent or pubescent children, and so are not relevant to Mr Lehnsherr’s time with the Hellfire Club. No studies have been undertaken that have shown such a connection in children, and the results of these studies cannot be taken to generalize to children.”

The defense looks displeased, but not entirely surprised by Charles’ response; surely even he knows that this entire line of argument on the Hellfire Club’s behalf is a shot in the dark, a last-minute grasp at the sociopath’s sympathy vote. 

Charles spends another three minutes citing his own examples of papers that show quite the opposite, and thoroughly debunking the defense’s prior arguments for good measure; it’s worthwhile for the firming expressions he sees on the judges’ faces, and for the way he can see Erik sitting just a little straighter, even if he’s still not his usual confident self. 

Charles is answering a question about his own experience with other high Dominants -- one final attempt on the defense’s part to discredit him -- when there’s a loud noise outside the courtroom doors, and he freezes, sitting very still, until it sounds again, an enormous bang like a car backfiring but it’s not a car, it’s -- 

\-- his heart is racing, his breath -- he can’t -- Charles can’t breathe, scrabbles at his tie knot with one hand even as his other hand goes up to his suppressor band, oh God, got to -- _BANG_ \-- got to -- _BANGBANG_ \--

It’s a gun, it’s a gun, _it’s a gun_ \--

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: references to child murder; extensive discussion of and references to past child physical and sexual abuse/rape; extensive victim-blaming; Shaw being an absolute shitstain of a human being


	30. Thirty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out the amazing fanart that Dri did of [the corset scene](http://drisrt.tumblr.com/post/109132721946/it-looks-good-erik-says-gaze-turning-down)! Isn't it amazing? <3
> 
> cw at end of chapter

_Erik_

The gun goes off, and everyone hits the floor. Everyone except Erik.

There are screams coming from outside, footfalls, people running. Inside the courtroom utter chaos erupts, the soldiers shouting conflicting orders and the judges crawling in their robes on the floor trying to escape out the side doors. Charles vanishes into the witness stand but Erik can still hear him screaming as well, every time the gun goes off, a panicked, piercing sound that drives into the core of him and splits him apart.

Three more gunshots. Erik is standing on the seat of his chair, leaping over the backs of the chairs in the front row. Another shot. Moira MacTaggert yells his name but he ignores her, landing on both feet in the center aisle, the impact jarring his bones. Charles must be freaking out, in his own panic-world, unable to defend himself, too busy with his paralysing fear. Erik has to get to Charles, he has to --

His gaze lands on Sebastian Shaw, the six of them still chained immobile to their chairs, and his mind goes suddenly, blissfully blank. People are yelling just outside this room. In the media enclosure, behind that black glass, he can feel a dozen cameras on them, on him. But his focus slides away from these things like oil on water, until Shaw is all he can see.

There’s an explosion, distant-sounding even though Erik knows feels iit rumbling through the floor beneath his feet, can sense all that metal shrapnel. It wasn’t that far away.

“It sounds like my cavalry is arriving,” Shaw says, with a small and genial smile. He hasn’t raised his voice, but all the same Erik hears it as if it were spoken just next to his ear, far closer than the pops and bangs outside. “If you speed things along, Erik, I may even consider allowing you to rejoin our little group. You have after all proven yourself worth the effort.”

Erik’s metal-sense latches onto a gun. Look closer: Glock 18C, 9x19 mm, automatic and fully-loaded. Dutch military issue, belongs to one of the guards, who hasn’t drawn it from its holster. “Hey!” It’s in Erik’s hand a second later, the steel buzzing in his ears -- Shaw is right there, just ten feet away, his blue eyes empty and cold. He’s wearing suppressors. Erik’s aim would be perfect; Erik never misses, not anymore. Shaw trained that out of him long ago.

Another gunshot outside.

Charles screams again, a short, startled sound, and Erik’s focus fractures. One part of him sees Shaw but the rest -- the other half of him has split away, and all that part of him can think is: _Charles._

He draws in a sharp breath and finally rips his gaze away from Shaw, running up two steps to the dais. Behind him he hears the horrible _put-put_ of automatic gunfire -- whether friendly or foe it’s impossible to say, and the sound of dead bodies hitting the floor just outside the courtroom door. They’re out of time.

Charles is huddled down behind the desk, his arms wrapped tightly around his head, shaking like a leaf with the suppressor band glimmering silver in his hair. When Erik crouches down beside him he can hear Charles whispering to himself, the actual words inaudible, but Erik knows this, he’s seen it before, has lived it himself.

“Charles,” he says, grabbing both Charles’ shoulders and bending in close, getting his mouth as near to Charles’ ear as he can. “Charles, get up now.” He thrusts all the Command he possesses into it and frantically hopes -- begs -- Charles will obey. “Come on. Let’s go. This way, right now.”

The rear doors bang open from the corridor, and Erik thinks -- the judges are out of the room, safe wherever judges go. That side door is still open, they can make it, they can --

One of the Dutch soldiers runs toward them from that doorway, tilted forward at the waist. “Kom op!” he yells at them. “Daarheen! Opschieten --”

He’s shot in the head before he can finish the sentence, with a bullet Erik doesn’t sense coming, his body dropping just a foot away from them, blood soaking into the carpet. Another shot rings out, then another, followed by loud thuds as heavy weights hit the floor.

Charles makes an awful sound, his hand clutching tightly at Erik’s jacket, his eyes screwed tight shut. “Don’t move, he’ll see us,” he says, begs, his voice raw with panic. “Cain’s got the gun, he’s going to shoot us -- ”

“Shh,” Erik hisses, but before he can continue another, familiar voice says,

“Well, well, well. Not so powerful now, are you, Shaw?”

Erik’s breath seizes in his chest. _No._

“Stay here,” he orders Charles, and clicks the safety off his gun as he rises to his feet.

The doors have been blown off the entrance to the room. Eight dead bodies are strewn like dolls outside, and two more within, not including the blank-eyed Dutch soldier. Five civilians left alive, huddled in the southeast corner. Agent MacTaggert is nowhere to be seen. Victor Creed stands in the middle of the courtroom, his sharp teeth bared in an animal grin, the thick, rough thatch of his hair falling raggedly around his shoulders. He has blood on his hands; the woman beside him is holding a gun, and it takes Erik a moment to realize that the reason it looks weird is that it’s made entirely from plastic.

“Sit back down, Erik, Victor and I are having a conversation,” Shaw says, sounding entirely calm, though Janos Quested is looking very nervous indeed, and Emma Frost -- Erik doesn’t think he’s ever seen her sweat before.

Charles tugs at his pants leg, trying to drag Erik back down and making soft, whimpering noises. Erik could remove his suppressor band, but he can still feel the media’s cameras watching, witnessing. That could be what Creed wants: force Erik to release Charles’ power, and annul the results of the trial. Maybe not his Plan A, but Plan B….

“The conversation’s over,” Erik says.

Creed moves. Erik’s quicker.

Creed staggers back, a shocked look on his face and a bullet hole between his eyes. Then falls, with a loud thump as he hits the tiles limp as a ragdoll, and Shaw laughs delightedly.

“Good shot,” Shaw calls, as if he’s a judge at some competition.

Creed isn’t dead, of course, just incapacitated, but Erik doesn’t have time to worry about that -- Creed’s compatriot rounds on him with the plastic gun, face twisting into a snarl, but Erik fells her with two more shots before she can even touch her trigger. Probably a good thing Charles is suppressed right now; better he doesn’t have to feel her die.

When he takes in another breath it’s like ice in his lungs, but he’s never felt steadier. He’s too well-trained to let his gun hand shake, and the way he looks around the room again, assessing -- it’s reflex, by now, as deeply ingrained as all Shaw’s other teachings. No surviving army personnel. It's just him, and them.

“Very nice shooting,” Shaw says, and he _applauds_ , a slow, gracious clap of his hands that rattles his cuffs. “I must say, Erik, I hadn’t expected you to keep up the practice. I’m rather impressed.”

Erik looks back to him, the man who is almost singlehandedly responsible for everything that has ever happened to Erik -- the good and the bad, the memories that wake him up at night in a cold sweat but also those tiny affections, little graces Erik can't bring himself to let go of, that almost let him believe he was loved.

Shaw quirks an eyebrow, inquisitive, even as beside him Essex murmurs something to Azazel, who has his head bent down to the older man’s level, listening intently. “Now then,” Shaw says, “I believe this is the time for us to negotiate the terms of our release?”

Erik nearly laughs, but the sound that comes ripping out of his chest is more like a bark, hoarse and raw. He lowers the gun, but doesn't let it go, doesn't release the safety. Not that he needs a gun to kill. He could crush the life out of Shaw's body with nothing more than those same steel cuffs around his wrists, the chain linking him, all of them, to their seats. He never thought he would have this opportunity, but here it is, presented before him like some great karmic gift. He doesn't need to wait for the trial's judgment -- he could end this now. No one would blame him. It could look like self defense. Even Charles would understand.

"And what terms would those be?" Erik says. The words sound ridiculous coming from his mouth.

Erik twists his lips into a thin smile and takes a step closer to the six of them, tugging Charles' grasp free from his leg -- Charles makes a noise that sounds a lot like ‘no’, but Erik can’t pay attention to that now. His heart pounds throughout his entire body, shuddering down to his very bones. Shaw's presence has consumed everything. Once again, he has become Erik's entire world.

Shaw shrugs, casual, as if he isn’t a prisoner here. As if the police won’t arrive any moment. “Well, what would you like?” he asks, glancing along the line at the others. “There are limits, of course, even to my generosity, but I’m sure we could make you a junior officer now that you’re grown. And you’d be free of the limitations the humans have put on you. That submissive, for example, unless you want to keep him.”

Disgust surges through Erik, hot and nauseous. This is what Shaw thinks he wants -- that even now Erik is so under Shaw's thumb that his greatest desire would still be Shaw's acceptance. It sickens him that Shaw would think to _gift_ this to him. That Erik should become like them. A true Hellfire officer, in every sense of the word.

His jaw clenches and he reaches out with his power, anticipation flowing through his veins like ecstasy, and sinks it into the metal links of those chains --

\-- when with a loud snarl Victor throws himself up from the floor and in _Shaw’s_ direction, his clawed hands ready to slash. What the --

Erik reacts on reflex. His power slips out of the chains and into all the guns he can sense in the room, all of them lifting into the air and spewing their bullets toward Victor Creed. Victor has such momentum, though, that he keeps crashing forward, swatting through them as blood and flesh flies from his body and stains his clothes. Erik takes in a sharp breath, and with it he feels the humming force of the earth’s geomagnetic field, electromagnetism sparking through every piece of matter in the universe -- then he _twists_ it, wringing it like a fabric that catches Victor and hurls him away from Shaw and the others to slam into the wall across the room. Erik hears Charles gasping for breath, a loud, wet sound from the witness box; in contrast Shaw has barely reacted. Emma Frost is tugging on her restraints trying to pull free, as are the others -- they’re pulling together trying to yank loose, even as Victor staggers back to his feet.

“I’m not here for you, kitten, I’m here for _Shaw_ ,” Victor says, wiping away a trickle of blood that’s escaping his mouth. His face is half torn up but already healing, gouges filling themselves with fresh meat. “For fuck’s sake, stop shooting and let me do the job!”

 _What job?_ Erik doesn’t understand -- going after Shaw seems like blasphemy, the very thought of a Hellfire officer turning on Shaw anathema to the part of Erik that is still that boy, wide-eyed and confused. There’s no time to think about that, however. Shaw isn’t Victor’s to kill. Shaw ruined Erik’s life, and Erik fully intends to seek his vengeance in every bone, every blood vessel, every nerve of Shaw’s body. And all the rest of them as well: Wyngarde, Azazel, Essex, Quested, Frost. Victor himself. Everyone who ever laid a hand on him.

“Shut the fuck up, Victor,” Erik snaps, ignoring his confusion, and Dominance sparks around each and every syllable, sizzling like electricity in the air. It isn’t an order but his Will is there all the same, as if a part of Erik _wants_ to order Creed down. He lifts his gun again, taking aim.

Victor makes a disgusted sound, spitting more blood out onto the tiles with a splatter. “For fuck’s sake, Lehnsherr, I’m under orders to leave you alone but if you push me we’ll fucking see!”

Erik hesitates, his finger on the trigger and all the metal in the room hovering in the air, paused. “What do you mean, you’re under orders?” he says, but Victor just stalks forward, gesturing for Erik to come at him again.

Erik takes a step closer himself, lifting his other hand to brace the other at the grip of his gun. “ _Tell me._ ”

“What the hell do you think it means,” Victor snaps, finally halting his approach, teeth sharp and bared. “There’s a new boss in town, fuckwit, and I have orders. Now get out of my fucking way -- ”

Before Erik can respond, metal explodes into his awareness: guns, dozens of them, and grenades, helmets --

“Freeze!” someone yells in a harsh military voice. “Drop your weapons!”

Some of those guns are aimed at Erik.

“Don’t shoot, we’re prisoners,” Shaw shouts, and Victor roars in frustration, a loud and terrifying sound -- he shoots a fierce glare at Erik, then at Shaw, before spinning on his heel and charging the rear door, bursting through it and slamming into the squad of soldiers on the other side, scattering them like bowling pins as he barrels through. The few shots that catch him in the back don’t even slow him down; Erik can hear his roar echoing through the building.

A unit splits off to chase him -- Erik feels their metal moving down the hall -- but the rest of them stay where they are, fingers on triggers.

“I repeat -- Drop! Your! Weapons!”

Erik senses Shaw’s gaze on the back of his neck, and he doesn’t have to look to imagine the coldness in those reptilian eyes, boring into his flesh. It’s a long second before Erik can bring himself to unwind his power from the metal he’s controlling. The weapons drop to the floor with a loud clatter. A beat later he drops his gun as well and kicks it away, sending it spinning across the floor toward the soldiers, then raises his arms to fold his hands behind his head.

“Down on your knees,” the sergeant orders, and Erik kneels down there on the floor, swallowing the coppery taste in his mouth and wondering what the hell they think they’d do if he didn’t obey -- if they’d shoot him with lead bullets, or throw a steel grenade.

“Erik,” Charles calls from behind the wooden wall between them, and he doesn’t sound like himself at all.

“If you want to shoot your star witness, please go ahead, you’ll be doing all of us a favor,” Shaw says, his tone implying the deep stupidity of the sergeant without ever so much as dipping into rudeness, and Emma Frost says, “Do aim the blood spatter elsewhere, the laundry service in prison is terrible.”

The sergeant opens his mouth to respond, but another voice speaks before he can give the order.

“Stand down!” Agent Moira MacTaggert pushes her way between the squad along with two of the robed judges from the ICC, both of them still pale-faced and perspiring but clearly trying to stand firm, accompanied by officers of the UN police. “All of you, stand down.”

“You don’t look like my commanding officer,” the sergeant says, and MacTaggert says, “These prisoners are under UN jurisdiction. Your orders are to stand down.”

“How disappointing,” Shaw casts a sidelong glance at Erik, though: one of utter satisfaction.

“Erik,” Charles calls again, and this time it’s very clear that he’s not himself. He sounds scared, and Erik twists around to look back toward the stand. Charles is still out of sight, but Erik can feel the suppressor band around his head moving: Charles must be trying to claw it off, ignoring the needle slid under his scalp.

“Don’t touch that, Charles,” Erik orders quickly; if Charles manages to remove the suppressor the defense will leap on the possibility that he altered the minds of the judges, or the defendants. The whole trial will be thrown. Charles isn’t himself right now, with the flashback and the suppressor casting him into deep submission, but Erik knows that if Charles accidentally ruined the trial, he’d never forgive himself.

“ _Stand down_ ,” MacTaggert says one last time, and finally the weapons lower, the squad’s formation slowly splintering.

“Sergeant,” one of the ICC judges says, her voice remarkably even, “please remand these six into custody and return them to their lodgings.” She gestures to Shaw and the other Hellfire officers. “Lehnsherr, you’re to go with the paramedics. Once you’re medically cleared the UN police will take you in to debrief you.” A brief pause, her lips tugging into a slight frown. “Where’s Xavier?”

“There,” Erik points to the stand as he slowly gets to his feet, not trusting the men with the plastic guns not to shoot him, even though he can see their weapons, like the metal ones of their confederates, are lowered. A trio of soldiers are already moving to obey MacTaggert’s command. “He needs medical attention.”

“Was Charles shot?” MacTaggert asks with urgency in her voice. Of course, Erik thinks; they’re friends, of sorts.

“No. He -- didn’t react well to the gunshots. Understandably,” Erik adds before anyone can make the mistake of thinking Charles is weak.

“Erik, you grab Charles, I’ll see you through to medical,” MacTaggert says, and gestures for him to move. “Come on, hustle.”

Erik hardly needs to be told twice. He goes to Charles immediately, ducking down behind the desk where Charles is curled on the floor, shaking with his arms around his head, and gingerly reaches out a hand to touch the bare nape of his neck. “Charles,” he whispers, stroking down once, twice, and wills Charles not to flinch away. “Charles, it’s over. You’re safe.”

“No, no, no,” Charles says, but it’s little more than a whisper, like he’s still scared he’s going to be heard.

“Shh.” Erik rests his other hand on Charles’ upper arm, squeezing very lightly. He can feel Charles trembling even through the thickness of his jacket. “It’s just me. It’s Erik. Do you remember me?”

“Get down,” Charles says, and he reaches for Erik, tugging him down with impressive strength, pulling him under the desk. His face, now revealed, is sheet white, his eyes red and swollen. His mouth is bleeding -- he must have bitten himself to try and stay quiet. “I can’t hear anyone, I’ve got this thing on me, it’s bad, we -- we have to hide.”

“No, we have to go and see the medics,” Erik corrects him.

Charles has pulled him into a rather awkward position, his spine twisted painfully, but he doesn’t try to pull away. Not yet. He infuses his words with Dominance, but just a little -- it won’t take much with Charles like this.

“Come on. Let’s stand up. I’ll protect you, I promise.”

Charles still looks scared, but he gets up on shaking legs, letting Erik straighten with him.

“We have to -- we should hide,” he says again, still whispering. It’s increasingly clear that Charles isn’t lucid right now, that he’s somewhere else entirely inside his head, but Erik can’t do anything about that right now. Not with the stress of all these soldiers in the room, with the media’s cameras as witnesses.

“We’re leaving right now,” Erik reassures him, and he tucks his arm around Charles’ waist, letting Charles drape half his weight against Erik’s side as he guides him slowly down the aisle toward Moira MacTaggert, who holsters her gun and reaches out to grasp Charles’ other elbow when they get close.

“ _No,_ ” Charles says, cringing away violently, and MacTaggert looks stung, her mouth opening in an ‘o’ of surprised hurt.

“Just let me,” Erik tells her. He doesn’t bother explaining why -- there’s no good explanation.

Charles curls close against Erik’s body, Erik guiding him around the gun Erik had kicked away earlier so he doesn’t trip over it. He’s compliant enough when it’s only Erik touching him, so it doesn’t take long to get out of the building, though they have to step around the carnage Victor left behind, bodies and blood in the corridor. Charles doesn’t seem to react to that, but it’s hard to tell what he’s really thinking when he’s like this.

Erik himself isn’t feeling anything at all. It’s as if someone went in with a knife and excised all his emotions. Probably it’s for the best. He doesn’t need to think about anything right now except Charles -- not Shaw, not the others, not Victor Creed and his orders.

Outside the ambulances have pulled right up on the sidewalk. As soon as Erik and Charles emerge a woman bustles up to them, talking in rapid-fire Dutch as she ushers them towards the back of her ambulance. Erik can’t even get a moment to say they don’t speak the language before she has them both sat side-by-side on the back edge of the bus and reaches for Charles who flinches again, pulling his arms up defensively.

“Wat is er gebeurd met hem?” she asks, looking sharply at Erik.

Erik can understand that much.

“He had a flashback,” Erik says in English. He repeats it in German, just in case, but he can’t keep his gaze on her -- it keeps sliding back over to Charles, searching his face and posture for signs he’s coming out of it. There aren’t any.

“He has had bad experience before this?” she asks in English, reaching for her pocket, drawing out a small flashlight. “Is this normal for him or is this not normal? You have seen this before?”

“Yes. On occasion.” Erik glances back toward the ICC building; he can’t see anyone paying them much mind, and he decides -- Shaw’s long gone by now. This is good enough. He uses his power to retract the needle from under Charles’ scalp and lift the suppressor band from around his head, slowly, so as not to startle Charles.

Charles makes a choked sound and takes a heaving breath, and says, “Oh! I -- I thought maybe he killed everyone already,” burying his face against Erik’s shoulder. The paramedic looks frustrated -- she probably wants to check his pupils, but Charles just looks like he wants to hide, making himself as small as possible.

“He’s gone,” Erik says. For a second, thinking about Victor Creed makes his heart stumble, his breath seizing in his throat. But no. He won’t be afraid. He wasn’t then, and he isn’t now.

Erik reaches for Charles’ hand, squeezing tight; Charles’ palm is clammy and damp against Erik’s own, but his fingers twitch up against Erik’s, which Erik counts as a positive response.

“Please,” he tells the paramedic, “just let us go back to the hotel. He needs to rest. Tell the UN police we’ll debrief tomorrow.”

“Is probably for the best,” she says, putting the flashlight away. “No rushing flashbacks, will end when it ends. Best thing for him, put him down and keep him there until better. Will help him stay calm. Can you do this? Does he have Dominant partner who can help?”

“There’s just me,” Erik says, and clenches his stomach against the small shudder that stumbles through his gut. “I can do it.” He’s the only one who can.

Charles is still shaking, but he gets up when Erik nudges him and follows along to the waiting car without arguing. Even so, Erik catches him glancing around fearfully. Looking for Cain, probably, his anxiety and confusion palpable now that he has the suppression band off. Those projected emotions are thick and cloying in Erik’s mind, like a fever dream, and no sooner than he’s sat down in the backseat Charles says, “I can’t find the way out,” clutching at Erik’s arm like a lifeline, his face wet again.

“Relax,” Erik says, layering the word with Command to try to start sliding Charles down into subspace slowly. He ignores their military escort, who settle down in the seats opposite Erik and Charles. Instead Erik bends his head to kiss Charles’ brow, tasting the salt of Charles’ sweat on his lips. “Stay calm.”

“Okay,” Charles says, and he’s quiet, then, drawing up his legs onto the wide seat so that he can place his head down against his knees, only his breathing giving him away. The soldiers look at him weirdly, but they stop when Erik glares at them, and none of them dare ask what’s wrong with Charles.

They ride in silence, then, Erik’s hand on the back of Charles’ head slowly combing his fingers through his hair over and over again. With Charles under control it’s hard not to let his mind wander back to the trial, to the way he felt so horribly, viscerally _aware_ of his own body when Shaw spoke to him, the way Shaw’s voice somehow felt like hands on his skin molding him into shape. Essex whispering to Azazel, something Erik couldn’t hear, words he can only now guess at: plans to execute him once Erik freed them? Or something worse?

And Creed.

Creed, whose influence is represented by Erik’s most recent scar, the long whitening streak on his stomach where they cut out his spleen and the long struggle to reclaim Erik’s own Dominance in reaction to what Creed did to him almost exactly one year ago.

Has it really been so long? When Erik closes his eyes he thinks it could have been just last night that he was lying on that mattress afterward, his entire body throbbing with agony and shame, Creed’s come soaking into his jeans.

What must the Hellfire officers think now? Erik replays the scene in his mind, and thinks … they must believe Erik was trying to protect them. He saved their lives, to their eyes. They don’t know he just never had a chance to finish what Creed started.

 _What a good boy_ , Shaw’s voice says in his head, and Erik swallows down bile. Nothing is as it should be. The six of them are alive due to Erik’s intervention, fully expecting Erik to one day make good on Shaw’s bargain.

That’s less important, though, than what Creed said: a new boss of Hellfire. Not Creed himself, then. Not anymore. So who?

There’s the bluebloods, the rich older mutants who thought their money ought to be able to buy them Hellfire power. Or maybe a clash between Hellfire and some other underground group went south and they’ve been subsumed entirely.

Someone out there wants rid of Shaw. It’s clear why: killing Shaw would cement their authority over all the cells. Dead men can’t be kings. And whomever it is, they were strong enough to bring Creed into line. The possibilities, the implications, are greater than Erik suspects even he can comprehend right now, with his mind still operating on a simpler format, a holdover from battle mindset.

When they finally arrive at the hotel it takes an order to get Charles out of the car and into the open -- too risky, apparently, but he obeys when commanded. The hotel staff are far too well-trained to ask questions, instead just calling an elevator and directing it straight up to their floor. The military escort checks the rooms for trouble, find none, and then leave them alone at last in their suite.

Charles starts moving the moment the door shuts, and it takes a few seconds for Erik to realize he’s headed for the space behind the couch, narrow and hidden from the rest of the room.

“No.” In two long strides he’s able to catch up, grasping Charles’ elbow and tugging him back, directing him toward the couch itself. “None of that.”

Erik sits down first himself, then pulls Charles after, pressing him back against the cushions with one hand on Charles’ shoulder. He still feels sick to his stomach from thinking about Hellfire, but with Charles to care for again it’s easier to ignore. He can deal with that later. And he’ll almost certainly deal with it the second he falls asleep, sinking into an ocean of memories whether he wants to or not.

“We’re going to sit here,” he tells Charles, and sends him down a little deeper. “We’ll sit, and I’ll tell you stories, and you’ll feel better. Understand me?”

Charles shudders, but then he relaxes a little, and when he says, “Okay,” it’s in a tone that manages not quite to be a whisper.

“Okay,” Erik says, and settles his arm across Charles’ shoulders, fumbling through his memories for a story to make good on his promise.

He ends up using a retelling of _The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe_ , the censored version Shaw had given him in childhood, with its moral of mutant supremacy. He can’t be bothered to worry about what it might mean, that this is the only story that comes immediately to mind, as if all the movies he’s seen and books he’s read since that time have been wiped from his mind entirely.

Charles listens in silence, laying his head down on Erik’s shoulder, though he doesn’t close his eyes, just stares at the door across from them, barely blinking. When Erik’s finished with the first story he has to invent a second, but his power of imagination is stilted and limited, awkward; he can’t tell if it’s really working. He tells a different story instead, then, a true story, and it’s somehow easy to replace the names as they fall from his lips with simpler ones. Gentler ones.

“Once upon a time,” Erik says, “there was a little boy, and when he was seven or so his ... father took him on a shopping trip.” Charles’ hair is soft beneath his touch, the silky strands falling between his fingers. “A real shopping trip. No other plans. The little boy was growing up and needed new clothes and he’d been a _very_ good boy that week, which meant he deserved them. They went to a regular mall, somewhere in Iowa where people wouldn’t be likely to recognize them -- they were famous, you see, like movie stars -- and the little boy’s father took him around to all the stores and let him try on clothes in the dressing room. The boy realized this meant he was growing up. He thought he’d be able to stay a child forever, but there’s something about this trip that made him feel like things had changed.”

Charles shifts against him slightly and Erik’s fingers slip a little lower, brushing bare skin and the crest of Charles’ ear.

“He got his favorite sweater on that trip. It was charcoal gray cashmere and made his eyes look like metal, which he liked. It was really warm, perfect for winter. His father bought him some new books to read, too, to help the boy learn English, and even a pair of leather shoes that looked like grown-up shoes. The boy was very polite and obedient the whole trip, so the boy’s father even let him go to the ice skating rink and try out the skates. The boy could float the metal blades above the surface of the ice and zoom around without having to touch the sides, which was good, because his father said he could only skate so long as he didn’t fall over, and if he fell they’d have to leave. So he didn’t fall for over an hour, until he was too tired to keep using his power and tripped and skinned his knee.”

Erik smiles a little, and lets out a soft breath, tilting his head back against the sofa cushions. Charles’ weight against his side is starting to grow heavy, warm, but he doesn’t mind it. It’s … familiar. Good.

“It was a nice day. It felt like everything was going right. One of the salespeople at the department store told the boy’s father that he had a very pretty son. The boy’s father said that his son was just as pretty as his mother was.”

Erik stops, not sure what else to say -- he can’t tell Charles the rest of the story, about going home, about how after the boy was rewarded with ice cream his father gave him a second reward, lying him down on his back on the bed and fucking his ass with slow thrusts that jostled the mattress and hurt even though it wasn’t a punishment. The day was only good until the boy got home, back to that house, where he trusted everyone implicitly and welcomed each and every betrayal of that trust.

“Shaw is a bastard,” Charles says, sounding drowsy but still watching the door; he seems calmer, but then there’s a slamming sound from outside, maybe someone down the hall, and Charles flinches.

“Lie down, Charles,” Erik orders him, pushing hard, and he can see it when Charles slips right down deep into subspace because everything in him relaxes all at once, like the tension has fallen out of his body. It leaves him soft and pliable as he obeys, shifting to lay down on the couch and lay his head on Erik’s thigh, then, when Erik nudges him, rolls over without complaint or hesitation to face Erik instead of the door, letting out a sigh as his eyes close.

"Better," Erik says.

He wishes it were as easy for him as it is for Charles to have all his fears wiped away with just a little pressure, swept down into the bliss of subspace, completely protected from the world.

“Mmm?” Charles hums, shifting so he can press his forehead against Erik’s stomach; his arm comes up to curl around Erik’s back, between him and the couch, and Erik can feel the question mark Charles is sending him, asking about his worry.

“Don’t bother about that right now,” Erik says firmly and settles his hand on Charles’ head, thumb over his temple. Charles has enough to think about on his own without having to deal with Erik’s issues as well. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

Charles sighs, and the question mark falls away, replaced by a feeling of contentment, broken only by spikes of anxiety when there are footsteps in the corridor, but those are easily soothed away. It’s kind of relaxing, actually, Charles being so easily managed, Erik being good at helping him for once. He tries to focus on that, instead of any of the quiet fears and memories buzzing at the back of his mind and threatening to overtake him if he lets down his guard. He does what Charles always tells him to do -- he focuses, ‘mindfully,’ on the weight of Charles’ head on his thigh, the press of his hand against the small of Erik’s back, the little nudge of his nose on Erik’s stomach, his soft breaths.

The smart jacket Charles likes to wear to court is rumpled now, no longer sleek and professional, but Erik smooths it out with his hand on Charles’ back, over and over, each time starting at the crown of Charles’ head and slipping his fingers through Charles’ hair, along his scalp and down the nape of his neck, along his spine, then back again. After a while, Erik realizes that Charles is hard, the front placket of his pants pushing out between his thighs where he’s laying on his side. Christ. Erik could do anything to him right now, and Charles would like it. The thought drifts idly into his mind and Erik dismisses it just as easily, the same way he did all the other intrusive thoughts. Better, anyway, to pretend he never noticed, for the sake of Charles’ pride.

Erik rubs the side of his thumb against Charles’ ear and drifts back into that beige mindset, that nothingness that is everythingness at the same time. It must be hours before he decides it’s been long enough since he last sensed telepathic anxiety from Charles to start allowing him to rise out of subspace on his own.

Charles makes a grumpy noise when Erik stops petting him, but a while after that he makes a ‘hmm’ noise, and then a while after that he thinks a silent apology, tied together with a healthy dose of embarrassment and shame and concern all at once, too abashed to speak it all aloud. His cock, at least, has subsided by the time Charles rolls over onto his back and opens his eyes, looking up at Erik. His mouth is pulled tight, but at least the color is back in his face.

“Are you feeling better?” Erik asks, his hand resting still on Charles’ shoulder, safe but still maintaining that contact between them -- as much for Erik’s own sake as for Charles’.

Charles lips part, half-shaping a word, for a long moment before he actually says, “Yes. Thank you.” His voice is rasping, dry. “Are you okay?”

Erik nods, not sure if that’s lying or not. “They didn’t find Victor Creed,” he says. MacTaggert had texted him while Charles was under, updating him on the situation. “Shaw and the others are safely back in their prison rooms. 103 dead, 48 injured. I haven’t checked media response yet.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, and pushes himself up to sitting, though it puts his back to Erik, the line of the back of his neck vulnerable and bare where his jacket and shirt are rucked down, and he shakes his head, fingers clenching on the fabric of the couch. “God ... I was … useless back there. I just checked out. I’m so sorry.”

“You couldn’t help it.” Erik wishes Charles would turn around again and look at him, but he doesn’t push for it, and tries to not even think it very loudly. “If the army hadn’t arrived, I could have taken care of it myself.”

He’s more than strong enough to handle someone like Creed now, and he should have. He should have finished Creed off while he was unconscious, somehow -- torn him into a million pieces, or trapped him for the UN police to suppress. He’d let himself be distracted by a greater goal, one he never even managed to achieve.

“You needed me and I wasn’t there,” Charles says. “It’s not okay.” There’s another long silence, but then he raises his near hand to place it on Erik’s shoulder, without turning to look. “Thank you for looking after me. I’m sorry you had to, but very glad you’re okay. Just -- don’t ever do anything that crazy again.”

Erik frowns at him, the first flashes of irritation lighting up in his chest. “Crazy? Like defending all of us from a rampaging madman hellbent on killing everyone he sees?” _Everyone but you, kitten,_ he hears a voice, suspiciously like Creed’s, say in his mind. “Don’t scold me for doing what was necessary. Your own life depended on it.”

At that Charles finally does turn, and the look on his face is so -- there’s so much love there that Erik has to swallow, hard, as Charles says, “Hang all of them, I don’t care if the whole Hellfire Club kills each other. As long as you’re safe and not putting yourself in harm’s way.” His hand squeezes Erik’s shoulder, tight, and Charles shakes him, just a little. “You could have died, and then what would I do?”

“Probably have died yourself five seconds later,” Erik says, brutally honest.

But he reaches for Charles all the same, his hand settling at the center of Charles’ back; he wants to draw Charles in close again but doesn’t, not sure he could stand having Charles gently push him away, having to sit and listen, again, to Charles’ apologies and remonstration.

“Shaw’s mine. Either I send him to prison to rot, or I send him underground. No one else gets to touch him but me.”

“Once he gets to prison I think his burly cellmate Bobo might object,” Charles says, and then -- then _Charles_ moves, shifting forward to wrap his arms around Erik and embrace him, his head tucking in alongside Erik’s so that their ears brush side-by-side, his chin resting on Erik’s shoulder. Erik tenses very briefly, a reflex that feels more intuitive when Shaw is so relatively near, but relaxes just as quickly against the warm press of Charles’ body. It must be awkward for Charles, he’s twisted in his seat with his knees pointing the opposite way but Charles doesn’t seem to care, just holds Erik tightly.

“Killing him won’t help anything. But I’m just -- I love you, you know that.”

Those words make something hot clench in the pit of Erik’s stomach, that young part of him that never stopped being greedy for affection and acceptance half-wanting to demand Charles say it again. Erik’s hand slips up the outside of Charles’ arm to dip into his hair again, keeping him where he is, his heart beating so fast he’s amazed Charles can’t hear it himself. He closes his eyes, and when he inhales his breath catches in his chest on that swelling warmth.

“I know,” Erik says, and wishes Charles meant it in a very different sense of the word. It feels selfish, wanting more when Charles has already given him so much.

Charles tilts his head a little, leaning against Erik. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you this afternoon. You shouldn’t have had to look after me.”

“That’s my job,” Erik says, the response coming naturally at first before he remembers, no. He isn’t supposed to be Charles’ Dom anymore. He doesn’t take it back, though, just opens his eyes again to look at Charles, as much of him as he can see out of his peripheral vision, the crooked line of Charles’ nose and the dark flush of his lashes against his cheek.

It earns him a hum and a squeeze, but then Charles finally pulls back, his arms slipping loose around Erik’s chest until there’s space between them again and Charles turns, setting his feet down and getting up. He stretches up towards the ceiling, onto his tiptoes, then says, a little stiffly, “We should get some food delivered. You’re starving.”

“Physically hungry and mentally willing to eat aren’t the same thing,” Erik says, staying where he is. “I think if I tried to put anything in my stomach right now I’d just throw it up a second later.” He still feels queasy, almost motion-sick in a way that started before he ever got out of bed this morning and only got worse as the day went on. “We can order something for you, though, if you’re hungry.”

“I can fix the queasiness, if you want.” Charles shucks out of his crumpled jacket, hanging it on the arm of the sofa. “You should eat something. You’ll feel worse if you’re running on empty.”

“Fine.” Erik waves a dismissive hand in Charles’ direction, not feeling up to arguing the point right now. Now that Charles is lucid there are other, more important things to talk about. “Do you remember what Creed said?”

There’s no hiding it from Charles if he doesn’t, though, now, because bringing it up means Charles will look. Erik doesn’t care. There’s not much he feels the need to hide from Charles these days.

Charles pauses on his way to the side table where the room service menus are kept. “No, I wasn’t really listening at the time,” he says, but in that slow way that means he’s processing new information. “That’s … troubling. I wonder if Moira knows anything about this.”

“It would explain a lot.” Erik crosses his arms over his chest and leaning back against the sofa. “Hellfire’s been too quiet this past year, since I went to see Creed. If Creed was an ineffective leader, or if there was dissension between the cells about who should be in power, it would make sense.” Already he’s turning his attention toward his laptop, still packed away in his suitcase in the other room. “I can find out what’s going on.”

Charles’ mouth twists, and he turns to face Erik more fully, crossing his arms to match. “It’s not really any of your business any more,” he says. “Well, obviously today made it your business, but it -- oh, hell.” His brows draw in, and he lifts a hand to rub the spot between them with a grimace. “I can’t even claim it’s not my damn business, not with Victor Creed saying someone’s deliberately sparing you in their assassination plots, can I? Bugger it all. I think we should talk to Moira, though, instead of you backchannelling and potentially getting into trouble for colluding with the accused.”

“Talk to Moira,” Erik agrees, finally pushing himself up off the sofa, unbending to his full height. “If she can’t help us, though, you have to know I’ll do what I think is necessary to get to the bottom of this. I don’t feel like being surprised. Again.”

“I could do without it, too,” Charles says, and fetches the menus. “You order. I’ll call her.”

Charles has taken care of the queasy feeling so Erik complies, though he keeps half his attention on Charles’ side of his conversation with Moira while he does. It’s clear before he ever hangs up what Moira has said -- she has no idea what Creed meant, which means that once more Hellfire is making their quiet moves in the backdrop of Erik’s life, hitherto unnoticed but there all the same, setting up the pieces for Erik’s eventual rise, or fall.

 

*

_Charles_

TERROR AT INTERNATIONAL COURT AS HELLFIRE STRIKES TRIAL

by the NYT’s Political Correspondent in Europe Gregory St James

 

> PANDEMONIUM struck the International Criminal Court in The Hague yesterday afternoon as the well-known mutant terrorist organization the Hellfire Club struck a violent blow against the ongoing trial of their captured leadership.
> 
> Reports are still coming in, but it has been confirmed that ten mutants attacked the ICC at 14:48 yesterday, in the middle of noted mutant psychologist Dr Charles Xavier’s testimony regarding the welfare of his ward and ex-Hellfire kidnappee Erik Lehnsherr. So far 105 are confirmed dead and 53 injured, some of whom have only today been rescued from under walls and ceilings which collapsed as a direct result of mutant-initiated seismic activity. All of the ICC judges survived without significant injury, as did the primary witnesses and defendants.
> 
> The motivation of the attack is still unknown, but undamaged segments of digital recordings indicate this may have been an assassination attempt. These recordings have been released to the general public.
> 
> “The Hellfire Club’s alleged activities have impacted all of us,” said an ICC spokesperson earlier today. “The ICC has always made recordings of trial events public information; people have a right to assess for themselves the integrity of the judicial process and draw their own conclusions about the evidence presented in court. These events are no different.”
> 
> There has been no public statement as of yet from Xavier or on behalf of Erik Lehnsherr. This paper understands that they are currently still in the Netherlands awaiting a flight home to New York, where they reside in Xavier’s penthouse apartment on Park Avenue. In recent weeks Lehnsherr had been in the news for more negative reasons after a bereaved father started a street protest calling for Lehnsherr’s immediate arrest for crimes committed while with the Hellfire Club. However few now can dispute that he showed a heroic streak yesterday in his valiant defense of the judges, observers and all others in the courtroom, the video of which was luckily preserved despite the ensuing firefight and can be viewed on the NYT website.
> 
> In the video -- sadly without audio -- Lehnsherr is shown arguing with Victor Creed, a well-known and violent member of the Hellfire Club -- before fighting back using his electromagnetic mutation, and fatally injuring Creed’s companion. It is believed that his actions prevented Creed from achieving his goal, which some speculate was the assassination of Lehnsherr himself.
> 
> The fallout from this incident can only confirm the position of the Hellfire Club as possibly the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization active today, and it will be a long time before the ICC is ready to continue the trial.
> 
> For more details on the attack and its aftermath turn to p. 4, HELLFIRE.

 

“You’re a hero, says right here,” Charles says when he gets to the bottom of the page, flicking through until he reaches page four and wincing at the enormous photo of the courtroom shot to pieces, the bodies removed but blood still on the floor. He’s amazed they were allowed to print it. “Valiant, too.”

Across the table Erik glances up at Charles over the screen of his laptop. “I’m sure Shaw and the others are inclined to agree.” He stabs at his breakfast with a fork, spearing a strawberry on its prongs. “Does it say why Creed was really there?”

“They’re saying assassination attempt, but they’re speculating it was you he was after, rather than Shaw,” Charles says, looking back down at the page.

Oh, wonderful -- there’s a picture of Charles being escorted to the ambulance looking pale as a sheet and entirely out of it. How humiliating.

“Overall they have most of the facts in here,” Charles goes on, undeterred. “I expect the CIA and ICC didn’t see much reason to censor the press. After all, it feeds into the anti-Hellfire narrative they want, so it’s all helpful. There’s even a still image from the cameras showing you fighting Creed.”

Erik makes an indeterminate noise and eats his fruit, leaning back in his chair. They’ve both been awake for over an hour now, but Erik’s hair is still tousled from sleep and both of them are still in their pajamas. It didn’t seem worth it to dress properly when neither of them are allowed out of their apartment until security arrangements can be made.

“I’d hoped all the focus on the attacks would take attention away from Shaw’s testimony. No such luck.” Erik gestures at his computer, and then folds his arms over his chest, his mouth a thin line. “Reddit’s losing it.”

Charles frowns, and gets up, shifting around a chair so he can sit next to Erik and see the screen. There are a lot of comments; he hardly knows where to start looking. “What are they saying?” he asks, glancing at Erik. “I mean, surely it’s obvious that he was talking complete and utter bollocks.”

“See for yourself.”

Charles looks again at the screen, tilting it a little more towards himself.

 

>   
> **oxenfree:** Everyone knows high Doms are more attractive, though. It’s a known thing. Why shouldn’t we believe it just because a terrorist said it? That’s like not believing Hitler when he says the sky is blue just because it’s Hitler.
>
>>   
> **son_of_daughter:** That’s a ridiculous argument, more so because Xavier outright rekt it right there like ten minutes afterward. High Doms aren’t inherently child rape bait, asshole, otherwise every high Dom would get abused as babies wouldn’t they?
>>
>>>   
> **bearjew67:** The point’s not all high Doms, the point’s this fucking kid. We also know he has a history with this kind of thing.
>>
>>>   
> **artistictrashcan:** So basically you’re saying you’d fuck a baby if its DS score was high enough. Okay. /r/theredpill must be leaking again.
>>
>>>   
> **11ubermensch11:** I go to school with Lehnsherr. Shaw’s a rapist but he’s not wrong, either. AMA.
>>>
>>>>   
> **misslovahlovah:** how big’s his dick

 

Charles pushes the laptop away, his mouth puckering like he’s bitten into something sour. “This is garbage,” he says, and on second thought reaches out and closes the lid of the laptop, putting it into sleep mode. “You shouldn’t be reading this, eavesdroppers never hear anything nice about themselves.”

Erik shrugs one shoulder and reaches for his plate again, settling into cutting up his pancake with superficial indifference. “Maybe. It doesn’t matter. Reddit’s just circlejerking. Tomorrow everyone will have the exact opposite opinion.”

“Then they oughtn’t say it at all,” Charles says, taking a sip of his tea and trying to swallow down his outrage with it; it’s an overreaction, probably, but the thought of all those people trying to argue that Erik deserved his abuse -- initiated it himself -- makes his blood boil. “Read the New York Times instead, they at least have to hold to journalistic standards of ethics instead of slandering you.”

Erik doesn’t say anything to that, just eats his pancake in silence, the only noise the sound of his cutlery clinking against his plate and glass against wood when he sets his water glass down again after taking a sip. It’s frustrating, knowing that Erik isn’t really taking in what Charles is saying -- but there’s no way to make him, so Charles sits and thinks, jetlag still making that whole process fuzzy despite the sleep he managed to struggle into on the plane. He can’t influence what people say about them -- no doubt there’ll be some internet forum dissecting that stupid shot of Charles, and whether he’s competent to care for Erik and give testimony at a trial if a little mass murder knocks him for six. But what Erik needs most is something to do about it all.

“Maybe we could look at that Hellfire groupie website together,” Charles says, once he’s finished his tea, reaching for the teapot to pour another cup. “See if there’s anything on there about the new leadership. I’m sure it’s nothing Moira hasn’t seen already, they must know about these places, but we can look for ourselves.”

This, at least, pings interest in Erik’s mind. “Sure,” he says, pushing his breakfast away and reaching for the laptop, drawing it close across the tabletop. Charles watches as he opens the lid, logs in and pulls up a strange browser with an onion icon. The URL he types into the search bar is almost incomprehensible, just letters and numbers jumbled meaninglessly together; it’s amazing Erik’s able to remember it offhand.

“I’m assuming this is some sort of secret website,” Charles says, resting his chin on his hand as the page loads. “The government can’t see you using it, can they? Because if they can that’s a very bad idea.”

"I'm using an onion router, so no," Erik says, tabbing back to Chrome to refresh his Facebook page, then returning to the other browser after checking -- and ignoring -- his notifications for 212 new friend requests. "This is how I found Creed last year. They didn't catch me then, either."

Onion router?

“I’ll take your word for it.” The page is still only half-loaded; Charles can see the top half of some red text, but nothing else. “I wonder if the modem is down? I’ll go reboot it.”

"It's always slow. The packet had to travel through hundreds of IPs to get here. Give it a second."

“Okay.” Charles waits, and a minute or so later the page finishes loading, a black background with the word PURGATORY branded across it in scarlet letters, with the words ‘Free. Powerful. Supreme’ underneath.

“That’s modest,” he says dryly, glancing at Erik, who snorts. “Okay, so. Where do we look?”

Erik clicks on a link that reads ‘Forum’, and sits back to wait; it takes another minute or two before it shows the page, and before Charles can see much of what’s there Erik clicks ‘Current Events’. Another wait.

When it finally loads Charles can see that the page looks old-school enough that the site could have been set up when he was still in high school himself, very basic; there’s a list of topics, along with the number of comments listed alongside each topic, and the last person to post in them. Charles glances down them and is disturbed to see titles like WHO WORE CHAINS BEST, LETS KILL THE JUDGES OURSELVES, and WHORE OR HERO. Charles can guess who that last one is about.

The leading topic, however, the one with more than ten times the number of comments that the others have, is ICC ATTACK BREAKDOWN.

“Is there any kind of search facility?” Charles asks, looking over the page; it’ll be easiest to find what they’re looking for if they can use keywords. “Maybe at the bottom?”

“No, but I can get us one, hold on.” Erik goes into his documents and pulls up a text file of indecipherable code, which he selects and copies, then pastes into another sheet of code that he manages to make pop up at the bottom of the browser screen. He refreshes, and when the page reloads there’s an overlay box at the top of the page with a search tool. “Here you go,” Erik says, pushing the laptop over for Charles to use.

Charles knew Erik was good with computers, but the casual way he just … overwrote a website to do what he wanted it to do, within thirty seconds, is incredible. “That’s amazing,” he says, honestly impressed, even as he types in ‘leader’ and hits the search button.

“I wrote the code for this ages ago,” Erik says, watching over Charles’ shoulder as he sips at his coffee, his upper arm brushing Charles’, impossible to ignore. “Now I just have to paste it into the developer console whenever I want it. Useful. So, what did we find?”

Most of the results that appear are useless -- isolated references to Shaw, to Erik himself when the news came out about his DS score, or sarcastic responses to other commenters. There are one or two mentions of Victor Creed in there, but it’s not until the fourth page that Charles sees a new name.

“Who’s Solomon?” he asks, clicking on the entry.

“Who?” Erik leans in closer to look, frowning.

“Someone here referenced a mutant called Solomon as a new player in Hellfire,” Charles says, as the page loads. “I’m assuming that’s probably a codename -- have you heard of him?”

“Must be after my time,” Erik says. When the page finishes loading he scrolls down to where the name was referenced and reads, “‘Solomon’s been making some waves among my contacts, looks like he’s making a grab for power. I don’t know much about this guy, is he new?’ And then -- no, looks like no one else knows who he is either.”

“Is that normal?” Charles asks, frowning and scrolling down the page himself, skimming over it -- it would be easier to read in better colors, frankly, but he gets the gist. “For someone to just … pop out of the woodwork in three years that you’ve never heard of, and get powerful enough to be mentioned as a possible leader? I don’t know a lot about the Club’s inner workings, but I thought it was more structured than that in terms of who the alpha dogs are.”

“It is,” Erik murmurs. He tugs the laptop out of Charles’ grasp and logs in at the top of the page: his username, appropriately, is ‘Magneto.’ “There’s no harm in asking around,” he says as the page reloads. “We can use the chat room.”

Charles isn’t entirely sure this is a good idea -- surely it’ll seem weird to suddenly appear and start asking questions about Hellfire leadership. “Won’t they think we’re cops?”

“Depends how you do it. Last time I was on here they were asking questions, too. Wouldn’t talk to you unless you could say something only a true Hellfire aficionado would know. I never said they were the brightest bulbs.”

Erik pulls up the chat box; there are 21 people in the room, according to the notification. Erik makes 22.

> > > > **victorforpresident:** they’ve released more pictures look: http://bit.ly/1xkrylx  
>  **jokesonyou:** cool thx  
>  **victorforpresident:** np  
>  **mutantpower:** new face in the room, magneto hello

Charles glances at Erik. “They don’t remember you?”

“I was only around for a day or two. Once swineherd messaged me there was no point.” Erik scoots his chair over closer to Charles’, pressing their shoulders together as he starts typing his response.

> > > > **Magneto:** Hey. How’s it going?  
>  **mutantpower:** we’re all good but we’re shy with strangers. what’s your deal?  
>  **Magneto:** Long time lurker.  
>  **Magneto:** I watched the videos on the NYT site this morning. Anyone here able to read lips?  
>  **hoosadadi:** y, can’t u cops afford ur own lipreaders  
>  **greebo:** give us ur address we’ll google u and check ur legit

“Would anyone actually do that?” Charles mutters, rolling his eyes. “Tell them there’s no way they can tell if anyone on there is a cop so making you jump through hoops like this is entirely futile.”

> > > > **Magneto:** For all any of us know, you’re the cop and I’m Sebastian fucking Shaw  
>  **Magneto:** Why don’t you prove yourself @greebo? Tell me something only HC would know.  
>  **victorforpresident** : duh if any of us were real HC do you think we’d be in a chatroom at 11am on a weekday

“American probably,” Charles says. “Given the timezone.”

> > > > **Magneto:** Only safehouses currently operational are in Western Europe and China. Not 11 am there.

“Bullshit, but they don’t know that,” Erik tells Charles, sitting back to wait for a response.

> > > > **mutantpower:** lol like you’d even know that  
>  **hoosadadi:** this is y we don’t giv out names and adresses bcos all of us culd b cops and arrest each otherr  
>  **jokesonyou:** what’d i miss  
>  **hoosadadi:** not much some new asshole

Charles rolls his eyes, and says, “All right, give it here,” reaching for the laptop and typing.

> > > > **Magneto:** so anyway, the ICC attack is more interesting than this pissing contest, unless you want to all get your rulers out and measure your dicks/clits  
>  **Magneto:** does anyone know if Victor’s actually leading now? he looked pretty boss to me but Lehnsherr handed him his ass, that’s gotta hurt

“Subtle,” Erik says dryly, but he’s radiating surprise along with affection and satisfaction. He must be relishing him and Charles are on the same team for once, political partners rather than rivals. “Have you been leading a double life as an internet warrior or something?”

“They don’t seem like the kind to beat around the bush,” Charles says, a little embarrassed. “I spend enough time with teenagers -- and with Raven -- to know a thing or two about how to talk trash.” He looks back at the screen, reading through the next few responses.

> > > > **jokesonyou:** well he is a 7D  
>  **mutantpower:** that doesn’t count for much mutant-on-mutant unless you’re fucking tho  
>  **mutantpower:** far as I hear it he was trying to get in charge but everybody knows Victor Creed’s got more brawn than brains, nobody much wanted to listen to him if they were out of arm’s range  
>  **victorforpresident:** shut your mouth victor rules  
>  **happyslappy:** victor is a washed up piece of dogshit chasing his own tail pretending he’s the boss dog  
>  **victorforpresident:** shut the fuck up

Charles types,

> > > > **Magneto:** so who’s the boss? I’m looking to fill out a job application  
>  **mutantpower:** the new fans always come out of the woodwork after a new attack i s2g jfc  
>  **mutantpower:** so that clusterfuck got you all wet and panting did it  
>  **Magneto:** stop projecting and answer the question unless you don’t know the answer

“You’re better at this than I am,” Erik says, making a face at Charles and leaning in closer toward him, the heat of his body burning along Charles’ side.

“I doubt that,” Charles says, flushing a little; he hadn’t really paid any attention to it up until now, but Erik is close enough that Charles can smell his shampoo, the animal warmth of him distracting now Charles has noticed it. He has to forcibly turn his attention back to the chatroom, trying to pretend to himself he’s just embarrassed at being told he’s good at pretending to be a teenage mutant supremacist.

> > > > **mutantpower:** fuck you  
>  **hoosadadi:** lol  
>  **jokesonyou:** everyone knows there’s no real leader now Shaw’s in jail, it’s all gone to shit  
>  **mutantpower:** you’re all morons, anyone who knows anything actually useful knows it’s all factions now  
>  **mutantpower:** so it depends where you are as to who your local boss is

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Charles mutters.

> > > > **Magneto:** i’m not telling you where I am but tell me the bosses and I’ll find my local one from there  
>  **victorforpresident** : lol numbnuts it’s not like you can just go to their recruitment site  
>  **victorforpresident:** they call you you don’t call them  
>  **Magneto:** I’m a telepath, and a fucking good one. Pretty sure they’ll be interested  
>  **mutantpower:** okay fine knock yourself out  
>  **mutantpower:** asia is Lady Deathstrike obvs  
>  **mutantpower:** africa is Shadow King, you do not want to fuck with him i’ll tell you that for free if you’re african give it up now if you want to live bitch  
>  **mutantpower:** p much everywhere else is Solomon territory now

“Solomon again.” Erik crosses his arms on the tabletop, his lips thinning out. “Too obvious to demand to know who that is.”

“Give me a second.”

> > > > **Magneto:** what’s his deal anyway? any tips? i’ve only heard a bit about him but it’s probably all shit  
>  **mutantpower:** nobody knows much about him that’s his whole thing  
>  **mutantpower:** you’ll just have to go hope he doesn’t kill you  
>  **jokesonyou:** i heard he’s telekinetic  
>  **hoosadadi:** i heard he’s a sub  
>  **jokesonyou:** no fucking way  
>  **mutantpower:** that’s the stupidest thing i ever heard  
>  **mutantpower:** hellfire wouldn’t let a sub be the boss even if they were omega level  
>  **mutantpower:** case in point: lehnsherr, even though his ds was fake they knew he was super strong  
>  **mutantpower:** unless it’s xavier or someone and he’s making them all bow and scrape like brainpuppets

“Yes, Charles Xavier, new king of Hellfire. It has a certain ring to it.”

“I’ll only take the job if I get to wear a crown,” Charles says, pushing the laptop away and giving Erik a quirk of a smile before turning serious. “So. Does that tell us anything useful? Anything jump out at you? I don’t think we can ask any more without it getting too weird.”

“It’s almost intentionally vague,” Erik says. He twists toward Charles and looping an arm over the back of his chair. Charles hadn’t realized quite how close they were sitting until now, when Erik’s facing him, nearer than they have any right to be. “Telekinesis? Even my ability could be described as telekinesis, broadly-speaking. Solomon being a sub sounds like intentional misdirection, like the kind of rumor you’d spread if you wanted someone to underestimate you.”

Charles glances away, down at his teacup, trying to think about the problem at hand instead of whether or not he should move.

“It makes sense if you’re trying to take over the Hellfire Club,” he says after a moment. “Everyone is strong and everyone is vying for a place, so the less people know about you the easier it’ll be to win fights and work your way up. If everyone knows what you can do then they can prepare for you.”

Erik frowns, tapping his finger against the side of his coffee mug. “We need to find local contacts. If I can find even just a few affiliates, people will make things easy for me. I’ll talk to Frank; maybe some of his MLA people are involved with the underground.”

“No,” Charles says immediately, holding up a hand. “I agreed to this because it keeps us remote from the people we’re talking to so it’s more or less safe, but going looking for the Hellfire Club is the very definition of a bad idea. We don’t need to know that badly, I’m sure Moira will be able to tell us more when she gets back from Europe.”

“Speak for yourself,” Erik says. “You’re not the one they’re planning shit for. It’s obvious they have no intention of killing me, and I can defend myself.”

Charles rolls his eyes, and pushes his chair back from the table, making room between them again as he picks up his empty teacup. “If you don’t think I have skin in this game, then you haven’t been paying attention. Delivering yourself directly to them isn’t your best plan ever.”

“If they wanted to take me, they could do that any time. They haven’t chosen to do so. You think it’s safer just sitting around waiting for them to do whatever it is they’re going to do? Depending on the _humans_ to protect us?” Erik makes a derisive noise and shakes his head. “I won’t be a sitting duck.”

“You’re assuming they have a plan for you at all, beyond not killing you.” Charles gets to his feet and goes to pick up the kettle, taking it over to the sink to fill. After a second, he adds, “Quite aside from the fact that no, they couldn’t just take you any time -- both you and I are omega-level, and regardless of the fact I’m generally a pacifist I like to think I’m somewhat of a deterrent.”

“Then between the two of us, we’d be perfectly safe.”

“I’d rather be Switzerland and attack only when provoked,” Charles says. “No, Erik.”

Behind him, he hears the scrape of Erik’s chair legs against the floor, the sound of his footsteps on the wood and then Erik is standing too close, one hand braced against the counter next to Charles’, blocking him in. When Erik speaks his voice is low, the consonants harsh. “That’s your decision, but it isn’t mine. Don’t presume to tell me what to do about this. Those people controlled my entire life, and I won’t let them do it again.”

Charles’ gut clenches, the back of his neck prickling, and he turns to face Erik -- too close. They’re always too close these days.

“You’re letting them do it now,” he says, the kettle in his hand between them, sloshing as he moves. “One off-hand remark from Victor Creed and you’re running off after them again. _Think_ , Erik. Maybe this is their plan, making you do something stupid and fall back into their hands! The only one controlling your life here is you. And me, if you force me to by doing stupid things like this.”

He doesn’t even really think about the threat he’s making, using telepathy against Erik to force his hand, but Erik immediately arches one brow, resentment surging forward in his mind like a dark wave.

“Oh really? Well, Charles, if we’re controlling each other now, two can play that game. Don’t you fucking dare make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

There’s enough Command thrown behind it that it’s nearly enough to push Charles all the way down into subspace on its own; he staggers, the kettle smacking into Erik’s chest, and has to fight to make his eyes focus, his vision all blurry with the headrush. Erik grabs his elbow, steadying him, and Charles slaps him open-handed, his hand ringing against Erik’s cheek with a loud smack and making Erik stumble back.

“Don’t you ever do that to me,” he snaps, setting the kettle down on the counter with an almighty bang. “You’re my ward, it is literally my job to look after you. Don’t you dare use Dominance against me to get yourself killed!”

“What, you can dish it out but you can’t take it?” Erik’s cheek is flushed red already, his eyes bright and angry but too-wide, whites showing around the irises as he takes another step back. He’s afraid -- bordering on terrified. It’s making his voice shake, and that in turn has only made Erik angrier.

“That is not how this works,” Charles says, furious, trembling with both his anger and the aftereffects of such a powerful order. “I am the adult, I am your guardian, and the buck stops with me. I am the one who makes these decisions and I have said no. You don’t get to just override me because you don’t like my decision.”

The worst thing is knowing that Erik’s not entirely wrong -- he’s on the other end of the same sword, because Charles could do the same to him if he chose to. The difference is that Charles is the one who’s supposed to be in charge. He knew, he _knew_ he should have put a stop to them sitting so closely, should have pulled away harder after his subspace episode in The Hague, instead of letting Erik get into the habit of Domming him.

“I won’t tolerate you Dominating me into things. I won’t have it.”

“So this is how it is?” Erik’s hands clench into fists. “You fuck me, you hit me, and you make my decisions for me? You’re a fucking hypocrite after all.”

Charles draws in a sharp breath, feeling bile rising up in his throat, and he can’t -- there’s nothing he can think of to say that isn’t either far worse or entirely too submissive, and he wants to throw up, every inch of him nauseated and sordid, but he can’t let Erik do this, and he can’t make him not do this, and --

“Fuck,” he shouts, and before he can give into the urge to either punch the kettle or cry he makes himself disappear, so at least Erik can’t see the pathetic display that’s sure to follow.

With himself imperceptible Charles can step out from the corner Erik had him caught in and lean forward to rest his hands in fists on the kitchen table, trying to catch his breath and keep from vomiting; there’s a loud crash behind him, Erik hurling the kettle into the sink with his power and making Charles jump.

“Stop that,” he snaps, then remembers to relax his hold on Erik’s perceptions enough so that he can hear him. “That’s not going to bloody help anything, is it?”

Erik spins around but Charles is still invisible to his eyes, and Erik’s gaze sweeps the room before settling somewhere over Charles’ right shoulder.

“I’m going out,” Erik says coldly. There are military guards in their building, ostensibly for their protection, but somehow Charles doubts that will pose much of a problem for Erik if Erik’s truly determined.

“It’s not _safe_ , Erik, haven’t you been listening at all?”

“Apparently not.”

Erik gives him a hard smile and walks past Charles, into the living room; Charles wants to scream he’s so infuriated, but without physically assaulting Erik there’s no way to make him stop.

“Erik, wait,” he calls out after him, but Erik leaves anyway, out the den window. Charles curses as he hears it slide shut behind him, leaving Charles angry and thwarted in the apartment, hoping to God Erik doesn’t do anything stupid to prove him wrong.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: violence, I guess? a tiny serving of domestic as well. references to past child rape/abuse.


	31. Thirty-one

_Charles_

Charles spends the next couple of hours pacing the apartment, anger and nausea warring inside him as he goes over and over the fight, replaying it again and again -- he shouldn’t have slapped Erik, but Erik shouldn’t have forced him, shouldn’t have ordered him like that, but Charles shouldn’t have slapped Erik -- it doesn’t make Charles right to have done it but the order feels like it’s scratching away at him from the inside, the compulsion made more awful for knowing that Erik wasn’t wrong, either -- of all submissives, Charles is the one most able to impose his will on anyone he chooses, just like a Dom. Worse, because he could make Erik think he agrees with Charles, if he chose, or make Erik forget all about anything Charles found more convenient to keep from him.

But Erik was wrong to order him. Charles can’t, won’t, let himself concede that point, even as he stalks around the den, unable to settle. There is a big difference between making his feelings clear, expressing his vehemence, and Erik actually going through with forcing Charles against his will. Especially when Charles is the one who is supposed to be in charge.

There’s no use in pacing. Charles starts winding down in his anger about three hours after Erik left, finally sitting for longer than five minutes at a time and taking his head in his hands. Every minute Charles is seething in here is another minute Erik is out there, like an idiot, vulnerable and alone.

No. The only thing to do is to follow, and make Erik listen to sense.

When he finally cools down enough to go out, it’s not hard to track Erik down. Charles finds him in the public library, his thoughts calmer than before but still dark and roiling as he pretends to peruse the shelves, his hands folded behind his back but clenching one another tightly, pinching the flesh. Charles stands at the end of the aisle and watches him for a few long moments, heartache sinking into his chest like a pain he cannot shift, as Erik scans across the spines of the books, eyes dark.

Erik is still, even now, even when Charles is so angry with him that he literally struck him, the person Charles loves and wants the most, and it’s painful to see him here, tall and broad-shouldered and strong and furious with Charles, that familiar, belovedly handsome face carved into a scowl.

“What do you want, Charles?” Erik says at last; he must have sensed Charles’ wristwatch, or the silver ring he still keeps in his pocket, even if he can’t wear it. He doesn’t turn to look at Charles, just steps further down the row, gaze skimming the book titles without really seeing them.

Charles takes a breath, lets it out slowly. “I want you to come home so we can talk about this,” he says quietly, stepping a little closer. “I’m sorry I lost my temper before -- it was wrong of me.” He doesn’t say, _I’m supposed to be the adult,_ , because making Erik angrier is not the point here.

It’s hard, so hard, to contain the part of himself that wants to tell Erik off again, to clutch at him and ask him to come home and look after himself instead of keeping jumping into danger again and again. Charles feels it like an ache in his chest, the desire to demand -- and the desire to beg, like a supplicant, needy and humiliating.

Erik looks at him, his head tilting slightly in Charles’ direction, but he doesn’t move closer. “What else is there to say? You made yourself very clear.”

Good thing Charles already knew Erik wouldn’t make this easy. “I’m sorry I slapped you,” he says, lowering his voice further, since all he needs is for somebody to overhear, and to then have to decide whether or not to make them forget. “I was -- I was angry, and frightened, but that doesn’t excuse it. I’ve been ordered into compliance in the past, and I panicked. I apologize.” Calm. Neutral. Neither demanding nor begging. Even though just the thought of the accusation Erik made, the way he looked, after, pink-cheeked and shocked, makes Charles feel sick all over again.

Erik turns more fully to face Charles, and finally he steps toward him, closing most of the distance between them so that they can keep speaking without disturbing the sacred silence of the library. Erik hasn’t entirely softened, not yet, unwilling to relent his anger until he’s certain of exactly where they stand, but at least he hasn’t gotten riled up further. His expression is firm, shadowed and tight.

“I told you before that I won’t let you treat me like a child. I don’t like having to order you not to mind control me. It shouldn’t be something I need to defend myself against in the first place. But I will, if that’s what it takes.”

“I just want you to be safe,” Charles says, letting out a frustrated breath and folding his arms across his chest, fingers tightening against his opposite elbows. “It’s not about treating you like a child, it’s about -- I’m responsible for you, I have to look after you, and letting you walk right into the dragon’s mouth wouldn’t be doing that. If you won’t listen to reason then you’re not leaving me any option, Erik. You don’t think things through enough. You’re not my Dominant, you don’t get to order me. I _am_ your parental figure, whether you want it described that way or not.” Whether Charles is worthy of that position in Erik’s life or not.

“And how is forcing me via your telepathy any different from anyone else forcing me with other threats?” Erik asks, one eyebrow rising sardonically. “I have to make my own decisions. You may not like them, but they’re _my_ choices to make, not yours. Hellfire is my entire life, in ways I don’t expect you to understand.” His voice is soft, but it’s also measured, firm. “But since you can’t understand it, you can’t legislate how I feel or what I do about them.”

Charles sighs. “If you saw me about to jump into a furnace, what would you do?”

Erik huffs, rolling his eyes. “It’s not a comparable situation. You know the furnace will kill you. You don’t know what the consequences would be of me asking a few questions. You simply assume. Maybe it’s stupid of me to do, but it’s the only thing I _can_ do. I can’t just --” he shakes his head, gaze dropping briefly to the floor. “I can’t just _wait._ ”

It’s easy enough to see that Erik is going to do whatever he thinks best regardless of what Charles says or does, so finally he says, reluctantly, “I’ll tell you what,” leaning his shoulder against the heavy shelf, the edge of the wood digging into his muscle. “You find some local contacts -- without _making_ contact -- and I’ll get the information for you. Cleanly, without interaction. I don’t like doing it but I will, if it’ll keep you from doing something foolish like tangling yourself up in their games again.” Better that than the alternative.

Erik lifts his eyes again, meeting Charles’, and Charles hears him wondering, reflexively -- old habits -- if there’s a catch. “Thank you,” he says at long last, some of the tension visibly leaving his shoulders and relaxing the formerly-rigid line of his body. “I mean it.” He reaches out and grasps Charles’ elbow briefly, squeezing once before letting go.

“One more thing,” Charles says, feeling a jitter start in his foot that he can’t let express itself, needing to seem calm, “I want you to take the order back. I won’t compel you to do anything, but I can’t leave this hanging over my head either.” Just knowing it’s there makes him feel like scratching himself right out of his skin.

Erik nods once. “All right. You can disregard the last order I gave you.”

“Good,” Charles says, awkwardly, and he looks away, at the books on the far side of the aisle. He can’t help but still feel … uncomfortable, knowing that Erik … remembering the comparison Erik made, between him and Shaw, and knowing deep in his bones that Erik is right, that Charles is kidding himself if he thinks the warmth of his affection in any way changes that fact. “I’m going home now,” he says carefully, sliding his hands down to tuck them into his coat pockets. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah. Come on.” Erik touches his upper arm again, nudging him to turn to walk with him back down the aisle. He’s quiet most of the way home, except to remind Charles to conceal their presence from the agents when they’re getting back into their building, Charles draping a veil of obscurity over their guards’ minds as they pass by their ranks.

Once inside Charles gives Erik a small, weak little smile and retreats to his office, relieved at least that Erik is back where Charles feels they’re mostly safe, within their own space and fortress. His book is still open where he last left it, and Charles picks it up, stroking his fingers over the age-soft page edges, but can’t quite make himself start reading it.

“Charles,” Erik’s voice says from the doorway, quiet, as if they’re still in the library.

Charles half-turns, not quite enough to see Erik, but enough to show he’s listening. “Yes?”

Erik takes it as an invitation, coming further inside and hovering there at Charles’ shoulder, one hand on Charles’ desk. “I didn’t mean what I said. I don’t think you’re like them. I was angry, and scared, and it was the worst thing I could think of to say to you. I shouldn’t have.” A pause. "And perhaps my order was a little ... strong."

And Charles -- he can’t even laugh, because it hurts to breathe in that deeply. “Thank you for apologizing for the order, sort of. As far as the other thing goes, don’t be silly. You don’t have to apologize for saying something that’s true, even if it did sting. You were right. It’s better that you know it, because it means you’ll see it for what it is, when I’m … not at my best.” He squeezes Erik’s hand, then lets it go. “Forget about it.”

“You can’t tell me you really believe that,” Erik says, and his power turns Charles’ chair, making him face Erik straight-on even as Erik crouches down on the floor, putting them eye to eye. He tugs Charles’ book gently out of his grasp, closing it and setting it on the desk. “I mean it, Charles. We both know it’s not really true.” A pause. “You _do_ know, don’t you?”

“My motives may be different,” Charles says, slowly, painfully, like each word is being pulled out of him by the roots, “but my methods are the same. I had sex with you. I tell you what to do. And I lost my self-control and I hit you, for the second time now. Underneath it all I’m not the person I want to believe I am, when you strip away all the pretensions and pretences. I’m better than they are, but it’s only by a matter of degree.”

“ _None_ of us are the people we want to believe we are,” Erik says. He reaches for Charles’ wrists, placing his hands in his lap palms-up so that Erik can rest his own atop them. “And -- fine, discrete actions might be the same, but that doesn’t make _you_ the same. You make it sound like degree and motivation are insignificant, but they’re not. The consequences of what you do are nothing like the consequences of what they did. And that’s what’s important.”

Sometimes Charles can’t tell if the things he thinks and feels since he’s known Erik are things that were there all along, hidden, or if somehow he’s changed, become this way over the past three and a bit years, slowly eroding.

“It won’t happen again,” he says, and manages a smile for Erik.

Erik gives him a look, one he quickly tries to disguise, but it’s too late: Charles has glanced at his thoughts and caught Erik thinking, _don’t make promises you can’t keep._

“Read my mind, Charles,” Erik says abruptly, taking Charles’ hand and lifting it up to press two of Charles’ fingers against his temple. “Look at how I feel about Shaw. And then look at how I feel about you.”

“How you feel about me doesn’t change my actions,” Charles argues, but he looks anyway, and feels somehow simultaneously like his heart is being squeezed in someone’s fist and like it’s swelling, flush with emotion.

Erik’s feelings for Shaw are what Charles already knew they were -- fear, resentment, anger, affection, self-loathing for feeling that affection. Charles, in Erik’s mind, is something else entirely, and when Erik thinks about him his feelings are almost too complex to be disentangled easily, but there’s respect, admiration, Erik’s appreciation for all the little things Charles does -- as simple as the way he takes his tea and how he likes to curl up in his armchair and watch reality tv shows. Erik has an overarching sense of Charles as _home_ , someone whose presence makes Erik feel warmer inside, happier; even when Erik was angry with him today there was a part of him that was relieved when he saw Charles in the library, a part of Erik that found it hard to breathe when they weren’t together.

Charles keeps looking, unable to pull away, and there are deeper feelings, ones Erik isn’t consciously trying to show him but which rise up nonetheless. Erik’s desperation for Charles’ approval and attention, how Charles’ affection makes Erik feel loved and important, the jealous twinge of Erik’s possessiveness -- a breath of memory, Erik thinking one night how Charles was like gravity, Erik always falling toward him helplessly, inexplicably, as if Charles were the beginning and end of all things. Erik can’t stop looking at him, the freckle on the back of his neck, the shape his lips make when he smiles, the way glimpsing the underside of Charles’ wrist beneath his sweater feels erotic and illicit, Charles’ strong thighs when he crosses his legs. The low humming heat in Erik’s body when he thinks about how it felt when Charles was pressed bare against him, around him, pulling him in.

Oh, Charles thinks, his lips parting in shocked silence. And, maybe I should have made him meet more people, so he wasn’t stuck with just me to imprint on. And, oh, his heart is aching with love.

He smiles at Erik, can’t help it, and Erik flushes deep but doesn’t look away; he’s aware of what Charles found, the thoughts and feelings reflected back to him as Charles discovered them.

“So,” Erik says, and then can’t think of anything else to say and goes silent, torn between humiliation and a stubborn determination not to be ashamed of the truth.

“Thank you,” Charles says, and leans forward to press a kiss to Erik’s forehead, does not let himself wish, no matter how dearly he wants to, that this changed anything between them, or how it has to be, because as much as Charles wishes he could take Erik in his arms and kiss him on the mouth, love him the way Erik wants to be loved, it would still be wrong of him to do it. “I love you, too.”

The color in Erik’s cheeks darkens further and he looks down at Charles’ knees for a second, clearly trying to regain his poise and struggling. “Ah,” Erik says after a long, tense second. “Is that what that is?”

“That or indigestion, could be either,” Charles says, freeing one hand to touch Erik’s soft hair.

Erik makes a soft, amused sound, but it’s enough to get him to look back up at Charles again, his lips caught in a small smile. He tilts his head into Charles’ touch, and Charles is still tied up in his mind enough to see how it’s not entirely intentional, the way Erik turns toward him like a flower toward the sun. “Just to be perfectly clear,” he says. “You aren’t talking about the paternal kind of love.”

Charles pauses, then very carefully says, “Well, I assume you don’t love me like I’m your son. That would be odd.”

“You know what I meant.” Erik’s hand shifts atop his, one of his fingers tracing the line of Charles’ vein along his wrist, then drifts over the heel of Charles’ hand to trail along his palm and toward his fingers. The touch is so light it’s hard not to shiver, and Charles has to disengage, taking his hands back and folding them neatly further back in his own lap, restrained.

“I just love you,” he says, looking back at Erik and willing him to accept it, to leave it there instead of pushing -- but of course Erik doesn’t. It’s not in his nature.

Erik shifts, leaning in closer as his hand comes to rest on Charles’ shoulder, near where it joins his neck, his fingertips still chilly from walking outside -- Charles can feel that even through the fabric of his shirt. Erik hasn’t ordered him, and Charles can tell it isn’t intentional or even conscious, but he’s exuding Dominance all the same; it pulses out of him like pheromones, magnetic and intoxicating, and Charles can’t look away.

“Charles,” Erik says, softly, and Charles … hesitates, his tongue already shaping the words to tell Erik no again, but they won’t come out.

“I’m not going to do anything,” Erik says, his gaze flitting between Charles’ eyes and his mouth, and even though he says that Charles reads how badly Erik wants to kiss him anyway. He’s close enough that Charles can see every one of his dark lashes, the texture of his skin, too close to forget how it felt to touch him. “I promised I wouldn’t, and that you wouldn’t, not until you’ve made that decision yourself. I just want to know. Tell me. How do you love me? Like a son?”

“It won’t change anything,” Charles says, closing his eyes at last, and he knows it’s a submissive gesture, a bad idea, but it’s easier than looking at Erik so near and not leaning forward to meet him. His stomach is fluttering inside of him, somewhere between nausea and an inappropriate excitement that he can’t quite banish. “No matter what my answer is, I will feel the same and you will feel the same, and we’ll be in the same place for the same reasons. Don’t torture yourself, Erik, playing the what-if game. It’s not worth it.”

“On the contrary.” Erik’s other hand touches Charles’ knee, sliding upward but stopping well shy of Charles’ hands, Charles’ hips. “It makes all the difference in the world to me.”

And Charles … hesitates, balanced on the very tip of the knife, and says, very quietly, “You’re not my son.”

He hears the soft breath Erik lets out, feels it ruffle his hair a bit, and for a long minute they’re both silent, Charles’ heartbeat loud in his own ears and Erik’s touch hot against his thigh, his shoulder. He hears the rustle of fabric as Erik leans forward -- but Erik’s lips hit Charles’ cheek, not his mouth, far enough back that it’s almost to Charles’ ear. Charles’ breath catches in his throat, and he doesn’t move, doesn’t let himself do anything at all, just keeps his eyes closed and his body still, careful, so careful not to lean one way or the other, not to fall off that point.

Erik’s kiss is warm, soft, and lasts both entirely too long and not long enough. Erik draws back, then, his exhilaration, his desire pulsing through the telepathic bond between them, and his voice says, “I’d suggest we take this upstairs if I didn’t already know your answer.”

“You’re still sixteen, and I’m still your guardian,” Charles says, opening his eyes. “Nothing has changed, Erik. Do you understand what I’m saying?” It doesn’t matter if Erik feels differently than before, or how Charles feels, or what they are or aren’t to each other. All of the reasons why Charles shouldn’t have slept with Erik in the first place are still there, just gussied up in a prettier ballgown. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Like I said: I know your answer.” Erik sounds disappointed, though, just a hair, and slowly he brings his hand down from Charles’ shoulder, settling it down on Charles’ leg instead, with the other. “I do want you. Your decision might not have changed, but that much has.”

And how much of that, Charles wonders, is because Erik wants Charles’ love so badly that he would change the very core of who he is to get it?

“Be that as it may,” he says, taking hold of Erik’s hands and clasping them in his own, “It’s still a no, Erik. Besides, how could I compete with Madelyne for your affections? She’d kill me and wear my skin as a jacket.”

Erik gives him a rueful look and says, “She and I are just friends.”

Charles snorts, amused, and lets go of Erik’s hands. “Penis in vagina friends.”

“I’m _malesexual_ ,” Erik says, faintly offended, but he’s smiling all the same when he draws his hands out of Charles’ lap. “It’s an -- experimentation thing. You know.” He waves vaguely.

“Of course,” Charles says, and gets to his feet at last, feeling more in control once he and Erik are no longer face-to-face, close enough to breathe for each other. “As long as nobody gets hurt and everybody gets to come, that’s the important part.” And perhaps if Erik gets involved enough with Madelyne, or with Frank, he’ll get over that part of how he feels about Charles, and they can move on with the rest of their lives without those two weeks forever holding them back.

Erik rises to standing slowly, like an old man, never mind he’s still a teenager in his prime. “I like to think you’ll change your mind one day,” he says, holding Charles’ gaze.

“I know,” Charles says, and leaves the office before he can say anything Erik might take as encouragement.

 

 

*

CEREBRO  
 _Ways to make your side of the argument look bad, part 138769_

 

> This week’s big news in the mutant world is of course the bloody and violent attack on the ICC during the most recent session of the Hellfire Trial, executed by their own members and killing over a hundred people who had the misfortune to be present when Victor Creed, aka Sabertooth, plus Avalanche, Viper, and seven other as-yet unidentified Hellfire members -- all of whom I presume also have stupid codenames -- came to try and kill … somebody. Or so the press tell us is the assumption, though what that’s based on nobody seems able to say.
> 
> It’s always been very clear that the Hellfire Club exists not to try and win more rights for mutants but to create chaos and kill non-mutant humans, and never more so than when they break into court not to present a legal defense for their captured comrades but to massacre as many innocents as possible, fight one of their own ex-members (ex-victims) and be chased out again. It certainly won’t win them more mutant hearts and minds, and even the separatist movement’s non-criminal leaders are now disavowing, excommunicating and disowning the Hellfire Club entirely, publicly and vocally.
> 
> I’d ask what the point of it all was if it weren’t clear that there is no point to this useless violence. Until we can all take a reasoned, logical approach to working together to agree our course of action, integrationist and separatist alike, we won’t make any progress at all. And that is exactly what terrorist organizations like the Hellfire Club are set to prevent.
> 
> On a side-note: Erik Lehnsherr could very easily have joined his ex-brethren in that courtroom and gone with them, but instead he stood and fought. Anyone still claiming he’s just waiting his chance should shut up and watch the footage. If you really think he’s doing it to save Sebastian Shaw after the crap he spouted about Lehnsherr in court then you need to have your ears cleaned out and/or your reading comprehension examined by a remedial studies teacher.

*

**humdingmutant** wrote **ERIK LEHNSHERR ROUND-UP POST**

 

> I’ve seen a lot of posts going around tumblr asking who is this hottie and thought I’d clear up some obvious misconceptions.
> 
> 1: That, friends and tumblrinas, is Erik Lehnsherr. In case you’ve been living under a fucking rock for the past three years, Erik Lehnsherr is like the mutant equivalent of the Lindbergh baby, only instead of getting found dead he got found playing the role of Sebastian Shaw’s mass-murdering sex toy. You might have heard of him.
> 
> 2: In case this is unclear, the Hellfire Club is not a boy band.
> 
> 3: Lusting after a famous rape victim is the most uncool thing you can do imo
> 
> 4: Not to mention he’s sixteen years old making him officially jailbait. Here’s a link to the Wiki article on pedophilia if you’re still confused.
> 
> 5: Also, he doesn’t have a hot dad, this is world-renowned mutant psychologist Charles Xavier. Have some respect. Or at least crack open a book once in a while jfc. This means no, they are probably NOT fucking and insinuating as much is gross and offensive pls stop. they are not your fangirl slash faves
> 
> 6: Anyone writing Erik Lehnsherr/Sebastian Shaw noncon RPF fic (yes, that is actually a thing) should go kill themselves stat.
> 
>   
>  ANYWAY, if you were paying attention to anything outside your own wet panties you would know that the reason he is in the news is because the uncaptured part of Hellfire tried to KILL HIM this week at the trial where he’s been giving evidence against his abusers like a damn boss motherfucker, and Erik Lehnsherr fought them off and saved himself and Xavier and didn’t blow up anything or hurt anyone except the people attacking him because contrary to what a lot of shitbags will say he is NOT A TERRORIST BY CHOICE, and he’s been out of Hellfire and safely NOT KILLING PEOPLE for THREE YEARS NOW, EVEN THOUGH HE LIVES IN ONE OF THE MOST HEAVILY POPULATED CITIES ON THE PLANET. So now you know and you can shut the fuck up about how hot he is and concentrate instead on the actual shit happening in the real actual world, read a newspaper if you want news details jfc
> 
> also stop taking candid photos of him and posting them on tumblr, he is a MINOR CHILD and that is fucked up and gross
> 
> Protect rape victims.  
>  Protect child abuse survivors.  
>  Protect MALE rape victims and DOM child abuse survivors.
> 
> Protect Erik Lehnsherr at all costs.
> 
> _tags: #erik lehnsherr #tw: hellfire #tw: terrorism #tw: rape #tw: child abuse #hellfire club trial #the hague #international criminal court #social justice_  
>  128,483 notes

 

 

>   
> **moomoocachoo:** I really get such weird vibes off of this entire Hellfire thing. I mean, don’t get me wrong I totally get that if you’re kidnapped as a baby and raised to do bad things and punished if you don’t then you’re gonna do them. But doesn’t that then raise the question of why he isn’t doing them now? I mean, you don’t just stop being a terrorist because your terrorist kidnappers-slash-parents went to jail. Is nobody concerned he’s just going to keep doing the same thing over and over again? It wouldn’t be his fault he was like that but still it scares me sometimes when I’m lying awake at night thinking about ways I might die in NYC.
> 
> _tags: #erik lehnsherr #hellfire club #nyc #mutant rights #does this make me a bad person #still nature vs nurture_  
>  12 notes

 

 

>   
> **harribo:** I wrote a charles/erik/sebastian threeway dubcon alpha/omega AU it’s posted to my AO3 now if you wanna read, comments are love and i’ll keep writing it if i get at least 24 of them
> 
> _tags: #cherik #sherik #erik lehnsherr #charles xavier #sebastian shaw #hellfire club  
>  1 note_

*

_Erik_

Erik’s sitting in his English class, taking notes on _The Great Gatsby_ , when a notification pops up on his laptop screen -- a new email.

Erik tabs over from Evernote to Chrome and his heart skips a beat: it’s from Braden-Newell. He glances up at the teacher, making sure he isn’t going to miss anything too important, then clicks into his Gmail and opens up the message.

 **This week**  
Elias Braden-Newell  
 _to me_

 

 

> Dear Erik,
> 
> I was shocked and appalled to see on the news about the attack this week, and to see that you had been caught up in this terrible violence. I know of course from our own conversations that this is something that is far from new to you -- your younger experiences, I’m sure, steeled you for that moment -- but it is still, I am sure, a terrible thing to go through and I am very glad to have been reassured by the news anchor that you had escaped unscathed, along with Dr Xavier.
> 
> The Hellfire Club may have good ideals at heart, but their methods are often crude and, dare I say, poorly executed. Anyone with any sense -- and you’ll excuse me saying so, I hope, given the speculation that they were there to kill you, but as a purely academic exercise I would say that whatever they were doing could have been done with a great deal more surgical bent in mind and less slashing about. It makes the entire separatist movement look like rabid bears with blindfolds on, rolling about like imbeciles instead of a credible political and sociological viewpoint. Very irritating, especially when I am called fifty times a day for a comment by various members of the associated press.
> 
> In any case, I could not in good conscience remain quiet on the subject and thought that given how stridently I am sure dear Charles is vilifying the very core of separatism and championing this as evidence in his favor, I would offer a sympathetic ear if you would like to speak to someone who lives in the real world. Alas -- if we were all so rich as an Xavier then we too could argue for pacifism over the fish course.
> 
> Yours, etc,
> 
> Elias Braden-Newell
> 
> Geofferey B. Tobias Distinguished Professor of Mutant Studies  
>  Professor of Social Psychology  
>  The University of California at Berkeley

Erik reads it twice, three times, and as he reads it’s like he can hear Braden-Newell’s voice speaking the words aloud in his head, calm and empathetic, a little wry at times, poised. It’s eleven in the morning in New York, which means it’s just eight in California; Braden-Newell must have sent this email just as soon as he got into his office.

Braden-Newell clearly understands just how Erik feels about the Hellfire Club’s activities; Erik knows perfectly well that violence is often necessary to elicit real social change, but the way Hellfire goes about it undermines the separatist message entirely. God, but he wishes Braden-Newell and Charles hadn’t had their falling out. It seems to him that if Charles would just _listen_ to what people like Braden-Newell have to say, he’d start to really understand the state of the world, and why mutants so badly need for it to change.

Thinking about Charles makes a warm feeling pulse in the center of his chest, a small shiver running down his spine when he remembers their conversation from yesterday, what Charles had confessed. _You’re not my son._ Maybe Erik should have known, should have inferred how Charles felt from the way he behaved, but he’d always assumed -- well. He’d always assumed Charles _did_ see him as nothing more than his ward, his child. Just, his child that he wanted to fuck.

But this changes everything.

Charles was wrong, when he said knowing would make it worse. Erik already knew Charles wanted him and that Charles’ willpower was the only thing keeping him from having Erik. But knowing Charles _loves_ him feels -- safe. Like something real Erik can hold onto, not the ephemerality of physical attraction but something else he’s never had, something Hellfire never gave him. And Erik thinks that maybe this can be enough. Knowing Charles loves him, even if they never have anything else … maybe it can be enough.

“ … Erik?”

Erik jolts back to reality, lifting his gaze to his English teacher, who is standing at the front of the room, both brows raised. Erik pauses, uncertain, trying to parse from the memory of vague, jumbled speech of just a moment before what she’d said, but nothing comes to mind.

“Can you read from page 24 for us, Erik?” the teacher repeats after a moment, and Erik nods, flipping open his book and reciting out loud the words on the page, not really paying full attention even now, just forming the words with his mouth and tongue and throat until she tells him to stop.

He waits a while, then, pretending to be paying attention and even taking a few more notes on his laptop, until he’s certain she’s forgotten about him, before he goes back to Chrome and opens up the email from Braden-Newell again.

New Message  
To: Elias Braden-Newell  
Subject: Re: This week

 

 

> Dear Prof. Braden-Newell,
> 
> I appreciate your email. It’s a relief to hear my own sentiments regarding Hellfire’s actions this week reflected by someone whose opinion I respect. I feel that I could clarify so much about the agenda of the separatist movement if only I were allowed to speak openly, but until I turn 18 Charles has forbidden me from speaking to the media about anything at all, including the trial. I understand why, but still, it’s frustrating.
> 
> You don’t have to worry about insulting me. Please keep this in confidence, as it’s not been released to the media as public knowledge, but Creed and the others weren’t there for me. They were there for Shaw and the officers. They made it sound like this was some kind of power grab, which would make sense: as long as Shaw still lives, it would be almost impossible for anyone to attain real influence in Hellfire. Too many are still loyal to Shaw, and still believe he’ll be acquitted or will escape prison. Or maybe it was something even more insidious than that, a manipulation of the media in some way, and there’s a scheme going on that I’m not clever enough to see or understand yet.
> 
> I will say that I’m surprised Shaw isn’t making much of an effort to defend himself in court. I don’t know what his goal is. Maybe he always believed Hellfire would rescue him, but recent events will have disabused him of that notion, so I guess we’ll see.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Erik Lehnsherr

He schedules it on Boomerang to send in a couple hours, so it doesn’t seem like he was too eager to reply, then forces himself to turn his attention back to class.

He manages to make it through the rest of his high school classes, and his physics course at Columbia, without being too distracted. His focus starts to wander in the last ten minutes of physics, though, subsumed under the rising sense of anticipation. He’s meeting Frank this afternoon, for the first time since the trial. It’s his chance to see if Frank has any inroads in the underground to start making his connections, to find some names for Charles to investigate. He doesn’t want to let himself get too hopeful, when it’s entirely possible Frank won’t know any more than Erik does, but even so: it’s something.

Erik meets Frank in the student union half an hour after his class lets out. Frank is sitting in a group of other students, but he glances up as soon as he sees Erik and waves him over; when Erik gets closer he sees that the girl next to Frank has spines for hair, her eyebrows little thorns. “Hey,” Frank says, gesturing for the others to make room for Erik. “Erik, these are some of my associates from the MLA. Guys, this is Erik Lehnsherr, as seen on TV. Be cool, don’t scare him off.”

Erik lifts a hand in acknowledgement and manages a tight-feeling smile; he hadn’t realized Frank would be with other people. That these are the same people Erik wants to ask about only makes it worse -- he can’t ask Frank in front of them, and there’s no guarantee he’ll have a chance to be alone with Frank after. The mutants are looking at him with interest, some of them not even bothering trying to disguise the way they’re staring, but that’s nothing new; Erik’s used to people recognizing him and then getting that look in their eyes, the look that means they’re trying to imagine him with Shaw.

“Hey,” Erik says, dropping onto the sofa on the other side of Frank, squished in between him and another mutant, this one with an invisible mutation.

“Melinda, Tiffany, DeShawn, Harry, and Yuki,” Frank says, pointing at each of the others in turn. “We got a bit caught up in our discussion at our meeting this afternoon, I hope you don’t mind. I know you get possessive of my time and attention.”

Erik makes a face at Frank, then grins, leaning his satchel against the table they’re all gathered around and letting his gaze flit from face to face, meeting as many eyes as he can. “Nice to meet you,” he says, polite.

There’s a chorus of responses, but overall they seem pretty relaxed about meeting Erik, which is a bit of a relief after the week he’s had. Frank seems entirely chilled out, sure of his position here. “Melinda was telling us about a protest this week, want to come?” he asks Erik, tipping his head towards the spined girl. “I’m bringing cokes, Harry’s bringing chips. Yuki’s bringing her fighting attitude.”

“Believe it,” the skinny Asian girl says, pumping her fist.

“Maybe,” Erik says, intentionally evasive; Charles wasn’t wrong, after all, when he told Erik that his presence at protests might draw too much attention from groups like Humans First, putting others at risk. But at the same time, him being there would draw more media attention, too, which can only be good for the cause. “Text me when and where. What are we protesting?”

“The increased conviction rates for young mutant offenders,” Melinda says, searching in her bag and pulling out a flyer, which she hands to Erik. “Visibly mutant kids are twenty-eight percent more likely to be convicted than non-mutants. People with invisible mutations aren’t much lower, at eighteen. It’s a disgrace.”

Erik glances down at the flyer. They’re protesting in front of the courthouse on Saturday at noon, and there’s a note at the bottom that says non-violent demonstrative use of powers is encouraged. It’s practically begging to get arrested on bullshit charges which, Erik, supposes, is probably the point. “Thanks,” Erik says, folding up the paper and tucking it into his back pocket. “I’ll do my best to be there.”

“Will your government babysitters be okay with you using powers near a government building?” Frank asks, sounding lazy, but his gaze when he turns it on Erik is sharp. “I mean, go ahead on my part, but don’t want them thinking you’re turning rogue.”

“What are they going to do, arrest me? I’m already arrested.” Erik leans back on the sofa, stretching his legs out under the table and crossing them at the ankles.

Frank shrugs. “Cool with me. You should get Charles to come, he can mindbend the cops into doing the conga. That’s non-violent.”

It’s certainly a mental image, and Erik laughs. “I think the tango is more Charles’ style.”

“That, then,” Frank says, grinning. “I’d love to see him at a protest. That would really be something, if the big-name integrationists started really getting involved in this kind of stuff.”

Erik makes a derisive noise and says, “Don’t be ridiculous. If integrationists actually went to protests it’d mean they’d have to do something other than tumblr slacktivism. Why actually change the world when you can just talk about it?”

“Well, you live there, don’t you?” the other girl, Tiffany, says, leaning forward, her hands on her hips. “You live in his house, you talk to him. Ain’t nobody else going to change his mind for him. He ain’t gonna listen to me on the street, but maybe you tell him enough times over the dinner table and he’ll listen.”

“I’m the last person he’s going to listen to,” Erik says, and unfortunately he thinks that’s probably true; Charles will blame any disagreement between them on Erik’s upbringing, not on real critical reasoning. “But don’t think I don’t try.”

“Anyway, be there, Saturday noon. I won’t save you any chips if you’re late,” Frank says, with a wry smile. “Okay, so, did you just want to hang out or did you want to talk? Because we can go elsewhere if you need some privacy.”

Erik cringes inwardly, because the way Frank puts it, admitting he needs to talk to Frank one on one will imply that he has something personal he needs to discuss with him. As if he needs to go cry into Frank’s shoulder over what Shaw said in court, or something. “I was thinking we could go back to your place,” he says, lifting a brow in Frank’s direction, figuring Frank can interpret that however he wants.

“All right,” Frank says, wiggling his eyebrows, and gets to his feet with an effect like a cork from a champagne bottle; he was wedged in so tightly that once he’s moved Erik and Melinda nearly fall onto one another, which could have been very uncomfortable for Erik. “See you lot later.”

Erik pushes himself up a second later, waving to the rest of the MLA members as he follows Frank out of the building, falling into step alongside him once they’re outside and on the sidewalk heading toward Frank’s dorm, Frank tilting his head over his hand to light his cigarette. Frank gives him a sidelong glance once it’s lit, and gestures toward Erik with the box. “Want one?”

Erik shakes his head. “I’ll just take a drag of yours, thanks,” he says, and holds out his hand for Frank to slide the cigarette between his fingers, Erik lifting it to his mouth to inhale smoke. The scent fills him and he shudders deep inside, nausea crawling up the back of his throat. He passes the cigarette back to Frank and Frank chuckles, putting it back between his lips.

“This an indoor-only conversation or can we walk and talk?” Frank asks, sidestepping a group of students sat on the grass and overspilling onto the sidewalk.

Erik shrugs, and says, “Well, it’s going to sound a bit apropos, now,” he says, meaning since he’s just met Frank’s MLA friends. He’s not quite sure the best way to phrase the question, and decides to err on the side of bluntness. Frank tends to appreciate candid pragmatism. “I need to make contact with Hellfire. Do you know anyone in the MLA or otherwise who might have those kinds of connections?”

Frank makes a surprised noise around his cigarette, taking it out of his mouth entirely and looking at Erik with both eyebrows up, then shakes his head, letting out a whispering breath of a laugh. “Well now, that is unexpected. You calling them for back payments on your pocket money or something?”

Erik manages a crooked-feeling grin and slips his hands into his coat pockets, tucking his thumbs into his fists. “I’m assuming you watched the footage of the trial attacks,” he says. There’s no good reason why his heart is beating a little faster all of the sudden, and yet there it is, throbbing rapidfire against his sternum.

“I did,” Frank says, dropping the cigarette and crushing it out under his heel. “I figured I’d let you bring it up if you wanted to. Probably sick of talking about it by now.”

Erik’s surprised, faintly, but now that Frank’s mentioned it he realizes just how much he appreciates that. Frank’s the only person Erik knows who doesn’t pity him for what happened to him as a child, or at least doesn’t show it. He just allows Erik to exist: not as a victim but as a person, a person who happens to have a past, just like everyone else.

“True,” Erik says, just a few beats too late. “I only bring it up because of what Creed told me while he was there.” They turn right, onto a new street, and Frank steps closer to Erik to let a gaggle of tourists pass by, their shoulders pressing together. “Apparently someone’s making a play to take over Hellfire. Whomever it was, they were behind the attacks, and they explicitly ordered Creed _not_ to hurt me. I want to know who this person is, and why they give a fuck.”

“Weeeell … ” Frank sounds more hesitant than Erik thinks he’s ever heard him, his eyes on the pavement in front of his feet, but finally he says, “I might know someone who knows someone, if you catch my drift. If you want to write a letter or something I could pass it along.”

A letter isn’t exactly what Erik had in mind. “I’d rather leave my name out of it for the time being,” Erik says. “Considering my history with these people, I’d rather be in control of the process myself, as I’m sure you can understand.”

He manages not to be too surprised that Frank actually does know someone who knows someone. (Or, if Erik’s translating Frank’s words right: just outright _knows_ someone.) The underground isn’t down nearly as deep as most people tend to assume. Most affiliates aren’t full-time terrorists -- they have their own real lives. They’re lawyers, and doctors, and parents, and the guy driving your cab. They own your favorite bookstore. They’re the electrical engineer who puts his talents to auxiliary use.

“No, I get it,” Frank says, and he’s quiet for another few seconds, tucking his thumbs into his jeans pockets. “I’ll put out some feelers for you and see if I can organize a meet-up or contact or something, but without a name attached it’ll be hard. These aren’t trusting people.”

Erik glances at Frank’s face, reading the flickering tensions in the muscles there: Frank is concerned, not anxious but uneasy all the same. It reminds Erik of Charles’ reaction the other night when Erik first suggested this, although Erik suspects Frank’s trepidation has more to do with Hellfire’s reputation for killing first, asking questions later whenever someone steps out of line.

“So give me their name,” Erik suggests, deciding not to beat around the bush. “You can trust me. If I were going to start turning in free Hellfire agents I think I would have done it already.”

“It’s not that,” Frank says, and they reach the door of his building, where they have to break off conversation to get inside and past some other students and the warden at the desk. It’s only when they’re on the stairs that Frank continues. “I have a reputation to maintain, and these aren’t people who network. Handing out business cards is a good way to get cut out of the phone book. I know you can handle yourself, and hell, they can’t do much to me. But my rep is important to me.”

“All right. Organize a meet, then. Use the name ‘Max Eisenhardt.’”

“That’s easier,” Frank says, relaxing a little, though he’s still carrying some tension in his shoulders, just a little. He unlocks and pushes his dorm room door open for Erik. “After you.”

Erik goes in, stripping off his coat and draping it over the back of Frank’s desk chair, toeing off his shoes next to the bed. Frank follows, dropping down onto the end of the mattress.

Hellfire, or whomever Frank’s contact is, might recognize the alias, or they might not. Shaw gave it for Erik whenever he had to bring Erik to the mutant center for testing, and when Erik had to be admitted to the hospital for treatments. Erik suspects they won’t, though; officer pseudonyms were kept a tightly-closed book, at least when Erik was in Hellfire’s inner circle, but at least if anyone goes looking for Max to see who the hell he is, at least there’s something of a paper trail. They can learn, for example, that he recently tested Psi-level. That should be enough to pique their interest.

He doubts Charles will be keen on letting Erik actually attend the meet, but that’s not important, because once there’s a day and time, all they have to do is have Charles walk down the street and read people’s minds. Hellfire can just think Max bailed on them, and Erik will still get the information he needs.

“So,” he says, folding his hands behind his head, “what else did you have on the agenda? The doctor is in.”

Erik shrugs one shoulder and joins Frank on the bed, swinging one leg over Frank’s body to straddle his hips. “I don’t know,” he says, leaning forward to brush his lips against the side of Frank’s throat, nipping at the skin and then flicking his tongue over the teethmarks, letting his weight press heavy against Frank’s pelvis, rolling down unavoidably whenever Erik moves. “A lot’s happened since I saw you last. You’re out of touch.”

“Uh huh?” Frank leans back against the wall behind him, his hands slipping down to Erik’s ass. “Why don’t you tell me all about it.” His fingers dimple into Erik’s buttocks, tugging him in harder, setting a rhythm; Erik can feel him starting to get hard. “I promise my fees are competitive.”

Erik laughs, the sound muffled against Frank’s flesh. His hands have found the collar of Frank’s shirt, unbuttoning down the front. “Are you poaching Charles’ patients now?” he says, getting the last button undone and smoothing his hands against Frank’s bared skin, warm and firm. He grinds his hips down in a circular motion and Frank’s hands curve up over his ass until they reach the waistband of his jeans, then one comes around to the front to unfasten Erik’s belt, the other hand slipping inside as soon as the denim is loose enough and curving around his bare cheek.

“How is Charles?” Frank asks, with a tone of amusement in his voice. “It’s perfectly normal to talk about your ex-lover-slash-parent while fucking your current lover, by the way.”

“Since when have you been interested in normal?” Erik tugs at the open front of Frank’s shirt and Frank leans forward enough to Erik to push it off his shoulders, dragging it down his arms and stripping it from him entirely. Frank’s not wrong, of course, but Erik figures if he wanted someone with a healthy attitude about sex, Frank would fuck someone else.

He kisses Frank on the mouth, bruisingly hard, and as he bites down on Frank’s lower lip he holds out his hand to catch the length of steel chain that darts into his grasp from under Frank’s bed. He tastes the sharp sting of copper -- he’s drawn blood -- and draws back just in time to see the chain loop around Frank’s throat, the links melding together, unbreakable.

Frank laughs, tipping his head back but looking down his nose at Erik, eyes half-lidded. “Dirty pool,” he says, and takes hold of Erik at the hip and the shoulder to push him down onto his back, holding him there with effortless strength. “I’m the boss today,” and he moves his mouth to Erik’s throat, then downwards, pushing up Erik’s t-shirt so he can lick and suck at his nipples.

It feels good, or maybe that’s just the fact that Erik has metal around Frank’s neck, can feel the beat of his pulse point against the steel. He shivers a little, despite himself, his back arching up against Frank’s body in a way that isn’t at all contrived. “Prove it, then,” he says, and yanks on the chain with his power, not enough to make Frank move but enough to press against his windpipe.

“All right,” Frank croaks, and reaches up to wrap his fingers around Erik’s throat, mirroring the chain and pressing down, restricting Erik’s air even as he bites down on the sensitive nub of Erik’s left nipple. “I’m the boss.”

Erik tries to breathe, but it’s like breathing through a straw; his lungs barely manage to expand at all. He twists beneath Frank’s weight, struggling until he manages to get a leg free to hook around Frank’s waist and pull him roughly down against him, Erik’s power coiling through Frank’s belt buckle and using it to roll Frank’s hips down, mimicking the rhythm of fucking. Frank grins, going with the motion, but he doesn’t let up; Erik’s free hand’s in Frank’s hair, gripping the curly locks tight as he fights to breathe.

Erik gives in first, relaxing the chain, and Frank holds for another five seconds, until Erik’s starting to feel a bit scared, before he lets go, smoothing his palm down Erik’s chest, soothing as Erik gasps for breath. “There, that’s nice,” he says, still thrusting against Erik’s crotch, working himself against him. “You okay?”

“Mhmm.” Erik’s lungs feel like they’re tingling, filled with air again, his mind brilliantly dizzy with the flood of oxygen. His neck still hurts, and he knows from experience that it might bruise a little, just from the use of Frank’s mutation on his skin. That’s part and parcel of fucking people with strength-enhancing mutations -- sometimes it seemed like wherever Shaw touched him, Erik’s skin would bruise. Although, in retrospect, he wonders if that might have been Shaw’s aim all along.

“Here,” Erik says, pulling open Frank’s desk drawer with his power. “Go on. Get the lube.” He makes it an order, just because he can.

Frank snorts even as he obeys, stretching over to fish out the bottle. He drops it to the sheets and goes to work on Erik’s fly, knocking aside the loose ends of his belt so he can pull down the zipper; then he takes hold of the denim and drags it down Erik’s thighs, moving Erik’s legs up and over his shoulder so he can pull them all the way off. “So, we were talking about your not-dad,” he says teasingly, mouth twisting wryly even as he throws the jeans to the floor and goes back for Erik’s boxers, groping him along the way. “How’s he doing?”

“Oh, well, since you want to know,” Erik says sarcastically, and he means to leave off there, to let Frank get back to business, but he finds himself saying, as Frank drops his boxers on the floor and shucks his own pants before coming back to settle between Erik’s legs again, “He told me he’s in love with me.”

“Huh,” Frank says, hooking an arm under Erik’s thigh and reaching for the lube; he doesn’t so much as pause, squirting some out onto his fingers. “Well, that’s appropriate. He horny or something?”

Erik rolls his eyes, and exhales to relax his body as Frank starts to press one finger inside him, grasping onto the free end of the chain around Frank’s neck -- not tightening it but just holding him there, under Erik’s control. It’s enough to make his cock start to feel warmer, heavier, and Erik shifts his hips to force Frank’s finger the rest of the way into him, gasping slightly when Frank bottoms out.

“We aren’t fucking,” Erik says, pressing his thumb against a steel chain link to feel the metal flare hot against his skin. “His morals, still. Which I understand. If we got caught, it’d be worse for him than it would be for me, as well.”

“Well, then it’s a bit pointless, isn’t it?” Frank asks, working his finger in and out of Erik’s hole, pumping it a little. “Oh, I love you, but I’m never going to do anything about it. Instead I’m just going to let you know it so you have to brood on it and I feel better for being _honest_. It’s a shitty thing to do.” He starts working a second finger in alongside the first, knowing Erik’s body well enough by now to know he can take it. “I love you, now run off and fuck all the other people out there but subtly feel bad for doing it because I’m the one that loves you.”

Erik flushes a little, mixed anger and embarrassment, even though neither feeling is justified -- Frank would be right, after all, if that were in fact what Charles had done, but: “As it happens, I may have … goaded him into it,” Erik admits, and he makes himself think about that, about the way Charles looked with his eyes shut, unable to tell Erik to his face, instead of acknowledging the thin tendrils of anxiety that are prodding around the fringes of his thought, threatening as usual to turn into a flashback. “Well. He did tell me he loved me, but that could mean anything. He didn’t want to clarify further until I pushed him.”

“Hmm,” Frank says, clearly not convinced, but he keeps working those fingers, stroking up inside Erik until he finds his prostate and can rub over it with the tips, rolling the sensitive spot and making heat jolt through Erik’s lower half. “Well, I still think he needs to either shit or get off the pot,” he says, leaning over to grab a condom and ripping the packet open with his teeth, placing it over the head of his own cock and starts rolling it down. He’s hard and thick, erection tapping against Erik’s groin when he lets it go, flushed with arousal. “Right now you’re just going to be dancing around each other forever. It sounds exhausting.”

Erik grimaces and leans up enough to strip his own shirt the rest of the way off over his head, letting it drop off the edge of the mattress. “He can’t stop feeling the way he feels. Unfortunately for him, he feels that way for his sixteen-year-old ward. What else is he supposed to do?” He gasps when Frank’s fingers rub past his prostate again, his ass tightening around the digits and his knee jerking in toward Frank’s shoulder.

“He fucked you before, didn’t he?” Frank asks, squirting some more lube onto his fingers and stroking himself, getting himself slick. “Didn’t bother him much then. Bit late for morals.” He pulls his fingers out and lines himself up at Erik’s hole, then pauses, rubbing his tip over the twitching muscle. “Look, don’t get me wrong. I know it’s messed up, I get that. But I just think that it’s a bit rich of him to be precious about it now, if he loves you and you’re obviously hot for teacher. Might as well just have fun and go with it.”

He pushes forward, the thick head stretching Erik’s hole wide, wide, wider, until suddenly it slips in with a wet sound of lube on latex and Erik shudders bodily, tightening his grasp on the chain. His body feels split open, throbbing with pain from being stretched too wide and not quite prepped enough, not relaxed enough. But Erik knows it could be much, much worse.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Erik says through gritted teeth, and he shifts, tilting his hips up to try to get a better angle as Frank keeps pushing into him. “What’s your Plan B?”

“Hook up with a handsome Texan,” Frank says, grinning down at him, and sets his hands to Erik’s hips, helping him up, lifting him up from the bed until Erik’s weight is resting on his upper back and his ass is entirely suspended in Frank’s grip, no leverage of his own, his ass full of cock. “How’s that?”

“Submissive,” Erik says dryly, having been fucked just like this by more Hellfire Doms than he cares to count, but this time: he has leverage. He wraps the chain once more around his hand and uses it to yank at Frank’s neck again, dragging his head down so he’s hunched over Erik’s body, Frank having to catch himself on the bed with one hand to keep from falling over and out of Erik’s ass.

“I was just trying to help you get it in,” Frank protests, but he’s laughing as he angles himself and pushes in deeper, hips starting to move. “Okay, okay. Anything else you wanted to bring up before I get down to business?”

Erik waves his hand as if to give permission and mimics Frank’s grin, then groans when Frank starts thrusting in earnest, pressing him down into the bed and fucking him until neither of them can talk.

 

 

*

Three days later Erik is stopping on his way home from school, using Charles’ credit card to start restocking the pantry with all the usual caffeinated essentials. He picks up a new bag of coffee beans for himself then makes his last stop at Teavana to get more Earl Grey for Charles. He's standing in line, typing out a response to Frank (who said, "if humans 1st blows up this classroom i s2g it'll be a mercy killing") when someone steps up beside him and says, "It's been a while. Don't startle. You're famous enough now that _someone_ will notice if you look freaked out."

The voice is familiar. Erik lowers his phone slowly, slipping it back into his pocket, and turns around. That he recognizes the man at all is more a testament to Erik's memory than anything else; swineherd is as nondescript in appearance as ever, dirty-blonde hair swept back off his face and carrying a laptop bag, even his clothes telling at nothing more than an understated Dominance.

Erik’s immediate instinct is to shoot him. Only, he isn’t packing a gun, he’s out buying fucking _tea_ , living his private life. The last time Erik saw this man he ended up pinned down on a dirty mattress in the South Bronx, being raped by Victor Creed and later hospitalized for his efforts. Maybe Erik brought that on himself by seeking Creed out in the first place, but nonetheless, it doesn’t incline Erik favorably toward the middleman.

"What do you want?" Erik says, keeping his voice level even as he reaches for the ball bearings in his pocket, twisting his power through the steel. He double-checks his posture, his expression -- no matter how extensively Shaw trained him for encounters just like this one, he's out of practice; he might draw attention to himself unintentionally. Already it's an effort just to keep breathing the same steady rhythm, fighting the reflex to hold his breath.

Swineherd shrugs and picks up a tin of English Breakfast tea. "Relax, I'm here on my own recognizance. I have a buyer looking for a piece of information and you're the source both most likely to have it and least likely to kill me for asking. It's not a big deal." He pushes his glasses up his nose with the back of one knuckle. "I'll pay you for it, of course."

Unless of course he’s here because Frank tipped him off that Erik is looking for the Hellfire Club. It'd be a mighty big coincidence otherwise, and it’s all Erik can do not to respond with some snide comment, but to smile instead, like swineherd is an old friend of the family he's run into entirely by surprise. The expression feels even faker than it used to. "First you'll tell me how you found me," he says.

He can tell swineherd isn't armed, but that's to be expected; they're in public, where Erik wouldn't dare kill him outright, and swineherd's persuasion mutation must be strong enough to counteract Erik's Will if Erik decided to use Dominance to force him into compliance. But if swineherd's been following him all day ... or if Frank has been selling information about him ....

Swineherd gives him a sardonic look. "You have a mobile phone. Mobiles carry GPS. I pinged it. I found you in a froofy teashop buying your dad presents. Let's not throw stones here."

Erik watches his face carefully the whole time, but there's no sign swineherd's lying. "Maybe I like Earl Grey," he says, tapping at the tin in his other hand.

"You seem like the coffee kind to me. Whereas the good doctor seems like the tea kind. Can we talk business? I don't do small talk."

"Wait," Erik tells him, and turns to the cashier, who has just finished ringing up the submissive in front of him.

"Will that be all for you, dear?" the cashier says as she scans his tea.

"I'll buy his as well," Erik says, and he reaches back to take the English Breakfast from swineherd with his hand rather than his power, passing it over the counter with a false smile. "Thank you."

He ignores swineherd as the woman finishes the transaction, handing him a little paper bag with the handles tied off with a length of green ribbon, and lets swineherd follow him back out onto the street. Erik starts walking, heading back downtown toward Charles' apartment, letting swineherd fall into step next to him. He doesn't care how swineherd likes to do it; the tea shop is too small for that type of conversation, and there's less of a chance they'll be consistently overheard if they keep moving. And Erik will be damned if he lets fucking _swineherd_ control where they are and where they’re going.

"What is it you want to know?" he says. "I don't work for Hellfire anymore, as you might have gathered."

"That is still the word on the wire," swineherd agrees, tucking his hands into his jeans pockets. "I want to know about the other New York safehouse, the one Shaw used for meetings with outsiders. Location, any traps to look out for. That sort of thing." He glances over at Erik. "Like I said. No big deal, and I'll pay you for the information. It's not like you can use it yourself without putting yourself at risk of getting caught out by unexpected guests."

"Why do you want to know?" Erik frowns at him and picks up the pace a little, dodging a trio of Chassidic Jews headed in the opposite direction. "And before you tell me that's off-protocol, know that I'm not giving you any information if I don't know exactly what you're using it for. You can take it or leave it."

Swineherd rolls his eyes. "I should have known you'd be a snotty little shit about it. My buyer needs an off-grid location to transition packages from A to B, and given the sensitivity of the packages, somewhere top-end is needed, but they don't have the budget to do it all themselves. Shaw was many things, but he was fucking good at security, for the most part, and he doesn't need it any more. So it makes sense to repurpose it. Okay?"

"If your buyer can afford you, surely he can afford to dress up an empty warehouse," Erik says, and he slips a ball bearing out of his pocket, letting it jump up into his palm where he can curl his fist around it, secure. "What kinds of packages?" Drugs, no. Weapons, it will depend who-for. There are too many variables undefined here, and Erik hasn't so much as given this information to Homeland Security. He's disinclined to become an information leak so easily; swineherd's trying to capitalize on their former association, forgetting just how long it's been since last time. “Besides, doesn’t Solomon want it?”

"Solomon? Psh, no. He’s setting up his own operation, he’s not the sort that grafts on an old system. Too security conscious himself,” swineherd says, with another shrug. “No, this job is for someone else. It’s all but pro bono on my part, goodness of my heart. And we're shipping soylent green, okay? Soylent green that doesn't need to be seen in transit by people looking for it."

Erik gives him a sharp sidelong glance. Soylent green is code, and a rather obvious one at that -- swineherd's elaboration wouldn't be necessary at all if it weren't for the extra detail it provides. This isn't human trafficking. It's fugitive protection.

"Like I said," Erik says after a long moment, squeezing his hand tight around the steel ball, "I'm not in the business of doing favors for old club buddies. If your buyer's affiliated, then he's on his own."

Swineherd flicks a hand, dismissive. "Everyone in the underground who's mutant is minor-league affiliated, you know that. If you're asking if they're a member, then no, my buyer is a free agent in that regard. They don't answer to Creed or to Solomon."

Tenuous connections, Erik can deal with. The long and short of it, and what he won't say to swineherd directly, is that he won't be giving aid to anyone who's ever fucked or beat him. Problem is that with the underground, there's no way to be sure; Shaw whored him out to plenty of non-members back in the day, and while Erik would recognize most of them from being twelve or thirteen and capable of acting older than his age, he knows it happened occasionally when he was younger as well -- mostly if there was a client Shaw wanted to please by sating their dirty-secret affection for little boys. Erik wouldn't remember those names and faces with any certainty; it was too long ago, and too often, he was blindfolded. For the clients’ sense of security, of course.

Erik checks his phone for the time. It's 4:27; half an hour before Charles is off work and heading home, and paying any sort of attention to the tenor of Erik's thoughts. "Will you be in the city through the end of the week?"

For all he knows, swineherd lives here; it would certainly make sense. He's never met an information broker who didn't have his base in a suburb of a major city. Probably swineherd has some apartment out in Queens stuffed floor to ceiling with computer towers and wide-screen monitors like he thinks he's running the Matrix. Fucking douche.

"I can be," swineherd says noncommittally, as if it couldn't matter less. "Why, you need to clear your schedule to think really really hard?"

Erik gives swineherd a withering look. "I'm not doing this on your time. If you want to know where it is, I'll make the arrangements and take you there myself. Do you have mixminion?" He'd use MailTor, but for something like this, he wants even more security than that offers.

"I do. But really, there's zero chance this is a trap if you just tell me and have done with it."

"There's zero chance you're getting in the apartment without me being there," Erik says, raising an eyebrow at him and smiling, just a little. "Like you said. Shaw was fucking good at security."

Swineherd lets out a disgruntled sigh, and shakes his head, then finally just says, "Okay, fine. Give me the time and the place and we'll do it your way. I should have just asked someone else, getting shot would have been less effort than this."

"You know how I operate. I'll email you the time and place when I'm ready. What's your address?"

"Swineherd@mixminion.net. And give me more notice than last time, I could be in the bath for a long soak or taking a shit and not meet your fucking five-minute window."

"You should have thought of that before you and Creed gave me an hour to get from Manhattan to the South Bronx," Erik says, feeling sickeningly self-satisfied given the chance to turn the tables, even considering swineherd is a neutral player in all this. He reaches into the paper bag and pulls out the tin of English Breakfast. "Don't forget your tea. ... Oh, and just so you know -- I don't care if you are an intermediary. If you try to fuck me over, I'll break both your legs and let you bleed out _slowly_." He smiles and tucks the tin into the crook of swineherd's arm.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. And all my family members too, I know," swineherd says, adjusting his laptop strap on his shoulder.

“One last thing,” Erik says before swineherd can go, keeping pace with him as they turn onto a new street. “I don’t want your money. You trade information, that’s your job, and that’s what I want.”

Swineherd casts him a long sideways glance. “All right,” he says, shrugging. “Fine with me, cheaper that way. What do you want to know?”

“Well, let’s see,” Erik says, pretending to think. “My information’s worth about $170K to you. So what I want is everything you know about Solomon. His real name, how he got involved, his mutation, any correspondence between yourself and him, or him and other parties. I’m particularly interested in anything that involves myself. You can put it on a flash drive and bring it when we meet. I think that’s worth about 170, don’t you?”

“Ha!” Swineherd actually barks out a laugh loud enough to catch the attention of a couple across the street, who give them a weird look before continuing their walk; he grins at Erik, shaking his head and pretending to wipe away a tear. “Oh, kid, no. Solomon is so deep even I don’t know the juicy parts. And even if I did I’d be dead before I realized I knew them. He’s the shadowy figure kind of guy, not a showman like Shaw. I’ll give you what I’ve got, but it’s not much.” He shakes his head, genuine amusement playing on his usually dour features. “Solomon! Ha!”

“Fine,” Erik says shortly, because he does believe swineherd, at least; there are none of the tell-tale signs of deception about his expression or posture. “Then to make up for the difference, names and powers of any active Hellfire agents in New York. I already know most of them, I expect, but I like to keep up with the times.” That’s pushing the $170,000 value, and Erik isn’t terribly keen on owing swineherd a favor, but he’ll take the risk.

“I’ll give you five, but that’s best I can do for the price,” swineherd says, spitting in his hand and offering it to Erik. “Shake it, seal it, and email me later this week.”

Erik ignores his hand and nods his agreement. “All right.” And, because he can’t resist, he adds, “Say hi to Frank for me.”

Swineherd drops the hand, giving Erik a weird look. “Who the fuck is Frank?”

Erik checks carefully, but there’s nothing at all to suggest swineherd is being disingenuous. He really doesn’t know who Frank is. Erik’s skill at reading faces might not be as good as telepathy, but it’s good enough for most intents and purposes, and swineherd’s telling the truth. “Never mind,” Erik says, relaxing slightly, and he gives swineherd a small nod. “Later this week, then.”

“Okay.” Swineherd gives him a mock salute, two fingers sweeping from his temple. “See you later, kid. Thanks for the tea.” He walks off down the next turning, and Erik feels it when he chucks the tin of tea in the next garbage bin, without even opening it. There's no tracking him after that, his eyeglasses and wristwatch becoming indistinguishable from the hundreds of others crowding the streets of Manhattan at rush hour, and there's nothing then for Erik to do but go home.

 

 

*


	32. Thirty-two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No content notes this chapter. :)

_Charles_

Charles gets the call from Moira a few days after they get back from Europe, his desk phone ringing at his office when he’s almost ready to go home, just finishing writing up some of the day's notes. He picks it up and props it between his ear and his shoulder, setting his hands back to the keyboard to keep typing. "Hello?" 

"Hi, Charles, it's Moira." She sounds brisk and businesslike today, none of her usual friendly warmth; she doesn’t bother with smalltalk either, just immediately says, "I've got to talk to you about security."

"What about it?" Charles asks, surprised enough that his fingers still on the keys. He can feel his heart starting to pick up in his chest, beating a fast tempo. "Is this about Hellfire? Or that protester, Mr Jacobs? I thought you'd said -- "

"Not about him, no. Or not specifically." A pause. "Charles, there's a lot of chatter going on from our Hellfire sources about recent shifts of power, and given that they had specific plans for Erik when they attacked the trial -- well, people like that usually kill traitors. They don’t spare them. We think there’s a darker motive there, and while we don’t know what it is yet we can’t take any chances with Erik’s security, or with your own."

Charles drags in a new lungful of air almost by force, making himself remember to breathe through willpower alone. "What do you mean?" he asks, knowing his voice sounds odd but unable to fix it. "I'm already telepathically covering our surroundings, I’ve been keeping track of the school at all times since we got back -- "

"That's good, Charles, you're doing the right thing," Moira says, her tone almost soothing now, deliberately softened. 

He hears her moving in her chair, the shift of fabric on fabric, and imagines her in her office back at headquarters, taking the call privately so she can talk to Charles without interruptions, knowing him well enough to make him listen where with somebody else he might be troublesome. She continues, "The honest answer is we don't know what’s going to happen, or if anything will. I'm telling you so you and Erik can be vigilant. Okay? We'll keep monitoring the chatter, see if we can find out anything, and I'm going to assign a guard detail to your building, to keep an eye on you both -- two in the apartment with you, and two downstairs. When you go out, you'll have one each to go with you. You'll be safe."

Erik won't like that, Charles thinks, a sinking feeling in his own stomach at the idea of it, of being observed all the time -- he feels a bit sick, cold, and he knows without so much as a pause that Erik won’t like this at all.

“Is this really necessary?” he asks, rolling his pen between his fingers, backward and forward, backward and forward. “I’m grateful for the help, of course, but between Erik and me we’re fairly well defended. There’s … there’s not much that could get past us.”

A whisper of a breath that could almost be a sigh. “That margin of error is what we’re adjusting for,” Moira says. “Look, I can’t force you, but I very strongly recommend that you let us do our jobs and protect you both. After that incident with the gunman in your apartment the last thing you need is a repeat, especially since it might not end so … well, it might not end in your favor, the way it did last time.”

Charles lifts one hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, hard, trying to focus; there’s no good way to refuse, and perhaps it’s foolish to, for all the reasons he gave Erik when they discussed it before. Moira is just trying to look out for them, and the fact it might unbalance the delicate balance he and Erik have come to lately can’t be the top priority. 

It’s just … they were just ... starting to get back to something like ... no, Charles can't pretend they're getting to something like 'normal'. They don't do normal. Things have been easier between them, but they’ve been charged, too, Erik pushing and pushing to find out how Charles feels, testing the waters between them. If Charles let them they could easily backslide into something more, something sexual. He knows Erik wants it to -- it’s not even as if Erik is hiding it, he’s said it outright.

The thought of someone outside their door, or even inside the apartment with them, observing them, is ... it makes Charles conscious of just how far he's relaxed his own vigilance of late when it comes to Erik, because thinking of other people seeing them together -- anyone would think, watching them, that they were having sex. And to have trained professionals watching him, them, seeing the way they are -- the way Charles looks at Erik even now, the way he tries not to look at Erik ...

The thing is that Erik is so ... has been so grown up, lately. So much more mature, not demanding what he wants but accepting what Charles allows them, wanting more but not taking it. Charles knew what to do with the squalling, rebelling teenager, but Erik-as-adult is harder to combat. This Erik, Charles wants to lean on, to be close to again, to be --

Charles swallows all of that down and makes it a hard little pill in his stomach, hidden and crushed into all-but-nothing, something never to think of and never to show. Because as much as he hates the idea, he knows Moira is right. Charles and Erik aren’t truly equipped to deal with this on their own, no matter how much Charles would like to stick his head in the sand and pretend that they could manage. “All right,” he says finally, awkwardly, knowing that Moira will be wondering why he was so quiet for so long. “Thank you, Moira. It’s worth mentioning, though -- this weekend is the field trip I spoke to you about, where we’re heading out to Westchester with my mutant youth support group. I’m assuming the agents will come with us? We were given clearance for Erik to come without needing an army escort.”

“Hmm,” Moira says, and she doesn’t sound happy. Charles swallows, hard, and says, “Please, Moira. I’ve been arranging this for weeks. You can send someone to check out the house first if you prefer.”

A long, thoughtful silence, then Moira says, “All right. Go ahead. I’ll get a couple of agents to investigate and wait for you there the morning of, though, just to be certain.”

“Thank you,” Charles says, relieved. “I’ll let you know if we have any difficulties.”

As soon as he’s off the phone Charles picks up his mobile to call Erik; better to get it all out in the open early rather than have Erik come home to find government agents hiding in the rafters. It rings twice, then Erik picks up, the sound of the city, people talking and horns beeping and traffic zooming past filling the background. 

"Hey," Erik says. "Wait just a moment, it’s too loud here." Nothing else for several seconds, just that white noise of New York, until suddenly it goes softer, muffled. "All right. Hey."

"Hi," Charles says, leaning back in his desk chair and trying to sound normal, like this is an everyday thing to have happen, hardly worthy of discussion. "How are you?" It feels inane as soon as he's said it. Stupid, pointless. God.

"Fine," Erik says. Charles hears the sound of a child screaming happily on the other end, then laughter; Erik must be on his way across the park, heading home. "You don't usually call me from work. Is everything all right?"

"Moira just called. She says ... well," and Charles makes himself sound calm, "she says that there's a lot of chatter from Hellfire ever since the attack, and she’s concerned that it means nothing good for us in particular given what Victor said to you at the ICC. She's sending us a guard detail for the apartment, and to follow us for school and work."

"And did you tell her that won't be necessary?" Erik says, his tone sharpening.

"I discussed it with her, but in the end I agreed with her that having them there is better than not having them," Charles says, which isn’t quite true, but easier than saying, I couldn’t think of a way to say no without giving myself away. "I'm not omniscient after all, I could miss something."

"And what you miss, I'll catch. I don't want strangers poking into our private life, Charles. It’s not like these human agents can do much to protect us."

Charles bites the inside of his cheek, then says, "I'd rather that someone else did the protecting us part, if I'm honest; the last thing you need, or I need after last time, if to have to deal with the fallout of potentially harming or killing yet another attacker, regardless of whether it's self-defense. You'll be branded the child of your upbringing, and people will start to suggest that I've clearly taken to coercing people into breaking and entering just so I had a reason to murder them with my brain. No thank you."

He can practically hear Erik rolling his eyes. "As you say." 

"It's not my preference either, but if it keeps you safe, well, I'll choose the option I can live with."

"You know I trust you, Charles," Erik says, "but if you expect me to treat them like they're God's gift, you're setting yourself up for disappointment."

"Never that," Charles says, with a dry, forced laugh, his stomach clenching up, painful and sharp. "I know you better than that. Where are you, anyway?" It would be an awful kind of irony if Erik got taken out on the street right before government agents arrived to protect him.

“Just turned into Central Park. -- Look, Charles, something came up. You remember swineherd?” Erik’s voice has dipped down lower, softer, like he doesn’t want to be overheard. “The contact who arranged for me to meet with Creed last year.”

Charles blinks, caught off guard. “The information man? What about him?”

“He approached me on the street not half an hour ago, wanting information about some of the unused Hellfire safehouses. It’s a long story, but I’ve agreed to give him what he needs in exchange for names and powers of five Hellfire agents in the city.” Erik pauses, but not long enough for Charles to interrupt. “Can you grab the memory from my mind?”

“All right,” Charles says, unsettled, and he reaches for Erik, finds him with the same ease as always, that ever-present link between them as good as a guide rope. 

Erik is thinking actively about the encounter, and it’s not difficult to read the memory. _Suspicious timing,_ Charles says, frowning as he flicks through the moments, rewinding and replaying them like a home movie. _Given everything else that’s going on, it seems too much to be a coincidence._

“I agree,” Erik says, with a twinge of relief in his mind that has nothing to do with the situation itself. “There’s no way to control for all the variables, though. He could have noticed me logging onto Purgatory the other day. He could be one of Frank’s connections, I still haven’t discounted that entirely. Or this could be Hellfire’s opening move.”

Or it could be just as swineherd said it was, but such things rarely are; neither of them think of that as a likely explanation.

 _I don’t think you should go,_ Charles says. _It could very easily be a trap. I assume it’s just as easy to keep someone in there as out; it seems like Shaw’s style._

“You have to admit it’s perfectly-calibrated to my interests,” Erik says grimly. “I’m more than a little tempted to get personally involved with the operation, which is suspicious. I feel like I’m being tricked, I just can’t see the puppet strings yet.” A sharp, frustrated sound, then Erik says, bluntly, “I want to introduce you to Frank and have you read him. Tonight if possible. But as far as swineherd goes, I’m inclined to play along for now. I need those names, and swineherd knows more than he’s saying. You could come with me. If you take a browse through his memories there’s no telling what we may come up with. This could be invaluable for us _and_ your friends at Homeland.”

 _Probably a good idea, all things considered,_ Charles says grimly, though he’s a little bemused by the thought of playing spy. It’s really not something he ever saw himself doing -- it’s like living in a John Grisham novel. _All right. Come home, I’ll meet you there and we’ll lay out a course of action with the agents when they arrive._

“Absolutely not,” Erik says immediately. “No agents. No human involvement whatsoever. We’re ditching them for this; they’ll only get in the way.”

“I don’t see how the information will help any of my ‘friends in Homeland’ if they’re not included,” Charles says, starting to close down his computer. “Besides, they’re more experienced in this sort of thing and they can take action based on it rather than us coming home and telling them after the fact.”

“Maybe I’m just an old-fashioned terrorist at heart, but I don’t work with the fuzz. And if you think the feds hanging around won’t be obvious as fuck, you’d be wrong.”

Charles lets out a low breath, uneasy at the thought of doing this on their own -- what if they need back-up, or something goes wrong, or their evidence can’t be used because it wasn’t seen by law enforcement? But out loud he says, “Let’s talk about it when we’re home,” because he doubts Erik is anywhere so private that nobody noticed him calling himself a terrorist.

"All right," Erik says, and he pauses for a moment before he adds, "Good-bye, Charles."

"See you later," Charles says, and hangs up.

By the time he gets home there are already two agents stationed on the ground floor and another two are waiting outside the front door, standing politely at attention and examining him with cool eyes as Charles steps out of the elevator, the further away of the two standing with his hand on his gun, as if he thought Charles might be someone looking to break in.

“Hello,” Charles says, coming to a halt a couple of meters away, his heart beating fast in his chest -- as if they could tell just by looking at him how he feels about Erik, as if they might arrest him as soon as they catch sight of him. He makes himself smile, though it’s rather awkward. “I’m Charles Xavier. Moira -- Agent MacTaggert -- hadn’t said you’d be here so quickly.” In fact, given how quickly they’ve arrived he rather suspects that she’d already dispatched them by the time she called him; always efficient, Moira. “Would you like to come in?”

“Thank you,” the nearer agent says. She’s a black woman, medium height, her hair braided tightly to her head then tied back in a ponytail; along with her smart, sensible suit her body language screams calm control, her mind orderly and focused on the task at hand. Definitely a Domme. “We’ll try to be as unobtrusive as possible.”

Charles steps between them and fishes for his keys, trying to be as nonchalant about it as they are, though it all feels very strange. As they step inside the apartment, however, two sets of footsteps following him into the echoing gallery, two minds looking around curiously and noticing everything, cataloguing and cross-referencing every fine detail, Charles starts to feel even more anxious, even though there's nothing to be anxious about. It's not as if he and Erik _are_ sleeping together, after all, nor that there’s any evidence that they ever have; it's just ... having them there feels like he has to watch himself just as much as they will, to make sure all of his behavior is 'normal'. And Charles isn’t sure he knows any more what normal looks like.

“I’m Agent Cecelia Reyes,” the woman introduces herself, “and this is Agent Russell Collins. I’m assigned to you; Agent Collins is assigned to Mr Lehnsherr.” She holds out her hand for Charles to shake, her dark eyes meeting Charles’. “I’m a mutant, as are all the agents assigned to this detail. We thought it might sit better with Mr Lehnsherr.” Her mouth twists in a wry smile. “Don’t worry, we’re very good at our jobs.”

“I’m sure you are,” Charles says, wondering what the appropriate thing is to say next. “Thank you for your help. Is there anything you need from me right now?”

“No,” she says, glancing around them, half her thoughts already turning to examine the apartment and create a mental map, almost dismissing Charles from her attention, focused entirely on the job. “When Mr Lehnsherr comes home we’ll all sit down and discuss the plan and how we’re going to proceed. For now Collins and I will do a walkthrough, see what the strengths and weaknesses are so we know how best to tackle this.”

Charles nods, and the agents wander off into the apartment. He hears them thinking as they check each room, murmuring to one another about different things -- _this looks expensive, don’t touch that, easy point of access for fliers, good view of the street_ \-- and it feels awkwardly like his life has been put on display to strangers, stretched out like a canvas for everyone to see, exposed and vulnerable. It’s deeply uncomfortable, so instead of loitering behind them and watching them inspect his innermost workings Charles goes into the kitchen and puts the kettle on to boil, something that establishes him as someone who lives here, who belongs, the action reassuring in its familiarity.

A few minutes later the front door opens and then slams shut again a few seconds later; Erik’s home, Charles can feel his mind in the gallery where he’s taking off his coat and shoes, and Erik’s voice calls, “Charles, did you --” before breaking off abruptly; Erik’s noticed the metal of the agents’ guns.

“In here,” Charles calls, pouring hot water over the tea leaves and taking down another mug. “Coffee?”

“Mr Lehnsherr,” he hears, the agents coming back out into the gallery, having heard Erik arrive. “I assume Mr Xavier told you we would be here?”

“It was brought to my attention,” Erik says, a bit dryly, but at least he isn’t being outright rude. They approach, trailing after Erik as Erik heads toward the kitchen, tracing Charles’ wristwatch. Erik pauses in the doorway leading to the den, leaning against the frame and meeting Charles’ gaze. “Just one cup, thanks, Charles,” he says, as if completely oblivious to the two agents hovering over his shoulders. 

“Agents?” Charles asks, glancing past Erik and holding up the mug.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Agent Reyes says. “Milk, no sugar, thank you.” Collins just shakes his head no.

“Of course not,” Charles says, taking down a third mug. “Erik, the agents were doing a walkthrough of the apartment when you arrived, but I think Agent Reyes wanted to talk to us both about the plan once you were home?”

“That can wait,” she says calmly, before Erik can reply. “Best we do the walkthrough all at once.”

“All right then,” Erik says, and heads for the kitchen table, sitting down in one of the chairs, clearly impatient for the agents to get on with it and leave them be; his irritation with the entire situation itches at his mind so strongly that Charles can feel it prickling at the back of his own neck. 

Waiting for real coffee to brew will probably take longer than Erik’s patience will last, Charles thinks ruefully. “I’ll have the coffee ready when you come back down,” he says, turning back to the kettle.

Agent Reyes accepts the dismissal with good grace, her mind already ticking back over the layout of the apartment. “That’s fine,” she says, and the two of them head back out of the den, through the door into the library. It’s no easier once they’ve gone -- the awareness of their presence is too much in the forefront of Charles’ mind, prickling at him like a burr under a saddle -- but he tries to keep it from his face as he spoons coffee grounds into the french press to brew.

“The agents are all mutants,” he says, glancing at Erik as he takes the tea bag out of his own cup and drops it in the trash.

“Mutants who work for the government,” Erik comes back without hesitation, his disapproval unyielding. “Token minorities the feds can point to in order to prove they’re meeting their diversity quotient or fulfilling their sensitivity requirements. I wouldn’t trust them.”

Charles can’t help a small snort. “Technically I work for the government. They pay me for my help in your case.”

“Yes, and just look how far down the integrationist rabbit hole _you’ve_ fallen,” Erik says, but he smiles just a little bit all the same, stretching his leg out underneath the table to slide the opposite chair back and nodding in its direction. “Come, sit down. The coffee won’t be done for another six minutes, anyway.”

Cupping his own tea between his hands Charles takes the seat, leaning back into it and lifting his mug to his mouth, sipping at the hot liquid. This should feel like just an ordinary day, sitting with Erik in the kitchen, casual and normal, but instead it feels strange, knowing the agents are here -- even though there’s nothing wrong with this, nothing abnormal, it still feels like he has to think how it looks, how they’re sat in relation to one another, the positioning of his limbs and his head and his expression, just in case they come back, as if they’ll see something off. “So,” he says finally, putting the mug down on the table with a soft clatter. “They seem nice enough. They’re being honest with us, anyway -- no hidden agendas.”

Erik makes a meaningless noise and tilts forward, crossing his arms on the tabletop to bring him and Charles nearer together, his voice lowered when he speaks. “Forget about them. Can you get us past all the guards unseen later?” He’s thinking about Frank, and about swineherd, and the proposed mindreading; already planning how to do it, what Charles should look for and how they need to react depending on what they find.

“I could,” Charles allows, leaning in a little himself, “if I agreed with you that Moira and her team shouldn’t be involved. What if something happened? We’d be caught on the wrong side of the law and, if you’ll excuse the language, utterly fucked.” He understands Erik’s reservations, he really does, but it’s also very clear to Charles that they’re based more on the prejudices of Erik’s criminal upbringing than on hard fact. “If we’re open about it then we’re covered, in more ways than one.”

Erik shakes his head slowly, mouth twisting. “I can’t guarantee we won’t get made if we bring them. You don’t know who’s going to be there, and what their abilities are -- what if someone has a mutation that blocks telepathy? You can’t disguise the agents, then, and they’ll stand out like a sore thumb otherwise.”

“Because I wouldn’t stick out?” Charles asks, gesturing down at himself. “Erik. Come on. I have no pretensions to looking like I belong to the Dark Side.”

“I can dress you.”

It sounds ridiculous, and Charles snorts, holding his hands up to make a frame around his face with fingers and thumbs. “Surely my face would give me away. I’m too wholesome.”

“What, then?” Erik hisses back at him, speaking a little faster now; the agents will be finishing up soon. “What happens when Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum get us both killed? The worst that happens if we don’t bring them is we get arrested. Worst that happens if we do? I doubt swineherd’s suffering from a plastic bullet shortage.”

“I’m pretty sure we can still end up being shot and killed if we don’t bring them,” Charles says. “The main difference being they come with back-up. Erik, be reasonable. This isn’t the time to play around like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, they have resources we don’t and we’d be fools not to take advantage of that. Besides, I’m sure they’re trained for this sort of thing. Otherwise there would be no secret service, if everyone could tell who they were just by looking.” He’s not overly keen on him and Erik going at all, but the idea of doing it alone is beyond dangerous. “You have to let people help you sometimes.”

“I’m not a fucking snitch,” Erik snaps. “I’m not interested in getting swineherd or anyone else arrested. And if this fugitive protection thing turns out to be legit, I’m not getting _them_ arrested either. No feds. I mean it, Charles.”

Charles’ mouth twists unhappily, and he covers it with his mug, sipping at his tea as he tries to think it through. The thought of helping to protect fugitives from justice doesn’t particularly appeal to him either -- there may be some people who are legitimately fleeing, but he’s sure most of them are probably in trouble for good reasons. Still … he knows well enough that if he digs his heels in and refuses, Erik will just go anyway, without even Charles as back-up. And that’s something Charles just can’t allow.

“Fine,” he says finally, but he’s not pleased about it and it shows in his tone. “When?”

“I’ll text Frank to arrange something for the two of us tonight. He won’t know you’re coming, you’ll just show up. I don’t think he’s a mole, but if he is, I want to know about it right now, not later this week.” Erik relaxes back into his chair again, reaching into his pocket to  
pull out his cell phone and setting it atop the table between them, in-control now that Charles has relented on the matter of the agents. “As far as swineherd goes, I can schedule that for next week, when we’re both free. I’ll let him know as last-minute as I can so he doesn’t have time to prepare any traps for us.”

“Am I meeting Frank or just walking by?” Charles asks. It’s surprisingly difficult to keep his voice even. He doesn’t want to meet Frank, he realizes with a flash of insight that’s more embarrassing than helpful, no matter that Frank is Erik’s friend, not just his lover -- at this point in time Frank is an abstract, an idea. Meeting him would be like … like … Charles has no right to be jealous, but the thought of meeting the man is abhorrent.

“I think it’s best if you actually have a conversation with him,” Erik says, utterly oblivious to Charles’ inner turmoil. “I want you to be able to read his reactions to different subjects, to go as deeply as you can into his mind. What you grab just passing by may or may not be definitive.”

“He’s more likely to be open with you,” Charles argues, trying not to sound too emphatic. He can feel the agents moving around in his bedroom upstairs, the last room on their tour -- they’ll be back down within sixty seconds, he’s willing to bet. “You could direct the conversation, it’ll seem more natural than a stranger doing it.”

Erik nods, and reaches for his phone, unlocking the screen with TouchID. “That’s fine. We’ll do a coffee shop or something. I’ll do most of the talking, and if you ever want to see what he thinks when you’re not around you can just get up to use the bathroom. How’s that?”

It’s still vastly unappealing, not that Charles can say so. He manages to keep his expression bland only with great effort, and watches as Erik pulls up his messaging app, typing out: “What are you doing tonight? I want to try that new mutant-friendly coffee shop on 74th you mentioned the other day” then hits ‘send’ to Frank.

Meeting Frank face-to-face, talking to him … the very idea makes Charles want to lock himself in the bathroom and refuse to come out, but there’s no way to say no now without Erik asking why, and Charles doesn’t want to tell him why. So instead he just sits and stews and drinks his tea in silence while the agents come back downstairs to tell them how to be good at being followed around.

He spends the rest of the afternoon in much the same way, forcibly normal in company and pacing, uncomfortable and full of a nervous energy when alone; Erik is grumpy, but no more than Charles would expect him to be given their shadows. Still, when they leave Erik seems downright cheerful as they walk past the agents assigned to watch them, hidden from their perception by Charles, who feels rather guilty about the whole thing. By the time they’re approaching the coffee shop he’s almost reconsidered going at all, but it’s too late now. 

“How do you want to do this?” Charles asks, his hands tucked firmly in his coat pockets, trying to hide his unease. If the intent is for it to look casual, simply coming in with Erik might be best, as if he’s just decided to tag along, but it’s not really normal for someone’s parent figure to come and hang out with them and their friend on a whim. “Am I just turning up partway through, or passing by and you see me, or …?”

“Just come in with me,” Erik says. He’s changed out of his school clothes for this, into a slightly-fitted sweater and black skinny jeans that don’t manage to look entirely Dominant or submissive, an exercise in androgyny. When contrasted with the strong Dominant signals Erik can’t help but unconsciously put out, Charles would be lying if he said it weren’t … eye-catching. “It’s mutant-owned and operated, and new, besides. We can just say you read I was going and had been wanting to try it out yourself.”

Charles makes a dubious noise. “Won’t it be weird, though, your pseudo-parent coming with you on what might as well be a date? It’s like you’re making him meet the family by surprise.” They reach the front door of the cafe, and Charles pauses, his feet shuffling awkwardly on the pavement. “We don’t want to put him on his guard. He knows I’m a telepath.”

“And you don’t think it’s even _more_ contrived to have you ‘coincidentally’ walking past or coming in five minutes later?”

“Well … ” Charles says, but he doesn’t have an answer to that, and so finally he sighs, accepting his fate, and just pushes the cafe door open and steps inside.

It’s pretty standard coffee-shop decor inside; small square tables dotted around, leather-upholstered chairs (easy to clean) and a few proper armchairs and couches in the corners where people can curl up to work or chat, a long counter along one wall and the scent of sugar and coffee in the air. Charles recognizes Frank immediately, even though they’ve never met, just from Erik’s descriptions -- the man is built like a brick shithouse, easily one of the largest non-fat people Charles has ever seen, with an easygoing expression most likely born of the fact that nobody is going to mess with somebody that size and thus he has no reason to be uptight. Frank looks like he could crush a child if he sat down on them by accident -- or if he put a hand on either end and pushed.

“I’m assuming Frank is the human mountain in the back?” Charles asks, feeling his eyes widen.

Erik snorts. “Oh come on, you’re being hyperbolic,” he says, even though Charles really, _really_ isn’t. Erik’s hand touches the back of Charles’ arm, propelling him in the right direction. Erik doesn’t have to say anything to get Frank’s attention; Frank is already looking toward them, has been since the moment they stepped inside, and Charles tries not to look uncomfortable as he walks over, working on a casual smile.

“Hello,” Frank says, glancing between them when they get closer and raising an eyebrow at Erik. “You brought a date?”

“This is Charles,” Erik says, taking the seat opposite Frank that’s nearest the wall, leaving Charles to slide into the one just next to him; there’s not much room, their knees unavoidably knocking together under the table. “He invited himself along,” Erik adds, with a mischievous grin thrown in Charles’ direction, and Charles says, “Erik told me they do proper English tea here. It was an obvious lure.”

Frank laughs, a deep rumbling sound. “Well, it’s good to meet you, Dr Xavier,” he says, offering Charles his hand to shake -- as if Charles needed to be made to feel any smaller, his own hand enveloped entirely by Frank’s. “I’ve heard a lot about you, both in mutant rights circles and from Erik.”

“And I you,” Charles says awkwardly. 

Knowing that this man in front of him knows all about them -- that Erik _told_ Frank about him and Charles, that Frank is looking at them and, and judging them -- Charles doesn’t dare look at his mind yet, doesn’t want to know what Frank thinks on first seeing them together, imagining him and Erik in bed together, maybe, or feeling disgust at Charles for being so perverted as to sleep with his own ward, or … Charles still isn’t happy Erik told anyone, let alone Frank, not that there’s anything to do about it now without altering the man’s memory, and Erik wouldn’t be happy with that. 

Charles can’t help the sick feeling in his stomach just looking at Frank, so he turns to Erik and says, “What would you like to drink? I’ll go order,” thinking that at least this will give Frank long enough to stop thinking about it before Charles has to read his thoughts.

“Just a cappuccino is fine,” Erik says, and Charles gets up from the table gratefully, taking his place in line and pretending to be fascinated by the baked goods in the display case.

He can hear Erik and Frank talking but not clearly enough to determine the words, so he listens through Erik’s mind, even as he shuffles forward towards the counter.

“Is everything really okay?” Frank is asking, sounding skeptical.

“Of course it is,” Erik says, using that brazen, charming grin on Frank, a calculated choice that Charles can feel like an equation in Erik’s mind, a false expression targeted to stimulate a certain reaction. “Why?”

Frank shrugs. “No reason, I guess. I just thought you weren’t, y’know, together. But now you’re joined at the hip.”

“You’re not jealous, are you?” Erik says it sarcastically, but that isn’t his real concern; he’s already suspicious, has been of everyone and everything since the trial, and he’s thinking Frank might have guessed the reason he brought Charles along -- and that if he did, that would suggest he had something to hide.

“Not particularly,” Frank says. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. So how’ve you been?”

“Can I take your order?” the barista asks from behind the counter, and Charles twitches, recalling why he’s stood there, giving her an apologetic smile before ordering their drinks.

He has to wait a couple of minutes, but once he has the tray he takes it back over to the table, setting it down carefully so as not to spill. “Here,” he says, handing Erik his cappuccino, and lifting the lid on his teapot to check the color of the brewing tea. While he does he reaches out to try and see if Erik is right about Frank suspecting -- and hits a brick wall in Frank’s mind, seamless and impenetrable.

 _What?_ He tries again, but there’s nothing but … static, and vague emotions, like they’re coming from far enough away to be fuzzed out by the distance into watercolor blurs. It’s something he’s only rarely come across before, vanishingly rare, and Charles feels rather off-balance as he says _I can’t read his mind,_ to Erik, though out loud he says, “Erik was telling me you run the local MLA chapter.” It’s unusual enough to be suspicious, and Charles can’t help the way his voice comes out almost interrogative, demanding an answer.

“Yeah,” Frank says, looking bemused by Charles’ tone but too polite to mention it. “We run a lot of events on campus, go to protests, that sort of thing.”

Erik is thinking furiously, his own mind twisting around the information and trying to find a way to make it not suspicious, but failing -- he doesn’t believe in coincidences either. _Are you sure you can’t read him?_ Erik asks, even if his facial expression and posture don’t change at all, focused on lifting his cup up to take a testing sip of his cappuccino.

Charles sends Erik a mental shrug, then asks aloud, “And your mutation is strength-related?” He almost starts projecting a neutrally interested expression over his real one to hide his own consternation, before remembering that that probably won’t work either, and has to scramble to make sure he has his face under control. “I know Erik mentioned you had a secondary mutation, but I don’t think he said it was telepathy-resistance.”

Frank looks surprised, blinking -- if he’s an actor he’s a very good one indeed. “No, I detect mutants,” he says, even his tone a little confused. “Why would you say that?”

“I have a general awareness of other minds,” Charles says carefully, as casually as he can, “but I can’t hear anything from you but static, which is unusual. It’s not unheard of, I was just surprised, is all. How interesting! It’s very rare to have a tertiary mutation.”

Erik laughs convincingly beside Charles, and says, “I guess you could marry Emma Frost, after all,” referencing some inside joke of theirs.

Frank snorts. “Great tits, but she’d eat me alive, and not in a good way.”

 _We can’t go with the original plan, we’ll have to just write this off,_ Charles says, finally pouring himself a cup of tea and adding milk until it turns the right shade of pale. _I’ll head off when I’ve finished my tea, then you hang out with Frank like you normally would, so he doesn’t suspect._ Maybe Erik will have some ideas for how to get more information from Frank when they’re alone. Or … or maybe they won’t be _talking._

The thought is … it’s wrong to feel jealous when right now Charles isn’t even sure that Frank isn’t some kind of a terrorist, the emotion entirely inappropriate, and yet he can’t entirely crush it, either.

Erik pushes acquiescence back at Charles, and he and Frank chat about light, inconsequential things for the next half hour, Charles contributing only occasionally, enough not to be rude as he works through his tea. Frank may be working against Erik, there’s no way to know, but whatever else he is he’s also clever and articulate and a separatist, all the things which would appeal to Erik most, and while Charles would like to pretend it’s all a ruse put on for Erik’s benefit the first two are impossible to fake. It’s embarrassing to admit, even to himself, but under other circumstances Charles would have approved of Frank, would have pushed Erik towards him instead of wishing he could push Frank off a tall building.

He finishes the last sip of his tea and places the cup down on its saucer. “I’m going to head off, I think,” he says, trying to sound casual. “I have some things to do at home. I guess I’ll see you later, Erik?”

Both their heads turn to look at him, and Erik glances briefly back at Frank before he says, “No, I’d better go, too. I still haven’t done my homework,” and gives Frank a small, self-deprecating grin. “I’m sure you miss high school life.”

“Nope, can’t say that I do,” Frank says. He gets to his own feet and reaches for his jacket, which could probably serve as a tent for four or five refugees in a pinch, if they could find a stick for a center pole. “I’ve got plenty of homework of my own to do -- a college student’s work is never done and all.”

Even the walk out of the coffee shop feels like waiting for the other shoe to drop; Charles can’t help but feel relieved when they finally reach the street and they turn in opposite directions, Frank waving goodbye before turning and walking away, his broad shoulders and head far above the rest of the pedestrians on the street. He can’t relax, not yet, but it’s better without the man himself right in front of him, taunting Charles with his inscrutability.

“I don’t think he’s a spy,” Erik says a long pause later, falling into step next to Charles as they head back toward Park Avenue, late enough now that the streets are lit only by the lamps high overhead casting warm pools of light onto the sidewalk. “Maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, but his reaction when you called him out on his tertiary mutation ….” Erik shakes his head. “Of course, that mutation makes him the _perfect_ spy, too. Everyone knows about your power. It’d be foolhardy to send someone in you could read.”

“I don’t know him well enough to know if he’d be able to act his way through that,” Charles says, turning the encounter over in his mind. Frank had seemed … perfectly normal, which makes Charles want to suspect him even more; it’s unfair, he knows, to judge the man purely based on whether or not Charles is able to violate his privacy, but at the same time Charles can’t trust him, either, that prickling feeling on the back of his neck either gut instinct or wishful thinking -- and impossible to identify as either one. 

Charles makes himself continue, keeping his voice as relaxed as he can, “There’s nothing specific that makes me suspicious, but I think you should still be careful what you tell him from now on. Don’t bring him to the apartment, for instance.” The better to keep Frank from learning the layout or planning anything, but also keeping him out of Charles’ general area so Charles doesn’t have to decide whether Frank is evil or Charles is just pathetically, uselessly jealous.

“Well, there’s one way to know for sure,” Erik says, as unaware of Charles’ pitiful internal monologue as always. “I wasn’t suspicious before swineherd showed up, and even then I didn’t think Frank was a _spy_ per se, just … friendly with someone I hate. In any case, when we meet swineherd, you can shake through his mind and find everything he knows. If Frank has contacted him, he won’t be able to hide that from you.”

“All right,” Charles says, with a silent sigh as he has to accept another risky plan, trying not to think too hard about how easily this can all come crashing down on their heads. It seems like all he’s had lately are bad choices and wrong moves, one thing leading to the next slippery slope, and no sign of any brakes.

*

_Erik_

When they get back to the apartment the government weasels are not much different from how they were when Erik and Charles left: the woman, Reyes, is upstairs preparing one of the guest rooms for the first sleep shift, while the man-agent is down in the kitchen eating a heated-up frozen dinner, the kind of grotesque excuse for food that makes Erik want to go for a ten-mile run just thinking about it. He does his best not to show his disgust, even if he can’t help glancing at the packaging in the trash can as he’s throwing away the lid of his yogurt: _Lean Cuisine._ Oh, _really_.

Charles rolls his eyes when Erik comes back to where Charles has settled in one of the old armchairs in the library, not his usual haunt but further away from the man-agent -- Collins, that was it -- than the den would be. “Snob,” Charles says, and he’s smiling just a little even though he’s still not acting quite like his usual self, hasn’t been since they left to meet with Frank. Erik had assumed it was just nerves bothering him, or performance anxiety, but that’s clearly not the case.

“Why don’t Americans just start eating blocks of sodium and call it a day?” Erik says, spooning a bite of yogurt into his mouth; Charles’ chair is the only one in this room, so it’s perfectly natural for Erik to come to stand just next to it, leaning against the armrest with his hip hitched onto it, near Charles’ elbow, leaning in to glance at the book in Charles’ hands. “What are you reading?”

“ _The Remains of the Day_.” Charles flips the book over to show Erik the stylized cover. “It’s a Kazuo Ishiguro novel.” He glances up at Erik, then around the room, clearly noting the lack of seats in here, a small frown on his face. “We could get another chair, if you’d like -- I’m sure we can spare one from the parlor.”

“Oh, no, don’t bother, I’m fine,” Erik says, waving his hand dismissively and then retrieving his spoon from where it was tilted against the inside of the yogurt carton. He keeps his gaze on the book, plausible deniability, he thinks, as he says, “Is everything all right? You seem … stressed.”

Charles makes a tiny sound, then turns the book back over to his page, settling it against his thigh. “I’m fine,” he says, but he doesn’t sound fine. He ruffles the paper with his thumb, then crosses his legs, right over left -- restless, Erik reads from him. Uneasy. Charles isn’t hard to comprehend, even if he likes to think he is. “I’m just tired, that’s all. Don’t worry.”

It’s probably the agents. They’ve insinuated themselves into Erik and Charles’ lives, invading the privacy of their home, filled the guest room with enough equipment -- its metal buzzing in Erik’s senses -- to support the international space station. Erik’s not happy about it either, but he hadn’t expected it to wear on Charles this quickly. Charles is usually so … well, so extroverted.

“All right,” Erik says, moving his gaze to look from the book to Charles’ face, only his attention gets stuck halfway there, on the line between Charles’ thighs, tracing it up to his groin. Erik’s eyes snap upward, and he leans in to press a kiss to Charles’ cheek. 

Charles twitches, pink flushing under his freckles, tangible surprise blooming out from his mind that Erik feels on his skin, like a flower opening. It’s perfectly platonic, even if it isn’t. Were the agents to walk in right now, all they’d see is Erik giving Charles a filial peck good-night, but that’s not what it represents to Erik, or Charles.

“What was that for?” Charles asks, looking up at Erik, a tentative, startled sort of look on his face. It’s not a rejection, and it puts their faces close, close enough Erik can see the striations in Charles’ blue irises, like stained glass.

“Do I need a reason?”

“I guess not,” Charles says, not quite smiling, but he leans in enough to bump his shoulder against Erik’s side, a brief nudge that almost knocks him from the arm of the chair, then says, quickly, as if it’s intended to distract, “I was thinking. The agents should use the parlor. That way they have their own room and we’re not displaced from our space. We never use it. The only problem would be if they track dirt in or spill things, it’s so white in there.”

“I’m sure the government could afford to pay for any damages.” It’s a far sight better than letting them trail Erik and Charles around the entire damn house. Erik’s only just got Charles to admit his feelings -- he won’t have that undermined by sudden lack of privacy. Everything feels … close, now. Like they could tip forward and fall off the edge at any moment, terrifying and exhilarating all at once.

Erik settles his hand on Charles’ far shoulder, near his neck, ostensibly to keep from falling off the armrest. Charles suddenly goes very still, as if he’s trying to decide whether to push Erik off after all, and after a moment he says, “I’ll let Agent Reyes know, then,” making to get up from his chair.

“No, I’ll do it,” Erik says, and gets up before Charles can pull away, thinking -- better him than Charles. Better Erik leaves first, for once.

He finds the male agent still in the kitchen, washing off his dishes after that excuse for a meal of his. “The parlor can be your downstairs base,” Erik says from the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, watching the agent pull open the dishwasher to put the plate within. “Do you need me to show you where that is?”

“It’s the white room, right?” the man asks, straightening to his full height -- not as tall as Erik. “Okay. That works for us.”

Erik doesn’t waste time with small talk; he has no obligation to be anyone’s friend. He simply nods and retreats back to the library, half-expecting Charles to have fled somewhere Erik can’t corner him like this, but left alone Charles has relaxed again, turned back to his book, his eyes focused on his lap where it’s propped against his knee, utterly absorbed. Even so, he stiffens a little when Erik resumes his former place on the arm of the chair and pokes Charles in the upper arm with one finger, the muscle firm under his touch.

“Come on,” Erik says. “We haven’t had any time to ourselves all day. Be sociable.”

“Pest.” Charles glances up at Erik again, and though his mouth is a fond curve Erik can see the slight tension around Charles’ eyes that shows he knows what Erik is doing, and is concerned by it, even if he doesn’t say so. “What do you want to do, then?”

“Well,” Erik says, “you could tell me how your day went at work. We could play a game of chess. Or twenty questions. Or truth or dare.”

Charles snorts, shaking his head. “This isn’t a slumber party. Work was fine, my patients were all very reasonable today, no screamers or liars.” A pause. “How was school?” It’s an innocuous question, but it also very much puts them back on the footing of Erik-as-child, which rankles.

“Fine.” Erik makes his tone determinedly casual, just like the way his hand settles on Charles’ shoulder, thumb against the line of Charles’ collarbone. “Good, actually; I only got called a terrorist twice today. What did you eat for lunch?”

It’s an inane question, and Charles gives Erik a wry look even as he answers, “One of those noodle cup things. There’s a cart on the street that sells them,” sending Erik a mental image of it -- some sort of ramen, but fresh instead of dried. It actually doesn’t look half-bad, and Erik makes a mental note to pick one up next time he visits Charles at work.

The fact of the matter is, though, that Erik isn’t making much headway in dragging Charles into polite conversation. Charles is too wary, never mind that Erik fully intends to keep his promise not to let things go too far. It’s patently frustrating, and it reeks of Charles putting up one last defense, a final fight even though he knows he’s already lost, valiantly trying to save his king when they both know it’s checkmate in six moves.

“Do you want to go watch a movie?” Erik asks at last, feeling a bit like he’s grasping at the last resort; he isn’t much of one for sitting around on the sofa staring at a screen even at the best of times.

But Charles says, “Sure,” with a hint of relief, and gets up at last from the chair, laying his book down on the seat for later. Once he’s up and not wedged in he seems a lot calmer, and he brushes shoulders with Erik when they’re walking towards the den without shifting away, takes his customary seat on the left-hand side of the sofa without perching right at the far end, as far away as is possible to get. In fact, once Erik has sat down Charles tucks his legs up onto the cushion and his toes brush Erik’s calf, casual and almost meaningless, except that Erik knows that Charles is always aware these days of when they’re touching. It’s never meaningless if he stays instead of pulling away.

Charles thinks he’s so inscrutable, mysterious and secret in his ways, but Erik knows him better than he’s ever known anyone. Loves him better than he’s ever loved anyone. Charles can’t hide from him.

“I’m sorry it’s still awkward,” Charles says, after they’ve been sat there quietly for a few long moments, neither of them reaching for the remote. His aura is all apology, affectionate and uncomfortable, like a hug from someone afraid of being pushed away.

“I did promise, you know,” Erik says in a low voice, too aware of the agents in the apartment, even if he can tell they’re far enough away to be mostly out of earshot. “We used to touch all the time. It doesn’t have to mean it’s heading anywhere.” 

“I know.” Charles isn’t looking at Erik, is plucking at the toe of his sock instead, worrying the spare fabric. “But you’re still thinking that you want it to head in that direction. Erik -- I’m a telepath, you can’t hide that. And it’s my job, my responsibility, to make sure it doesn’t. It would be wrong of me to pretend otherwise.”

It’s the same argument as always. It feels like they’ve gone over it a hundred times, never making any headway. Erik’s starting to wonder if they ever will. 

“Hope isn’t the same thing as intent. Here --” Erik catches the remote in his hand with his power and passes it to Charles, even as he shifts down onto his side, curling up on the sofa with his head resting in Charles’ lap, face turned toward the television, Charles’ thighs warm pressed up against his cheek. “This means nothing. I don’t expect it to go anywhere. I just want to be close to you.”

He glances up at Charles out of the corner of his eye. Charles is still, for a moment, with a sense of deliberation, of teetering between two choices -- but then it passes, and he presses the on button on the remote, the TV springing to life, and Charles flicks through until he finds some nature documentary, bright colors and shifting shapes on screen as his hand comes very gently to rest on Erik’s shoulder, then further down his arm, not stroking but a present and welcome weight.

“Okay,” Charles says.

Erik can feel it as they watch together, the weight of Charles’ attention; he’s stiff at first, so, so careful to be appropriate, but as time goes on and he gets more involved in the documentary Charles softens, relaxing under Erik’s weight, until he’s just … there, with Erik, comfortable and easy, not overthinking it, exuding calmness and interest and enjoyment instead of the tension from before. 

“Hey,” Erik says around midnight, twisting his torso a bit to gaze up at Charles, reaching with one hand to adjust the placket of Charles’ shirt where it had torqued a little and then just letting his arm drop against Charles’ stomach, fingers loosely curled. 

Charles looks down at him, his eyes a bit drowsy; his hand has shifted to rest on Erik’s belly, but he doesn’t seem worried about it now, which is good. “Hey what?” 

“Have you ever thought about what it would be like,” Erik says, “if we didn’t meet like this? If we met each other at school, maybe. If we grew up together as neighbors.” The agents are in the parlour still, where they ought to be; there’s no risk of being overheard.

A long pause, then, “Sometimes,” Charles says, and he smiles, though it’s sad around the edges, like maybe it’s something he’s thought about a lot. “Things could have been … very different.”

“I dreamt about it the other night. We met in college. You were TAing my psychology class, so it was still fucked up, I suppose, but at least it was legal.” Erik closes his eyes, briefly, remembering, and when he opens them again it’s with a tiny smirk. “We had sex on Braden-Newell’s desk. It was great.”

Charles has gone pink again, blushing, and he must be seeing Erik’s memory of the dream because he says, “You have some very detailed dreams, don’t you?”, his body tense in a different way now than before, not uninviting. His hand shifts on Erik’s stomach, as if he’s thinking about moving it, though to do what is the question. “I … should probably go to bed.”

Erik grins up at him, and doesn’t move. “I could come with you, if you’re worried about terrorists breaking in. I’ll protect you.”

It’s only mostly a joke.

And Charles actually _hesitates_ , doesn’t immediately say no -- the expression on his face is halfway to a smile, and when he says, “I’d expect you to sleep on the floor in front of my door,” his tone is light, not the rejection Erik has grown to expect.

It’s reassuring, promising, even, and Erik feels something strange flutter in his chest, beating to the rhythm of Charles’ breaths moving his hand up and down against Charles’ stomach.

“Oh, no,” Erik says. “Everyone knows real terrorists come in through the window.”

“Well,” Charles says, smiling now, “you can sleep on the floor under the window, then. That way if they step on you I’ll hear you wheeze and I’ll wake up.”

Erik snorts. He knows maybe he should get up, now, stop while he’s ahead, but he can’t bring himself to leave the warmth of Charles’ lap. He doesn’t want this moment to become a memory -- he wants to draw it out longer and longer, luxuriate in whatever Charles will give him, for as long as Charles will let him. 

“Do you think you could fight them off?” Erik murmurs, turning his hand to press it flat to Charles’ warm chest, pushing only lightly, Charles’ heartbeat suddenly picking up against his palm. “I’m the expert. But then again, you’re the brave one. Maybe you’d save us both.”

“I -- ” Charles is tensing now, though, a guilty look on his face, and he shifts, saying, “I really should go to bed,” his tone apologetic, clearly pushed over the line. His hands go to Erik’s shoulders, and before Erik can stop him Charles eases out from under him, getting to his feet. “Good night, Erik,” he says, but then -- he pauses, face going through two or three emotions before he bends down and presses a kiss to Erik’s forehead, then darts away as if he’s afraid of being caught.

Erik stays there for several long seconds, blinking up at the space where Charles had been, trying to replay that moment in his mind and identify what it is Charles was thinking. What Charles _wants_ , now, his signals all tangled and knotted up. Well. Erik knows what Charles wants. Just … not what Charles will allow. Not anymore.

He gets up slowly, reaching for the remote and turning off the documentary that was playing on the television. His body feels strangely old when he stands, like he’d fossilized there with Charles and can’t quite return to the present. 

He walks past the parlor on his way to the gallery and one of the agents calls out, “See you tomorrow, Erik,” and Erik pauses in his tracks, thrown, before he remembers -- right. They aren’t alone here. 

Charles’ bedroom door is ajar when he gets upstairs, light streaming out from within onto the hallway floor. Erik glances within as he passes but he can’t see Charles, not at this angle, although he can sense Charles’ watch by his dresser, can hear a drawer opening and then closing.

In his own room Erik strips out of his clothes and changes into his pajamas, hair tousling out of order as he pulls his t-shirt down over his head and pads over to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Standing there, watching himself in the mirror as he scrubs away, he tries to imagine himself from Charles’ perspective. If Charles would look at him and see a Dominant or if a part of him can’t help seeing the little boy he rescued three years ago, a little bit older but still a child in the end, someone that must always be protected, even if it’s from Charles himself.

He tips forward and spits his toothpaste out, cupping his hand under the faucet to splash water onto his face. Fuck it, he thinks. It isn’t his fault he’s seventeen. Charles is the telepath, he’s the one who should know what Erik wants. He should be able to look into Erik’s mind and see something other than his underage ward. 

Erik turns off the bathroom light and crosses through his bedroom, going back out into the hall. This time he doesn’t think twice about walking all the way down to Charles’ door and knocking once before he pushes it open, stepping in and pushing it shut behind him.

Charles is pulling back the bedclothes, and he turns to look at Erik only slowly, his expression almost forcibly calm.

“So,” Erik says. “About those terrorists.”

“What about them?” Warm, neutral, far more casual than the way Charles’ fingers twitch at his side.

No matter how much Erik wants to close that distance between them and lift Charles’ hand, suck one of those fingers into his mouth, he stays where he is, leaning back against the wall with his hands locked at the small of his back. He can do casual just as well as Charles can. Better, probably.

“Homeland’s threat level is still set at ‘severe.’ It’s a pressing concern.”

“If you’re scared, I’m sure Agent Reyes will tuck you in,” Charles says, and his mouth quirks. “She might even bring you some warm milk if you ask nicely.”

“Agent Reyes lacks your comforting maternal presence,” Erik says. He mimics Charles’ smile and adds an arched brow for good measure.

“Ha ha,” Charles says, and he shakes his head, genuinely amused now -- Erik can tell the difference. “What are you angling at, Erik? I was just about to get into bed.”

To hell with it. “You heavily implied you needed a strong Dominant presence to protect you. I thought I’d volunteer my services.”

Erik’s heart is beating in his throat, a hundred fifty times a minute, his veins electric. He hopes it doesn’t show.

Charles’ smile falters, his breath catching audibly, and his fingers curl in his blanket, a tremor running through him. “Erik … there are federal agents downstairs. Sleeping in the same room would be like -- like coming downstairs covered in blood and trying to pretend it wasn’t there.”

It isn’t an outright dismissal, not by Charles’ standards at least. That’s something, and something is _never_ nothing.

“So tell them I have nightmares. That’s actually true.” Erik pushes off the wall but doesn’t step forward, even as he lifts one arm and gestures at Charles. “Go on, toss me a pillow.”

Charles doesn’t do or say anything, he just sort of stands there, his lower lip strangely dimpled, probably biting it on the inside; it’s a long, silent few moments, Erik waiting to see if he’s going to be kicked out, preparing himself for it, until all of a sudden Charles turns his back to him, and climbs into bed, lying down facing the center of the bed, on his side with his hands curled up towards his face. Erik can’t see his expression, but when Charles speaks his voice is rough, low, riddled with uncertainty. “You might as well sleep in the bed if you’re sleeping in here. You’ll catch cold if you sleep on the floor.”

Erik takes in a shallow breath, surprised, and for a moment all he can do is stare dumbly at what he can see of Charles’ head before at last he makes himself move, half-expecting Charles to take it back with every step, but then he’s pulling back the duvet and climbing into bed and Charles still hasn’t said a word. 

Erik hardly dares to breathe as he settles there under the warmth of the covers, lying facing Charles on what he’d come to consider ‘his’ side of the bed, even if only over the course of two weeks. His mind buzzes with too many memories: crawling under the sheets late at night to curl close to Charles after a nightmare, falling asleep here when Charles was sick only to wake with a gun pointed at his head, the way Charles used to reach for him when they were both naked and spent. 

Charles’ eyes are halfway closed, not quite managing to convey the kind of disinterest Charles probably means them to. In the lamplight his skin is golden-pale, his hair dark against his face, his mouth deep pink. His freckles are like paint-specks from a flicked brush. “Good night,” he says after Erik has lain down, then closes his eyes the rest of the way, though his breathing is rather shallow, his chest rising and falling rapidly. “Get the light?”

Erik smiles, and quickly swallows it, closing his own eyes to block out the temptation. “Good night, Charles,” he says, and plunges the room into darkness.

In the morning Erik wakes up first to find Charles has curled closer toward him in his sleep, one of Charles’ hands grasping at the cotton of Erik’s t-shirt and his head tilted down like he wanted to rest it on Erik’s chest. Erik’s knee is bent, brushing against Charles’ unmistakable hardness -- and it takes a while, it goes against all of Erik’s instincts and all of his desires, but he pulls away, heart aching, and slips out of bed to retreat downstairs before Charles ever wakes up.

*

That weekend, Charles has arranged to take his gaggle of mutant center Teen Mutant Support Group kids out to the Westchester house to practice their powers. When he invites Erik to come along Erik nearly says no -- but, of course, he doesn’t have much of a choice; with their security situation he’s been ordered to go where Charles goes, even if that means holing up with him in a mansion outside the city, crowded in with a dozen people Erik’s never met. Besides, he wants to keep working on getting Charles to finally give in -- and he can hardly do that if he’s in New York and Charles is in Westchester.

He won’t pretend he isn’t a little bit interested, too, to see some of their powers in action. Charles has told him bits and pieces about what some of these kids can do, and Erik’s only real mutant friend is Frank. 

The minibus that’s to carry them all out to the country picks them up at the mutant center on the West Side at ten in the morning on Saturday. Erik and Charles arrive early to load it up with the other essentials, which apparently includes an entire suitcase of pastries, chocolate, candy and cookies, as well as two cases of Coke and a full fresh box of laundry detergent.

“We’ll need it,” Charles says cheerfully when Erik asks about it, and closing the rear door of the minibus. He’s been excited about the trip ever since he first mentioned it to Erik, and he’s almost annoyingly chipper this morning, an exuberant attitude which continues as the other teenagers arrive, all the way until they’ve been shut into the bus in their proper places.

Erik had planned on sitting next to Charles, but a skinny redheaded girl got there first and is now chatting animatedly to him about something or another, waving her hands around. Erik reluctantly ends up closer to the back of the bus, crammed in between the window and a girl around his age with an invisible mutation who smiles shyly at Erik, her hands tucked tightly in her lap as if she feels the need to hold onto something.

“All right,” Charles calls from the front of the bus, standing in the aisle as Agent Man turns the engine over and Agent Woman sits down in the front. “Is everyone settled? Anyone forgotten anything?”

Nobody answers, and Charles nods. “Great! This is Agent Reyes and Agent Collins, they’re also mutants and so if you’re lucky they might help out this weekend!”

“They’re here because of him, aren’t they,” a blond boy says from across the aisle, gesturing at Erik. “Make sure he doesn’t kill us all on a terrorist rampage.”

“Alex, if you start out this way being rude I’ll kick you off the bus and you can go home,” Charles says without missing a beat. “You all know about the attack Erik and I survived at the ICC; that should be reason enough to be kind, instead of acting this way. It’s not a joke. So! Let’s get going,” and he sits down in the front seat opposite Agent Woman, buckling his seatbelt.

The bus starts off down the road, and it feels like they’re hitting every single pothole. That, or the bus is just large and unwieldy enough that the texture of the road is especially palpable, unsettling Erik’s stomach already just a few minutes in. He pulls his phone out of his back pocket and opens up his Kindle app -- he has a copy of _Absurdistan_ on here he’s been meaning to read -- when the girl sitting next to Charles wobbles her way down to the seat in front of them and plops down next to the kid with wings, turns in her seat and says, “Hi I’m Jean Grey Dr Xavier told us all about you your power is so cool I’m telepathic and telekinetic but not just metal just all sorts of things.”

“Oh,” Erik says, a bit stunned, and it takes him a second to recover his tongue enough to say, “Telekinesis -- like, gravity? Or spacetime?” He has a few theories about how that might actually work, but he’s never had an actual telekinetic he could ask about it. It’s entirely possible he’s overanalyzing it, trying to make it fit the same schema as his own mutation, which uses electromagnetic force, of course.

“Huh,” she says, flicking her hair back over her shoulder. “I don’t know. I just think of it as kind of like a big brain hand that can pick things up.” She’s still smiling.

Overanalyzing, then. Erik bites his tongue over asking what her class is; that might have been quite normal in Hellfire, but out in the real world people tend to see it as dick-measuring. “Sounds useful,” he says instead, his phone still unlocked in his lap, not sure if he wants her to go away or not but half-expecting her to, regardless.

“Only when it works right,” she says, sighing and propping her elbows on the back of the seat. “It doesn’t a lot of the time, I try really hard but nothing happens. You live with Dr Xavier, don’t you? I bet that’s cool. I bet he trains with you all the time. He’d be a great dad-person. He’s awesome.”

“Jean, your crush is embarrassing everyone,” the boy with the wings says, though it sounds fond rather than mean, and Erik tilts his head down briefly to cover his laugh.

“I don’t know, he still makes me do my homework,” Erik says, looking back up at her, one corner of his mouth still turned up.

“Sexy,” the winged boy says.

“Shut up, Warren,” Jean says, and actually sticks her tongue out at him, pink and childish.

“I like Dr Xavier too,” the girl next to Erik says, looking up from her hands. “He’s been helping me with my powers for a while now.”

“And those are?” Erik prods, meeting her gaze; she lifts her chin a little and says, “I phase through things,” though it sounds almost like a question. She has a Star of David strung on a chain around her neck, small but there. He points to it and says, “My parents were Jewish,” with one brow lifted, wondering if she’ll think he even counts, considering who raised him.

“Cool,” she says, brightening, her expression opening up. “Are you practicing or just ethnically Jewish? I know Dr Xavier isn’t but you can still go to shul if you want. Mine is pretty nice.”

“I don’t know, a little bit of both?” he says. “I do holidays, and I keep sort-of kosher. Charles dated an Israeli Domme for a while so she showed me a lot, but I haven’t really gone to shul or kept Shabbat. To be honest, I’m not particularly religious.”

“Well,” she says, “you don’t have to be religious to go to shul. Like, it’s culture and people too. And if your mom was a Jew then so are you. It’s automatic.” She shrugs. “It’s nice, it’s like there’s millions of people out there who all share your culture with you all around the world.”

Erik’s phone has automatically gone black to conserve battery in his hand, and he doesn’t immediately unlock it again. “All right, I’ll look into it.”

“Okay, awesome,” she says, smiling. “Let me know if you want info on my temple, you’re welcome to come. I can tell you which old ladies make the best food at the pot luck.”

“Jean, I’m feeling a bit squashed now,” Warren says from in front, his wings ruffling; it can’t be comfortable trying to sit in a bench seat in the first place, let alone next to someone. “Go back up front.”

“You can take my seat,” Erik says quickly, seeing his chance and not wanting to miss it, already half-standing in preparation to move. “I need to ask Charles something anyway.”

The girl next to him makes an odd face, then says, “You can climb through me, just do it quick before I fall through the bus. That sucks.”

Erik’s brows lift automatically, but he won’t say no to seeing her mutation in action, so he nods -- and as soon as her body goes slightly hazy he darts through to the aisle, the girl resolidifying behind him as he turns around to make sure she’s safe. It’s genuinely fascinating, and Erik grins widely when he looks back around at her.

“Neat trick.”

“Thanks,” she says, blushing a little.

At the front of the bus Charles is chatting to the agents, but he pauses when Erik comes up next to him and says, “This bus is a moving vehicle, nobody should be walking around.” He scooches over anyway, making space for Erik to sit down.

“I’m magnetized to the floor, you really think I’m going to fall over?” Erik says, making a face at him; Charles knows perfectly well Erik doesn’t like being told off, especially not recently. Not to mention that if he can survive a fatal car crash at a year and a half old, he’s pretty sure he could survive anything this bus might do.

“I just don’t want us to brake suddenly and you go flying out the window and die,” Charles says, not at all apologetic. “Come on, sit down. For the sake of my mental health.”

Erik sits, still irritated, and claps Charles twice on the thigh. “Better?”

“Yes,” Charles says, smiling at him, and doesn’t pull away from Erik’s hand, which … is certainly new, and interesting, especially in public. “All okay back there? They weren’t bullying you, were they?” There’s a twist in the corner or his mouth that belies his serious tone, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

“You know I’d come to you if I wanted to be bullied,” Erik says lightly, leaning his shoulder in against Charles’ and maintaining the contact a few seconds longer than is strictly justified; Charles snorts and nudges Erik with his elbow, and says, “Put your seatbelt on.”

*

_Charles_

They all arrive at the mansion in one piece, the minibus pulling up on the gravel of the turning circle in front of the main house with a grind of tires. As soon as they’ve come to something resembling a stop the kids are already flinging off their seatbelts and getting to their feet, agitating to get off before the bus doors are even open.

“Hang on, give Agent Collins a second to put the handbrake on,” Charles says, but he’s more amused than anything else, lips twitching. “Thank you for driving.”

“No problem, Dr Xavier,” the agent says with a quick, sloppy salute, then hits the button that opens the doors.

“All right, all off,” Charles calls back, the boys already on their feet, even as Kitty just slides sideways through the wall and out. “Grab your own luggage, or -- no, actually, Jean, this could be a good chance to get some practice in, let’s see how much of it you can pick up at once. Don’t overstrain yourself, we don’t want to drop anyone’s case!”

Jean grins broadly, excited at getting to show off, and buzzes in place while the others in front of her get off the bus, her energy trapped until she can dash outside and around the back.

Erik precedes Charles off the bus, fully absorbed in something on his phone as usual. Charles follows, slinging his satchel over his shoulder and heading back to find Jean lifting half the cases, one or two of them wavering in the air, a look of intense concentration on her face.

“Very good,” Charles says, nodding towards the ones she hasn’t grabbed; Alex and Darwin pick them up, one in each hand, and Warren takes two of Charles’ crates of snacks, one atop the other, all of them looking at him, waiting to be told what to do next. “Well, then,” Charles says, smiling, and pulls the keys out of his jacket pocket. “Let’s go in and get settled, shall we?”

He leads everyone up the front steps and unlocks the door, stretching out to confirm where the other two agents are -- one is coming to meet them from the back of the house, having heard the bus pull up, the other in the front parlor doing some work on her laptop, connected to the house wifi. Other than those two the house is blissfully empty, no Kurt or Cain or anyone else lurking in the shadows, and so Charles steps inside, calling out, “Hello!”

The kids all pile in after him, chattering excitedly as they look around, eyes wide; Alex whistles, long and low, and says, “This is your family’s house? It’s huge!”

“He lives on Park Ave, dumbass,” Bobby says, rolling his eyes, and Alex gives him a good-natured shove that nearly knocks Bobby into Jean, who says, “Careful, I’ll drop the bags!”

“I’ll catch them if you do,” Erik says, speaking up from just behind Charles; the metal handles on the suitcases flip up briefly, demonstratively, and Jean grins, delighted. “Cool!”

The agent arrives in the hallway, looks at them long enough to be sure it’s the group that’s supposed to be here, then goes around them without speaking to talk to Agent Reyes. Charles decides it’s none of his business, so he just says, “Bedrooms are upstairs on the second and third floors, let’s go find everyone a bed, shall we?”

It takes half an hour to settle everyone in rooms -- Kitty, Jean and Anna-Marie insist on sharing so they can have a slumber party, while the boys scuffle over the west-facing guest room with its own private bathroom, Warren winning out in the end by smacking the others with his wings until they give in and let him have it. Charles doesn’t realize until everyone else is placed that Erik will, by a process of elimination, have to sleep in the room next to Charles’ own, on the opposite side of the house from everyone else, the East Wing full to the rafters now with teenagers and the two rooms the agents have suborned for their own use. If Charles had thought about it he would have tried to place Erik with them, had one of the others in the last room, or even the agents -- but it’s too late now. No doubt Erik was fully aware beforehand, by the sense of satisfaction coming from his mind as he follows Charles along the hall.

“Oh,” Erik says, sounding exaggeratedly disappointed; Charles glances back at him and finds him standing in the open doorway to his room, suitcase floating in midair at his side. Erik meets Charles’ eyes and shrugs, says, “My bed’s too small. Looks like I’ll have to share with you again.”

“Ha ha,” Charles says, deadpan, a swell of -- something, not quite anxiety or anticipation but a blend of both, entirely inappropriate -- filling him up from the inside, like a bubble he has to burst. Determined not to bow again, he says, “I’m sure you’ll manage somehow. I know it’s not the lap of luxury you’re used to -- ” Erik’s room, like many of the others, has a king-size bed, hardly restrictive -- “but you’re strong enough to overcome your hardships.”

Erik grins at him, showing teeth, and vanishes into his room. Charles can hear him moving around in there, unpacking his suitcase and bouncing on the edge of the bed, testing the springs and wondering if he can persuade Charles to give in for a second night in a row, even as Charles himself retreats back to his own bedroom and closes the door, then closes his eyes for a moment, breathing in, out, in again, before telling himself that he’s okay and setting his own case down at the bottom of the bed to deal with later.

It’s strange to feel this house so full of buoyant, exuberant life, seven teenagers -- no, eight, counting Erik, though it doesn’t feel right to lump him in with the others -- four FBI agents, aware of their surroundings and each alert and focused. Nobody is drunk or angry or doing drudge work, and it couldn’t be more different from the house of Charles’ childhood than it is right now. It’s … it’s good, actually, like an emotional airing out, like someone threw the windows of its oppressive history wide open and swept all that out with the dust. He’ll think about beds, and about Erik in beds, later.

Charles takes the opportunity to read over his notes again, checking what he had planned for today and fixing it once more in his mind. The kids all know to come down for lunch at half twelve, so he can leave them be until then to settle in, and the pizza should be delivered around then (he certainly paid a large enough delivery charge to have it brought all the way out to the mansion). Until then, Charles is at rather loose ends.

Not wanting to sit empty-handed for another half hour Charles goes downstairs instead and heads back down the long, narrow corridor to the kitchen where it’s tucked away at the back of the house, the snacks and drinks all abandoned in their boxes on the island in the middle of the room. He can put these away at least.

Charles is halfway through unpacking when he feels Erik’s mind starting to move downstairs, navigating with the ease of someone who’s spent a whole summer living here before. Erik catches the movement of Charles’ wristwatch at some point and then he directs himself toward the kitchen with intentionality. 

“Need any help?” Erik says when he finally emerges from the corridor, gesturing toward the snacks still unpacked on the table.

“Sure,” Charles says, sliding two packs of cookies onto a shelf. “Could you put the soda in the fridge for me?”

Erik complies, though he carries the cans over to the fridge only nominally; his power’s doing most of the work even though the plastic handles are looped over Erik’s fingers, a reflex on Erik’s part by now and difficult for him to override. “I can’t believe you convinced seven sets of parents to trust you with their kids,” Erik says as he closes the fridge door.

Charles stiffens a little, though he knows Erik doesn’t mean it that way -- last night is still rather too strongly on his mind, the memory of his having given in even a little bit making him quick to feel guilty. “Why’s that?” he asks, going back to the bags for the candy. “You don’t think I’m trustworthy?”

“It was a joke, Charles,” Erik says, and when he turns around to look at Charles again he’s frowning, brows lifted slightly. “Of course you are.”

“Well then,” Charles says, but he still feels ruffled by the thoughtless comment, and puts the candy on the countertop, looking down at the brightly-colored packets with their sugar-dusted cellophane windows, trying to remember that not everything Erik says is a dig at him any more. That it’s okay to stand down on this one small thing.

He hears Erik moving, the tap of his shoes against the floor, sees him approaching out of the corner of his eye. Erik leans against the counter beside him, their shoulders bumping, and his mind pulses out understanding, apology. “You’re very good with them,” Erik says. “They respect you.”

“Someone has to,” Charles says, but it doesn’t come out sounding like a joke. He looks down at his hand next to Erik’s on the counter, pale skin next to golden, his own shorter, workmanlike fingers alongside Erik’s more elegant ones, resting on the smooth dark granite. When he glances sideways, eyes still low to avoid direct contact, Erik’s shirt has ridden up at Erik’s hip, a thin sliver of skin showing there, too, above the denim of his jeans.

It feels inevitable, instinctual, to reach out and tug that hem down, covering Erik up even as Charles’ thumb grazes the skin there, his hand coming to rest at Erik’s hip, his finger somehow tucked just under the cotton of his t-shirt so that the tip brushes against skin, warm and alive and tingling through Charles’ entire body. He says, “I’m sorry,” isn’t sure what for, still watching his own hand, and he -- there doesn’t even seem to be an impulse to move it, as if he can’t bring himself to even think it, except at a remove -- should I be thinking about moving my hand?

He hears Erik’s breath catch, but Erik doesn’t move away. Erik’s mind takes a different timbre entirely, now, and Charles is caught up in the sudden tide of affection surging through the bond between them, mixed with the lower heat of desire, of tightly-controlled want. It’s painful, like pins and needles, and Charles can’t grit his teeth against it, can’t push it away, because it’s already inside him and rooted deep, tangled up in his tendons and muscles and in his lungs and he can’t, he can’t get it out.

For a moment he stands there, stricken with the feelings he has for Erik, and then he lets his head fall forward, turning as he does so that his forehead catches against Erik’s chest, so he can feel Erik’s heart beating against his brow as he blinks, breathes, feels it all get too much to contain.

“Charles,” Erik says softly, and he wraps an arm tight around Charles’ waist, pulling him in close. His body is so warm, his fingers digging into Charles’ soft side as Erik’s other hand lifts to start stroking through Charles’ hair, light and hesitant movements, catching on the strands but soothing, enfolding Charles utterly, surrounded in Erik’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says again. For everything. For nothing.

There’s pressure on the side of his head, Erik turning his face into his hair, chest rising under Charles’ brow as he takes a shaky breath in. “You’re fine,” he says. “You’re all right.” He's still stroking Charles’ scalp, down toward his nape as his other hand starts smoothing along Charles’ ribs, rubbing a patch of heat against Charles’ skin. “You’re doing good.”

Charles is just so tired of trying so hard all the time.

“I -- ” he starts, but then he hears a sound from upstairs, and when he looks he sees the kids gathering to come down for lunch, and he’s standing in an intimate embrace with his not-son in the kitchen where they’ll be coming in just a couple of minutes, more like lovers than guardian and ward. “They’re going to be here in a minute,” he says, and somehow even still, he stays where he is, wanting to eke out a few more seconds before he has to be strong again.

Erik nods against Charles’ head. But he doesn’t pull away either, not at first; his hand twists in Charles’ hair like he wants to forcibly keep him right where he is and damn the consequences. “I love you,” he murmurs in Charles’ ear. His grip tightens, hair tugging against Charles’ scalp, but then he lets go and steps away, putting a foot of distance between them just as the kids clatter down the corridor, laughing and joking with one another as they rumble into the kitchen.

Charles is knocked just a little by an apologetic Bobby, and by the time he manages to look back at Erik he’s not looking back, can’t meet Charles’ eyes for Charles to see if the same expression is there as he feels in his own, and Charles has to turn to the others and say, “I feel the delivery man coming up the drive now, so get whatever you want to drink and I’ll go pay the piper.”

He spends lunch in a distant, distracted haze, only managing to make conversation by sheer force of concentration. Erik took the seat at his left but he’s looking at his pizza, not at Charles, and Charles could almost think he imagined it except for the way that Erik’s feet tangle around Charles’ own left ankle, keeping it caught between them, anchored to Erik and unwilling or unable to break free.

*


	33. Thirty-three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings this chapter: passing references to past child rape and abuse

_Charles_

Charles wakes up slowly, first aware of the heavy feeling of his limbs pressing down against the mattress, the warm weight of the duvet draped over his body and the contented flush of a good night’s sleep settled beneath his skin. And then there’s light, an insistent glow against his closed eyelids that draws him steadily toward the waking world. He makes a noise in the back of his throat and curls deeper into the pillow, letting out a sigh. 

Strange, not to hear the hum of traffic outside, the constant beeping of horns and yelp of raised voices -- the feeling of a million minds around him, like living in a beehive, listening to the other drones rustling their wings and buzzing as they make honey. There’s just early morning birds chirping in the trees and the sound of wind rustling through branches, an old house creaking at its hinges.

Well, that and Erik, laying across from him on the other side of the bed, still sound asleep.

Charles opens his eyes slowly, looking at the back of Erik’s neck where he’s rolled onto his other side, the tousled line of his hair cut short at his nape, the muscle of his shoulder revealed by the worn old vest he’s sleeping in. Last night Charles hadn’t even protested when Erik paused in the doorway to his room, had instead pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed without looking up from his book. If he’d had to meet Erik’s gaze, the questions there, he could never have done it, but like that he had been able to pretend it didn’t matter, the soft pad of Erik’s bare feet on the carpet, the shift of the mattress, then the blankets as Erik climbed in and laid down, the backs of his fingers brushing Charles’ thigh where he was sat up in bed. When Charles finally laid down there was enough space between them for a third person to have snuggled inbetween, but still he’d felt as if Erik’s body warmed the entire bed, his presence welcome but frightening at the same time, Charles waiting for a rap on the knuckles that never came.

Now, he watches Erik sleep, and tries to pretend to himself this is nothing, just -- it’s chaste, familial, platonic, the way Charles feels calmer, better, having Erik here like this. Like he’s just returned from a long spell at sea, smelling of salt and brine.

After a little while -- too soon -- he feels Erik’s mind sliding toward wakefulness. He thinks about getting up and out of bed before Erik can open his eyes but in the end, he doesn’t, or not quickly enough; Erik shifts next to him, long legs stretching out under the duvet. For the briefest of moments Charles senses the uncertainty rolling through the telepathic bond between them as Erik tries to remember where he is, how he got here, then Erik twists his head to look at Charles over his shoulder, grey eyes pale in the light from the open window.

“Hey,” he says, voice thick with sleep.

“Hey,” Charles says, quietly, not moving --staying where he can imagine they’re sleeping on two single beds pushed together, not one large one, that the separation is something more than an imaginary line. “Did you sleep well?”

“Mhmm.” 

Erik rolls over properly now, turning onto his stomach with his face still turned toward Charles, both arms folded up under his pillow. Like this Erik looks ... luminous, the morning light from the window behind him making the curling ends of his hair glow copper-brown, everything about him slow and languid for once, the sun gilding the strong lines of his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, the swell of his lower lip.

Charles loves him like he’s never loved anyone before, nor ever will again.

“Nobody else is awake yet,” Charles says finally, trying for normality. “We’ll have to get up soon, though.”

Erik makes another soft, wordless sound, and adds, “People will be expecting breakfast,” but he doesn’t get up. Instead he shifts enough to extract one of his hands, reaching across the distance between them to curl his fingers around Charles’ wrist, his thumb pressing against Charles’ pulse point. Charles can feel Erik’s heartbeat there, a steady throb -- or maybe it’s his own, reflected back at him.

 _“Have you ever thought about what it would be like,”_ Erik had asked, the other night, _“if we didn’t meet like this?”_ If he’s honest with himself Charles can’t _stop_ thinking about it, about what this could have been like -- about waking up every day like this, with Erik, opening his eyes and smiling.

“Come on then,” Charles says finally, lifting his other hand to squeeze Erik’s once, gently, before he turns towards the edge of the bed and pulls away, swinging his legs out from under the blankets and getting to his feet to go into the bathroom to get ready for the day.

*

Charles’ first session after breakfast is with Alex, who of all of them is probably the one who needs the most help. While Anna-Marie is arguably just as dangerous as Alex, she at least can wear gloves to prevent her power from affecting others, whereas Alex losing his temper has already led to severe property damage in the past -- along with some nasty burns.

They meet in Charles’ father’s study, the room still just as he remembers it: dark-panelled wood and heavy, masculine furniture, the walls lined with books and all sorts of expensive knickknacks, astrolabes and telescopes and carved shells, the sorts of things Charles’ father brought back from business trips then never moved again. Charles and Alex sit on the two small couches by the fireplace, Charles’ hands folded in his lap, Alex restless and uneasy in the chair across from him, leg twitching so that his heel rises and falls from the carpet.

“We’re not going to concentrate on your mutation while we’re here,” Charles says, watching Alex’s expression closely. “I don’t think your mutation is as much the issue as your control of your own emotions, and it’s that lack of control that leads to accidents with your power. If we can rein in your innermost feelings, then we can rein in your mutation.”

Alex looks dubious enough, but it’s his mind that says it all: _My feelings aren’t the problem, my mutation is,_ he’s thinking, mulish, disappointed not to get to practice directly. It’s not unexpected, and so Charles leans forward in his chair and says, “Stick with me for this, give it a try, and if it doesn’t work for you we’ll try something else. Okay?”

There’s a long pause, but then Alex says, “All right,” with a put-upon sigh like he’s being seriously inconvenienced. “How do you want to do this?”

“Let’s start with exploring your anger,” Charles says, and gets to work.

It feels strange all of a sudden to be working with another teenage boy and to not feel the way he does when he’s with Erik, the contrast stark -- to Charles, Alex is just another teenage boy, someone to look after, certainly, to care about and attempt to help, but he doesn’t _react_ to his nearness, his presence, the way he does with Erik, the way Erik walking into a room makes Charles’ breath hitch, sometimes, like it’s pausing for approval. It shouldn’t be strange -- Charles has never felt that way about any of his patients before, of any age, and Erik is very much the exception to the rule. And yet ...

… and yet it’s so relieving, as ever, to find that it’s not at all the same, even when Charles moves to sit beside Alex on the small couch and says, “I’m going to place my hand on your stomach, so we can work on your breathing together,” and follows through, Alex’s belly taut and fluttering under his palm as Charles teaches him to breathe fully, deeply, before reacting to things that might make him angry. There’s no attraction there, no urge to touch more, to push up Alex’s shirt and stroke bare skin the way there would be with Erik -- it’s functional, and Charles can’t help feeling … it’s frightening, in its own way, given how close they’re becoming all over again, that the way he feels about Erik is targeted and specific, that there is a connection there he cannot deny.

Charles’ hand rises and falls with Alex’s inhales and exhales. He can feel Alex’s awkwardness over the close contact, self-conscious and a little shy, and after a moment Alex asks, “Do you teach this to him?”, turning his head to look at Charles directly, not quite managing to sound as disinterested, as casual, as he means to. “To Erik?”

Charles knows this isn’t a reply to his thoughts about Erik, but it feels a little too much like a continuation of his own silent conversation with himself, so he just says, “He knows it well enough not to need my help with it any more,” removing his hand and folding it into his lap, safely out of the way of impropriety. “You could learn a few things from him, you know.”

The words seems to light a fire that burns away the awkwardness, Alex’s mind flaring up with temper, and with sudden ferocity he says, “He shouldn’t even be here anyway,” his brows drawing together, his hands in fists and all but insulted at the suggestion. Alex twists around to face Charles, chin lifting. “We all know he’s a murderer and a terrorist, so what are you doing letting him hang out with a bunch of teenage mutants like an all-you-can-eat buffet for Hellfire? I mean, seriously, Doc, I know you’re all nice and all taking him in, but bringing him around a bunch of potential recruits for a long weekend … it’s crazy.”

“You don’t know anything about Erik, and you don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charles says, very quietly, and if anything the mildness of his tone is what shuts Alex up, the boy almost straining to hear what Charles is saying. “You’ve never really met him. You’ve never spoken to him, but you talk as though violence is essential to Erik’s being. Yes, Erik has done a lot of things, many of them bad. But you are ignoring the fact that he wasn’t in a position to say yes or no. I think you might be painting him with the same brush you’re painting yourself with, assuming that there’s no way to stop from being violent.”

“That’s not it at all,” Alex says, his jaw setting stubbornly. “You make it sound like he’s some innocent baby, but all the shit he did just makes the rest of us look like violent psychos, too! You can’t just pretend he didn’t do all that stuff with Hellfire, there’s video and everything.”

Charles shakes his head. “Alex, if the media chooses to make mutants look bad, they’ll find a reason to do it whether it’s Erik or someone else. Erik … ” Charles pauses, takes a breath, and says, “Erik has his flaws, but he’s one of the best people I know. And I’m afraid I can’t talk to you as if I can be objective about your criticism of him, because I love Erik very much. He is my _family_ , and you are insulting him to my face. Please bear that in mind and stop, before I take offense.”

It’s a terrible, awful risk -- it feels like he’s put something out there that Alex should never have heard, never have known. But somehow it must be the right thing to say, because Alex just stares at Charles for a long moment, silent and flushing pink, before mumbling, “Sorry.” 

“So you should be,” Charles says, rather stiffly.

There’s a long and awkward silence filled only by the ticking of the clock, rhythmic and loud.

“Look,” Alex says finally, scuffing his foot on the carpet. “I know he’s had a bad time of it growing up, and I get that. But it pisses me off that he’s done all these bad things, willingly or not, killed people, destroyed massive buildings even, and never been punished by the law for it. Instead he moves in with you and goes to school and lives the high life. And I have to watch myself every minute of every day to not have an accident again, because if I do then I’ll get sent to juvie or jail because I’d be a bad scary mutant, since what everyone would be thinking about is what Erik Lehnsherr did. It’s not fair.”

Charles can understand that frustration, and he feels a pang of sympathy for Alex, even if it doesn’t excuse his aggressiveness towards Erik. “I can understand that feeling,” he says, and he can, can see where Alex is coming from with painful clarity, shifting in his chair to sit forward with his folded hands hanging between his knees, elbows resting on his thighs. “Still, taking your anger out on Erik doesn’t solve the issue. He didn’t cause this. Or choose it.”

“It’s people like him and Hellfire who make it impossible for people like me, who don’t mean anyone any harm, to get any slack at all,” Alex says, his jaw tightening. “They give us all a bad rep and then pretend they’re doing it for our own good. You said yourself he’s still a separatist, even after everything. You’d think after all that violence he’d see separatism for the crap it really is.”

Charles hates being put in a corner to defend thing he disagrees with, but nonetheless he bites the inside of his cheek before saying, without letting his own opinion color his tone, “Separatism and violence aren’t the same thing, Alex, though I admit they often come together, and are most visible when combined. Many separatists are entirely non-violent, and some integrationists are just as bad as the extreme separatists. You know my views; I’m very pro-integration, and to an extent I’ve influenced all of you with my thoughts and feelings. But I can’t tar all separatists with the same brush, and neither should you.”

Alex frowns. “I can’t think of one non-violent separatist.”

“What about all those non-violent protests in favor of separate education, or separate healthcare facilities? Those are separatist movements.”

“Separate but equal,” Alex mutters. “Where have I heard that before?”

“Separatists -- reasonable separatists -- want specific, tailored services for mutants rather than integrating them into mainstream services,” Charles says, resisting the urge to fold his arms across his chest, not wanting to appear defensive. “What you’re talking about is mutant supremacy, which is not at all the same thing as separatism. Those are two different debates. Supremacists want separate services because they think humans are lesser than mutants, and I entirely agree with you that there is no merit to supremacy whatsoever. But separatism, though I disagree with it on the whole, is not the same and does include some well-respected thinkers and some good ideas.”

He takes a breath, then lets it out slowly, working himself up to a small, supportive smile. “I’m sure if you’d like to debate the difference Erik would oblige you; he’s very passionate about mutant politics, and if you can keep it civil then I guarantee you he will too.”

“I don’t need to. I know everything I need to know.”

“Then you’re a very singular human being,” Charles says lightly. “Just think, to know everything in the world that you need to know, with no need for anything else! A very rare mutation.”

Alex makes a face, leaning back in his chair and planting his elbows on the arms of the chair, wide and defiant in his posture; he’s trying to puff up, typical Dominant behavior, which tells Charles even more than Alex’s mind that Alex knows he’s losing this argument. “You know that’s not what I meant, Dr X.”

“Well then,” Charles says, still calm, unrelenting. “It’s up to you if you talk to Erik about it or not. But I want you to remember that blaming Erik for things that were mostly outside of his control won’t make a difference to how you, or I, or any other mutant, is received now. Hopefully you can trust my judgement enough to believe that Erik will not be doing anything else to endanger mutants’ appearance to the mass media.”

Alex sits silent for a long moment, chewing over what Charles has said; Charles gives him time to mull it over, sitting in patient silence, before Alex finally says, “Why is it you love him, Doc? You know all the shit he’s done, all the shit he still believes in, and you’re not like that at all. I don’t understand where that comes from. Like, I get that he’s your kid now, and whatever. But plenty of parents and kids don’t get on. It’s not, like, a prerequisite.”

Charles is caught a little off-guard by the question, even though he heard it coming -- not soon enough to have an easy answer, nor one that isn’t potentially damning. “Well,” he starts, then pauses, awkwardly, trying to think of what to say. Alex is looking at him like he expects a good answer, and Charles thinks to himself -- only a child would expect an easy answer to a question like that.

“Well,” he says again, slowly, giving himself time to think before each word, “I suppose I can empathize with him and his experiences. I had a … difficult childhood myself, in this very house, in fact, and so there’s a commonality there. My stepbrother was a terrible bully, as was my stepfather.”

“I’m sorry,” Alex says, his eyes widening as he straightens in his chair, as if worried he’s stepped on a landmine.

“No, no, it’s fine.” Charles waves one hand to dismiss Alex’s worries. “In any case, it means I understand him rather better than other people might who haven’t had those problems. I admire him, actually -- his situation was far worse than mine, and yet he’s come out of it so strong, and with such a strong moral compass of his own. Erik is a survivor, Alex. Given what he’s lived through it’s incredible that he can be as together as he is.”

“You have a big heart, Doctor X,” Alex says, but what he’s thinking is, _**I** feel sorry for the guy, but I still see the truth about the rest of him. Doesn’t seem like enough of a reason to me._

“Perhaps not to you,” Charles says, not unkindly, and Alex flushes at being caught out, cheeks darkening; Charles gives him a quick little smile, and continues, “Erik is brave, Alex. He’s loyal to his friends, and very smart and capable. You might not see it, because he’s guarded with strangers, but Erik is very kind, once he lets himself be. I’m his guardian, but he looks after me, too. He’s not the bloodthirsty criminal you’re imagining him to be. He cares deeply about people and about doing good in this world.”

It’s all true, and Charles has to work hard not to let his own emotion color the words too strongly, knowing full well that he could give himself away by being too emphatic. How ridiculous it would be, to be caught in his feelings for Erik because he simply cannot talk about him without becoming impassioned in his defense, caring too much for neutrality!

“Hmm,” Alex says dubiously. “Well, I guess I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“That’s your prerogative,” Charles says, shifting in his seat and trying to recover his own decorum. “But I do hope you’ll give Erik a chance, Alex. At least keep an open mind.”

It’s a few seconds more before Alex shrugs, but Charles can accept begrudging agreement -- it’s an improvement on open hostility, at least, and so he claps Alex on the shoulder and says, “That’s good. Thank you. Now. Shall we get along with your actual session?”

“All right,” Alex says, sounding relieved, and Charles feels rather relieved as well as they finally turn back to psychological theory.

*

_Erik_

The house is so full like this, the rooms echoing with the noises of half a dozen strange teenagers, their lives filling up even the dustiest corners. It’s not _bad_ , per se, but even so -- Erik’s not sure he can get used to having this many people in the same house as him again, or at least, not by Monday. It reminds him of how he used to live, when there were people in every room and nowhere he could go to not be around them. 

Here, of course, he has his own room upstairs, but vanishing there the whole weekend would be rude, and would negate the whole point of being here and being around other mutants. Even so, it means he feels cramped in and trapped, hanging around downstairs and trying not to be in anyone’s way, surrounded by these kids who all know each other and whose lives have been so different from Erik’s.

When he returns to the living room after cleaning up the breakfast dishes Charles is gone, along with Alex; the others are all there, boys and girls, setting out drinks glasses on the table. “Hey,” Kitty says, scooting along the couch and making space. “You want to play?”

“What are we playing?” Erik asks, but he sits down all the same, watching Bobby pour a shot’s worth of vodka into each of the glasses -- either they stole it from the liquor cabinet or they managed to sneak it in without Charles noticing, a remarkable feat. Not that Erik’s one to judge. “Isn’t it a bit early in the day to be drinking?” 

“Later we’ll all be in one-to-one or doing more group activities,” Bobby says, unconcerned. “Right now Dr Xavier is busy with Alex so he won’t be paying so much attention and we can just play. It’s ‘Never Have I Ever’, you know it?”

Erik shakes his head and Warren explains: “Basically, everyone starts with five fingers. People go around and say things they haven’t done -- like I might say, ‘never have I ever tried spiced rum.’ And everyone who _has_ done that thing has to put a finger down and take a shot. Last person to get to zero fingers up wins.”

“Sounds deadly,” Erik says; he’ll almost certainly be first loser in this game, but he doesn’t get up, just settles against the sofa, stretching one arm out along the backs of the cushions behind Kitty’s head. For a long moment everyone’s silent, looking at each other, no-one committing to going first and setting the tone for the game. Kitty is avoiding everyone’s gaze.

“I’ll go first,” Bobby says at last, breaking the tension like cracking an egg. He leans back in his seat, tapping his fingers on his chin. “Okay. Let’s see. Never have I ever … had sex in a car.”

Erik’s finger goes down; looking around the room, it’s clear he’s the only one who ever saw the need to give a classmate head while their driver was taking them home from school. “Whoops,” Erik says, with a tiny grin, and reaches for his glass.

Armando snorts, and Kitty gives Erik a surprised look from where she’s sitting next to him. Bobby just laughs, gesturing to his right, towards Anna-Marie. “Your go.”

“Um,” she says. “Never have I ever had sex.” She holds her hands up in their long black gloves, wriggling her fingers, which apparently everyone else understands, because they all groan, but Warren, Armando and Kitty all drink, folding their fingers, Kitty blushing furiously. Erik’s throat is still burning from his last vodka shot but he takes another, of course, grimacing against the taste.

It’s weird, sitting here among teenagers whom Erik knows most people would consider his peers; despite his friendship with Madelyne and some of his other classmates at school, Erik has never been to the sorts of parties where they play games like this, exploring boundaries, experimenting with talking about sex and relationships and drinking alcohol like it’s forbidden. Erik is more used to parties where everyone drinks and plenty of people sneak off to fuck, so sitting here in the middle of the day with a group of sheltered teens is a weirdly new experience, like taking two steps back from his own level. Or, what’s supposed to be his own level. Erik skipped the level system, growing up.

Nobody else has spoken, so Erik says, “My turn,” lifting his shot glass. Of course, it’s harder than he’d thought, coming up with things -- and so far everyone’s been going for sex items, which limits Erik’s options even further. “Hmm. All right. Never have I ever gone to church.”

Everyone except Kitty drinks for that one, putting Warren and Armando both on level pegging with Erik; Kitty says, “Never have I ever had a crush on a teacher.”

Erik isn’t sure Charles counts as his teacher, so he keeps his fingers where they are. Jean is the only one who slowly curls her finger down and reaches for her glass, her cheeks bright red. 

Warren laughs, his wings shaking with a susurrus of feathers. “Cough, _Dr Xavier_ , cough,” he says, covering his mouth with his fist and pretending to be hacking up a lung. Jean pulls a face at him, even as she takes a drink -- then really coughs violently as the liquor hits, spluttering wetly while the others laugh even harder. 

Most of them are two shots in now, only Anna-Marie and Bobby holding out at one, and Warren shuffles forward toward the edge of his seat, setting his glass down on the coffee table. “Okay. Never have I ever … crossdressed.”

Nobody drinks for that; but when Armando says, “Never have I ever kissed someone of the same orientation as me,” Anna-Marie drinks, to the astonishment of Kitty, who bursts out, “You kissed someone? Who?!”

Anna-Marie shrugs, a bit pink in the cheeks. “Just some guy at school. But then I manifested, so … ”

That’s right, Erik thinks as he takes his own drink -- Anna-Marie’s mutation is such that she can’t touch humans without killing them, and mutants without seriously disabling them. Her power lets her ‘borrow’ other mutants’ abilities, as well, and would be incredibly useful in warfare, but it’s too obvious from the way Anna-Marie talks about it that she wouldn’t see that as a positive thing.

He’s starting to feel a little warm now, even if he took those three shots too recently to feel anything else. He leans forward to shrug off his jacket, stripping down to his short-sleeved t-shirt and tossing the excess over the back of the sofa. The cool air on the back of his neck doesn’t do much. A part of him wants to beg off already; he knows his tolerance, and he thinks he can guess at theirs as well -- at any rate, it’s lower than his. The way they’re going, they’ll all be wasted in the next fifteen minutes and useless the rest of the day. But he doesn’t want to be the one to ruin everyone’s fun. This is his only chance to prove that he can be normal, that he isn’t permanently ruined, compared to these kids. So he stays where he is, and stays quiet, wishing 7D Dominance meant he could just Will himself into sobriety.

It’s Jean’s turn, her cheeks still scarlet from coughing, and she bites her lip before saying, “Never have I ever … given oral sex.”

Erik’s down to one. “Fuck,” he murmurs, shaking his head a little as he fills his glass up with more vodka and downs it. He’s not alone, though: Armando and Warren are drinking, too.

Bobby looks at Erik’s hand, and pulls a face. “Over way too quick, man,” he says, but he sounds more impressed than irritated. “Let me help you out. So. Things you _won’t_ have done …” He pauses, mouth shifting thoughtfully from side to side before he finally says, “Never have I ever had sex with more than two people at once.”

Erik’s brow flicks briefly up at that. He can’t tell if it’s cruelty or genuine naivete, but the difference doesn’t matter to the flush of shame in the pit of his stomach, and doesn’t erase the flicker of memory in the back of his mind. Suddenly he feels uncomfortable in his own skin, unclean. He says, “Well, I’m out,” and downs the rest of his drink in one swallow, setting the empty glass back down on the table with a _clink._ The burn of the alcohol sears out the sting of humiliation, at least.

“Woah,” Bobby says, and Warren says, “Seriously? High five!” and holds up his hand, palm outward. “Don’t leave me hanging!”

Erik forces a false smile and leans forward to lightly slap Warren’s hand, although he isn’t sure he entirely manages to disguise the awkwardness of it all, not sure he wants to look around and see the looks on anyone’s faces as he sits back against the sofa, arms automatically moving to cross over his chest.

“What was it like?” Bobby asks, leaning forward, seemingly oblivious to Erik’s body language.

“Oh,” Erik says, thrown off guard and feeling suddenly like a criminal somehow, like he has to sugarcoat it and put it behind layers and layers of obfuscation -- and for what? To preserve Hellfire’s reputation? His own? “It was,” he waves a hand as if to say it were no big deal, even as he fumbles mentally for words. “You know.” What do they want him to say? 

“Shut up, assholes,” Anna-Marie says, and her voice is like a slap, her brows drawn tight together and her mouth a flat dark line, folding her arms across her chest -- she glares fiercely at Bobby and Warren, and continues, “You saw what they said in the papers about the Hellfire Club and the … stuff … they used to do to him, and you’re still asking stupid questions like that? Are you really so stupid you can’t put two and two together and make four?” 

She turns to Erik then, her expression apologetic, and says, “Sorry, I should have said these games are usually sex-driven before we started, it was bound to veer into uncomfortable territory,” everything about her screaming pity.

“It’s fine,” Erik mutters, and Warren says, “No, man, I’m sorry, we didn’t think.”

“Sorry,” Bobby says, the manic energy of a moment ago gone.

There’s a long silence, awkward and uncomfortable, before Jean says, “It just sounds confusing,” her nose wrinkling. “Like, too many arms and legs and things. You’d get in each others’ way a whole lot.”

Warren snorts, and even Anna-Marie smiles, reaching over to poke Jean in the side; Jean squawks, squirming, and the moment is broken, the others laughing at Jean’s red face, even if it is a self-conscious sort of humor, interspersed with a few sidelong glances at Erik, like they’re checking up on him, trying to tell if this is appropriate, if they’re being Good People.

Erik knows he should be used to this kind of thing by now -- that between the things Shaw says in court and the way he’s talked about in the media, he shouldn’t be surprised it’s what people think about, but … he’s too drunk to parse that from the way his tongue feels too thick, the rush of blood to his cheeks -- they must be scarlet. 

“I think I drank too much. Hold on.” 

He lurches out of his seat and manages to make it to the hall bathroom without running into the wall, at least, where he kicks the door half-shut behind him and wastes no time lifting up the seat and sticking his fingers down his throat.

The vodka burns just as much coming up as it did going in, mixed with stomach acid and the long-ago remnants of breakfast. He clenches his eyes shut but that doesn’t stop them watering, leaking tears to mingle with the clearish stuff he’s spewn into the toilet. He’s out of breath when it’s done, shaky, his fingers sweaty as he pushes flush and splashes cold water on his face, rinses out his mouth. In the mirror he looks -- well, he looks drunk, bright-eyed and pink-cheeked, his hair tousled. He hadn’t realized, but he must have been dragging his fingers back through it, mussing it up unintentionally. The best he can do now is fix it with his hands and pat his face dry on the hand towel before heading back to the other room.

“You can’t just ask him questions like that,” Anna-Marie is saying to Bobby when Erik comes in, but her mouth snaps shut when she sees him, caught out and embarrassed by it; Bobby looks mulish, but Erik glances down and sees Anna-Marie’s pale, bare hand, and guesses she must have threatened Bobby to silence. 

“It’s not like it’s a state secret,” Erik says bluntly, dropping back down onto the sofa. He’s not nearly as drunk as he felt a moment ago, but he certainly isn’t sober, either. “Everyone knows everything. Besides, that’s not the only sex I’ve ever had.”

Bobby in particular looks relieved, like he’s been let off the hook, and he pushes the bottle of vodka over towards Erik, sliding it across the table. “Cool,” he says, then, a little awkwardly, says, “So, uh. What is it like? Sex.” He flushes, clearly a bit tipsy himself, because when Warren tries to say something Bobby flaps his hand at him to shut up, still looking at Erik. “Like, uh, how do you do a good job?”

Erik’s not sure that’s the point he was trying to make, and he can tell Anna-Marie knows as much from the look she gets him, grim and apologetic. But he’s in it now, and there’s no way to blow off the question without undermining what he just said.

“I don’t know. What it’s like will depend on a lot of things. On you, on the person you’re with, on how you feel about them and vice versa. On your respective dynamics. But being good is just a matter of knowing what your partner wants and the most efficient way to give it to them.” 

It’s not rocket science, Erik wants to say, but he manages to keep his mouth shut on that one.

“Okay,” Bobby says, his cheeks flushed red now -- he glances sideways at Warren and Armando, clearly embarrassed, but he still says, “How do you know what they want, then?”

Good lord.

Erik struggles to maintain his patience, to remember that they are nowhere near as experienced as he himself is -- that of course they would find the question embarrassing, and of course they wouldn’t think the answers were intuitive. But it’s hard.

“They’ll let you know one way or another. Experiment with things, be creative. If they like it, you’ll -- you’ll know. From how they breathe, or … vocalizations, or what they do with their hands.” Everyone is listening to him intently, even Jean. “My best advice would be to figure out what _you_ like, and then you can figure out how to apply that to someone else.” 

Not advice Erik himself had been able to take, but it seems inappropriate to suggest finding a diverse set of instructors who can give them cruel, if practical, experience.

“Be … enthusiastic,” he adds lamely.

Warren leans forward now, resting his elbows on his knees. “Do you know how to deep throat?” he asks.

“Sure,” Erik says, shrugging one shoulder.

“How do you do it, then?” Warren asks, ignoring a squeak of embarrassment from Jean. “Like, technique, and stuff? I can’t get it right.”

“That’s quite enough,” Charles says from the doorway behind Erik, and when Erik turns he can see the horrified disapproval on Charles’ face, then feel the sweep of his mind as he replays the past ten minutes from Erik’s memory, his lips parting on a silent oath. 

Alex is right behind Charles, peering over his shoulder at the rest of them with envy, but Erik is paying more attention to the way Charles says, “For God’s sake,” his face shutting down into a deep scowl, the sense Erik always has of Charles’ mind turning dark and frustrated, _disappointed_ , his brows drawn together and his hands on his hips. “I can’t -- breaking into my mother’s liquor cabinet is not only illegal but entirely out of line, as well as stealing. All of you -- I expected better of you.”

It’s painful to hear, especially when Charles stalks into the room and snatches up the bottle of vodka, screwing the top back onto the bottle with sharp motions of his hands. “I’m very disappointed in all of you. I brought you here this weekend to learn, not to waste your opportunity to practice with your powers out of the city by getting drunk and asking Erik incredibly personal and inappropriate questions.”

Erik drops his gaze down to his nails, affecting sudden fascination with his cuticles. He’s starting to wish he’d gone with his initial instinct, to find an excuse not to participate at all. He’s still dizzy from the vodka he wasn’t able to puke up, but not nearly drunk enough to not-care.

Jean sniffles like she might cry, and there’s a sound of shuffling, the others shifting awkwardly; Charles says, “All of you up, I’m making coffee,” sharp, commanding, and thinks towards Erik, _You as well, come on._

 _I think I might sober up upstairs,_ Erik thinks at him. He can’t help the note of apology that goes along with his words -- even though this wasn’t his responsibility, even though he has no right to tell people his own age what to do with their time, a part of him feels like he ought to have stopped them. He doesn’t like seeing how much it upsets Charles to have had his carefully-laid plans driven off-course. 

He just needs to not be around the others for a while. It’s not that he isn’t perfectly used to people knowing, to people looking at him -- like that, thinking of him like that. But it’s different having to be exposed to it in close quarters where he can’t just avoid people for a day or two until they forget and latch onto some other scandal. And there aren’t usually people like Alex, who must think, under it all, that Erik deserved it.

 _I can’t be seen to be favoring you when you were drinking as well,_ Charles says, still ushering the others out into the corridor and directing them towards the kitchen. _I’m cross with you too for the drinking, you know, you’re not exempt. Come and have some coffee and then you can vanish upstairs once that’s done with._

Erik concedes, for Charles, and trails after him to the kitchen where Charles puts a pot of coffee on to brew and then stands watching it, stewing, while the rest of them sit awkwardly at the kitchen island in uneasy silence. When he does finally open his mouth to tell them off again, his voice is low, not forceful or angry, and Erik can feel everyone around him squirming, wishing they were anywhere else but here.

Erik finishes his coffee quicker than anyone else, putting his mug away in the dishwasher and then makes his excuses, citing a headache and escaping away up the stairs.

He feels better once he’s in his own room, shut away in a space that feels ‘his’ even if it’s only been his for one night. Another thing he must have gotten used to, he thinks, living like they did, never staying in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. He made a habit out of finding his territory and laying claim to it, clinging to what privacy he was allowed. 

Erik finds one of the books he brought with him buried in his suitcase and takes it out, downstairs and out into the summer sunlight, Erik settling himself down in the grass near the lake. The breeze is perfectly cool where it blows off the water, ruffling lightly through Erik’s hair, and his book is good: easy to sink into, easy to at least temporarily distract him from anything else.

*

_Charles_

It’s hard not to stay frustrated with them all even after the kids are starting to sober up a little from the coffee; it’s not so much that Charles hadn’t expected this might happen, but he had thought it would be at night after he’d supposedly gone to bed, not that he would walk in on them all drinking and talking about sex, and Erik joining in, giving _advice_. Which … isn’t entirely fair, he knows -- teenagers talk about sex, and it’s natural for them to ask each other questions, but … still, he can’t help but feel cross, and more so at the others for asking Erik such inappropriate questions. While the rest of them are downstairs, playing video games or practicing with their powers on their own time, Charles can feel Erik’s absence like a missing tooth, an empty hole Charles can’t help but keep prodding with the tip of his tongue, probing it to see if it still hurts. 

He works hard at being calm, and by the time they need to start preparing dinner he’s managed to do two more one-to-one sessions with Jean and Anna-Marie, who had the least to drink, so at least he’s not too far behind schedule. 

So far he’s left Erik alone to work through his own emotions, giving him the space to do it -- forcing Erik to be sociable when he was already so uneasy wouldn’t have been productive, but Erik is supposed to be cooking for them all tonight and it’s getting to the time when they’ll need to start on it if it’s going to be ready for seven.

It’s the work of a moment to locate Erik’s mind, less than a heartbeat, like turning his head. It’s not so much a matter of finding him as becoming actively aware, the scent of water and the feeling of grass brushing against his skin, paper against his face where Erik has lain his book across his nose, eyes closed. Charles … he could, if he wanted, say something, prompt Erik to come back inside without ever moving from his seat here in the house, in his father’s old study. But instead he finds himself getting to his feet and walking out of the kitchen door, heading along the old path towards the lake.

When he reaches it he finds Erik still just as he was when Charles touched his mind, right ankle propped up against his left knee, hands folded over his belly. Charles sits down beside him, tailor-fashion, and watches the water ripple in the light breeze.

“How are you doing?” he asks, voice soft.

Erik lifts his hand to draw the book away from his face, setting it down on his chest and blinking up at Charles against the bright sun. “All right,” he says. 

“Mmm.” Charles looks down at Erik, laying there so … it’s an echo of the morning, the beauty of him, like something from a period drama, and Charles can’t help but reach down to brush Erik’s hair away from his brow, his thumb dragging over the fine skin of Erik’s forehead and hovering, hesitant, over his temple, not wanting to withdraw but knowing he must, finding himself caught and unable to do either. His thumb comes to rest against Erik’s cheekbone, and Charles says, “I’m sorry they asked you about those things. They didn’t mean anything by it, but I had thought they were smarter than that. I blame the alcohol.”

“It’s not your fault,” Erik says. “They’re just kids.”

He keeps very still, and Charles knows it’s because he doesn’t want to scare Charles into pulling away. He can feel Erik wanting to turn into the touch, to place his cheek firmly in the curve of Charles’ palm; can feel his own desire to lay down beside Erik, not even to kiss or to fuck but just to touch, like-to-like, puzzle pieces fitting into place. Charles says, “They are kids,” and Charles thinks, _but you’re not, not really._

He looks back at the lake and leaves his hand where it is, and after a moment Erik’s fingers close very gently around Charles’ wrist, like a cuff, holding him there.

“I’m glad we came back here,” Erik says. His palm is warm, sunbaked, against Charles’ skin. “Do you remember that summer?”

Charles smiles, thumb starting to stroke slow, idle lines back and forth along Erik’s cheekbone. “It wasn’t that long ago. I might be turning thirty next week, but I don’t have dementia yet.” 

“Yet.”

Charles glances back at Erik to see he’s closed his eyes again, relaxing easily in Charles’ presence, his mind a low hum of contentedness. He looks very grown-up, here and now, when Charles thinks about two years ago here at the house and the way Erik had been, jumpy and nervous at first, skinny and coltish and achingly young. Then growing bolder, more confident as he got used to the house and the quiet, until the day they’d left, and the lake.

“Do you remember when we went swimming here, that last day?” Charles asks, his touch slipping against Erik’s skin, rasping a little over faint stubble, dangerously close to his mouth. “You stripped down to your underwear and you looked … I think that was the first time I really noticed how you looked.”

Erik’s eyes open. “Really?” He sounds surprised. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize.” He manages to hold Charles’ gaze even though Charles knows he’s thinking that he wants to kiss him, pull Charles down with a hand around the back of the neck to press their lips together, to wrap themselves up in each other. Erik smiles. “I would have put on a better show, if I had.”

“That wouldn’t have had the result you’re thinking,” Charles says, not leaning in closer, but not pulling away, either. “You were so young, Erik. I suspect it had more to do with your confidence, your growing Dominance, than anything else. Even then, I was starting to feel it, though I didn’t know what it was.”

“Mmm. And now? Is it still just my Dominance?”

Charles doesn’t know what to say. To deny his attraction altogether would be a lie, and a poor one at that, but saying anything else would be to admit it, outright, that he not only loves Erik but _wants_ him, too, in a filthy and physical way. “You’ve certainly gotten cockier since then,” he says, but his thumb shifts to press against the swell of Erik’s lower lip, and Charles can’t help but stare at it, the way it dimples under his touch, inviting.

Erik’s breaths go shallow, his chest barely moving but each exhale warm against Charles’ skin, his fingers still holding Charles’ wrist but very lightly now, only-just touching him at all. It makes it easy for Charles to tug his hand away and place the flat of his fingers over Erik’s mouth, then to bend down and kiss the backs of them where they cover Erik’s lips, his hand keeping Erik from saying anything, doing anything, but staring up at Charles with hot eyes. Charles can feel that heat in his own body, flushing through him and settling in his belly, tingling in his veins and making it hard to remember what he should be doing. How he should behave.

He thinks -- can’t help but think, _Erik will be eighteen a year from now._ A year … it feels like a long time, an impossibly long time, and yet -- yet Charles has made it longer than that before, between realizing his own feelings and finally acting on them. And now … now, he and Erik both _know._ What they are -- could be -- to each other, if only nothing stood in their way.

He can’t stop thinking about it, about he and Erik all-but-together, dancing around it like stars orbiting a black hole.

“We need to go start making dinner,” Charles says after a moment, drawing back a little then getting to his feet. The heat inside him is still there, giddy and frightening, and he can’t help but wonder what on earth he’s doing. “Come on.”

He holds out a hand, and Erik takes it a bit belatedly, letting Charles pull him up to standing. Somehow it’s not better, now that they’re both standing up, Erik so much taller than Charles and still looking at him like he never wants to let him go.

“Come on,” Charles says again, tugging on Erik’s hand, and after one breath, two, three, Erik follows, walking alongside Charles back towards the house, and other people.

*

After dinner Charles goes upstairs to his own room and leaves everyone else down in the living room, playing games and watching TV; it’s been a long day, and he’s weary, the emotional ups and downs taking their toll. Looking after seven teenagers -- no, eight, Charles has to keep reminding himself that Erik is one of them -- is more work than he had quite realized.

He takes a seat in the armchair by the window, propping his feet up on the pouffe and sighing as he watches the bats flitting about in the dusky light outside, awakened from their home in the rafters of the attic -- he should probably have them moved, or exterminated, but nobody else makes use of it. They may as well. He can feel their bright, candle-flicker minds to-ing and fro-ing as they catch their supper, even if he can’t read them.

Charles has felt pretty unmoored, of late, like someone has cast him out away from shore and into foggy waters. Ever since Christmas, when he and Erik first became sexually involved with each other, things have been uncertain where before they were always clear, no matter how painful. Charles used to know that the way he felt about Erik was unequivocally wrong, that it was morally reprehensible -- and then they had sex, and Charles couldn’t decide one way or the other what to feel or to think, lurching from ecstasy to self-loathing, back and forth until he finally called it off. Then with Erik gone things were clear again: Charles was right now, he was doing right.

And then Erik came back, and now Charles doesn’t know what to think any more.

He knows how Erik feels about him, has felt the change in him and had that directed at him, for him, the very indifference to Charles’ physical self entirely overturned until now when Erik looks at him Charles can feel him _wanting_ , not sordid at all but -- entirely and utterly undermining every reason Charles had for not letting himself slip, Erik considering his options and still wanting Charles after all of that, understanding him and wanting him anyway.

Charles curls deeper into the chair, turning on his side towards the window, and tries to forget that he’s confused, that he wants more than the law says he can have, that Erik wants it too, with a fervor almost frightening. Charles can’t help but wonder if the reason Erik started feeling this way after everything that happened is because it was the one thing truly standing in his way of getting all of Charles’ love and attention, if subconsciously Erik created this feeling to overcome that barrier, the same dogged way he overcomes everything else. And yet …

And yet ...

He senses Erik coming upstairs before he hears him, and then the footsteps in the hall, the way Erik’s thoughts are directed toward Charles, not idle but pursuing a goal, giving away his intent. There’s no point in hiding; Erik will have sensed Charles’ watch, and in any case, it would be childish to avoid Erik just because Charles is having an emotional crisis. So before Erik can knock he calls, “Come in, it’s open,” sitting up properly in his armchair, though his feet stay on the pouffe.

Erik enters and pushes the door shut again behind him. Charles gestures towards the other armchair across from his. “Come sit.”

Erik crosses the room, but instead of taking the other armchair he sits on the pouffe, nudging Charles’ legs over with his hip. It puts them close and intimate, closer than Charles would have liked, Erik’s knees hitting the seat of the armchair, one pressed up against the outside of Charles’ thigh. Charles takes a breath that only shudders a little, and can’t suppress the way it starts a growing warmth in his lower belly, but he doesn’t move. He shouldn’t have to move. He should be able to just deal with being close without it affecting him.

“So,” he says.

“So.” Erik smiles a little, rocking his knee against Charles’ leg. He looks happy, in a way he hasn’t for a while. “I was thinking we could go skinny-dipping. It’s the next step, after underwear-swimming.”

“Really?” Charles asks, amused despite himself; the thought would be far more appealing, he thinks, to a younger man. Thinking about skinny dipping at nearly-thirty … the main attraction, he can’t deny, is the thought of a wet and naked Erik in the lake, skin slippery-shiny under moonlight, but Charles can’t dismiss the fact that there are other people here now who might catch them at it. “You’re not worried about the eels?”

“The eels know to fear me.”

Charles smiles, but then shakes his head, saying, “No, I think not. It’s not really warm enough yet in the lake for that -- never mind the wild eels, I’d be more concerned about my own domesticated one getting frostbite.”

Erik laughs, and there’s a warm flood of affection from him across the telepathic bond between them, tingling down Charles’ spine. “You’re always looking out for me, Charles,” he says.

“I try,” Charles says, feeling the corners of his eyes crinkling. It’s so _nice,_ , just to sit here and laugh together -- this is what Charles really wants, more than anything else. The right to just enjoy being with Erik, without worrying all the time about how far he can go and what he can and cannot say. He reaches out to clasp Erik’s knee, shaking it gently, then lets his hand rest there, either unwilling or unable to draw it back. 

For a moment Erik hesitates, the pause almost palpable between them before Erik’s gaze dips down to Charles’ hand on his knee, his mind a blur of uncertainty and want. But then Erik slips his fingers beneath Charles’, lifting his hand up and tipping forward to brush his lips against Charles’ knuckles. 

“Is this how it goes?” Erik murmurs, his eyes meeting Charles’.

Charles’ breath catches in his throat, like a lump he can’t swallow. He can’t look away, Erik’s gaze arresting, bright and intense; the feeling of his mouth was soft, dry, and Charles wants, deeply and viscerally, to take what Erik is offering.

“I don’t know,” he says, letting Erik keep hold of his hand, not pulling away. “Maybe you should try it again and see.”

The corner of Erik’s lips curves up and he obeys, lingering this time, thumb skimming the backs of Charles’ fingers as he presses his mouth to Charles’ knuckles, slightly parted this time, enough that Charles feels the moist inner surface of his lip touching against Charles’ skin, sleek. The gesture is so old-fashioned, and yet when Erik does it, it feels brand new, erotic in its own right, like a promise, a momentary glimpse of forbidden fruit.

Charles wants, and wants, and wants, and finally he says, “I still can’t sleep with you, Erik. I’m sorry.”

“These past two nights meant nothing to you, then? I’m afraid that ship has sailed.”

Erik grins and doesn’t release Charles’ hand, though he lifts his head, gaze intensifying even further, until Charles isn’t sure he could look away even if someone else came in the room.

“You know what I mean,” he says quietly, squeezing Erik’s hand where it supports his own. “Erik, I love you. You know that, there’s no point my trying to hide it any longer. It’s not fair to you to keep you hanging like this, though -- it’s like we’re playing at having a relationship, without ever having one, and I don’t want you to wait to see if I change my mind. If I thought it would be satisfying to you to have a -- an _all-but_ relationship, I would offer you that, because I think that’s where we’re living already. But it wouldn’t be fair of me.” He wills Erik to understand, his heart racing, wishing he could make Erik see what he means without imposing it upon him. “I don’t want to lead you on.” 

Erik makes a soft noise and shakes his head. “You never do listen, do you,” he says when his gaze meets Charles’ again. “All I want is you. I don’t need you to sleep with me. I don’t need or want you to do anything that will make you unhappy. I want as much as you will give me, however much that is.”

Charles’ mouth purses unhappily. “I don’t think you’re really following what I mean. This would be -- if we were -- like that, then you couldn’t keep sleeping with Frank. Or anyone else. That’s what I mean by it being unfair. You’ve finally learnt to enjoy sex, and I wouldn’t be able to stomach it if you were having it with other people, but you wouldn’t be having it with me, either.” He pauses, letting out a shaky breath. “I don’t even know why I’m talking about this, this is … stupid, it’s such a selfish thought.”

Erik is quiet, his wrist resting on his knee, Charles’ hand still draped over Erik’s and his fingertips grazing Erik’s thigh. It’s not fair, that Erik can look this calm when Charles is so unsteady inside.

“I’ll be eighteen this time next year,” Erik says at last, very slowly, as if he’s choosing his words carefully.

Charles’ heart stumbles in his chest just hearing it said out loud, so close to the whisper in the back of his own thoughts. “I know,” he says, looking down at their joined hands. “And -- I think it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that that fact hasn’t crossed my mind. I think we both … we both know that things might be different then.”

Erik’s grasp tightens slightly and he leans in just a little closer, bit by bit eliminating the distance between them. “A year’s not so long to wait.”

“If I were to offer … ” Charles starts, pauses, unable to decide whether he’s doing the wrong thing or not -- whether this is a disaster in the making. But finally he thinks -- this is something that is going to happen anyway. It’s been in the wind for weeks now, growing again between them -- better to harness it and keep control than to lose it entirely. His breath feels stuck high in his throat as he says, tentatively, “What if we tried it like this -- a chaste relationship, for now. We would be together, but without having sex. And if you meet someone else, in that time -- if you realize this is not what you want -- then we can end it without hard feelings.” His heart pounds in his chest like a hammer being taken to his ribcage, a ringing sound in Charles’ ears like it’s beating on metal. “What do you think?” 

Erik’s smile is slow but real, spreading across his face as he leans in and kisses Charles on the cheek, one hand braced against Charles’ knee. “I think that’s perfect,” he says.

“Really?” Charles asks, turning his head just enough that his nose brushes against Erik’s, too close to focus on his face, his lips almost touching Erik’s as he speaks. “I don’t want you to feel … trapped, or like you’re not getting what you want, what you need. I don’t want you to resent me for it in a few months’ time.” What Charles wants is to have Erik but not to feel guilty, to have his cake and eat it too, but he knows too that he’s selfish enough to take advantage of Erik’s feelings for him, if he’s not careful.

“It’s only a year, Charles,” Erik says.

“We’ve only known each other for three and a half years, and yet it feels like forever,” Charles counters, letting his free hand come to rest on the side of Erik’s face, cradling it. “Erik, this is never going to be simple and I’m probably -- I shouldn’t be suggesting this at all, if I were a model citizen. Forgive me if I want to be sure I’m not doing something awful to you that’s going to end up with you in even more therapy a few years down the line.”

“How much difference do you think it really makes? We’ve already had sex. We both know how the other feels. I just don’t see the point in pretending either of us would be happy with anyone else.” Erik really believes what he’s saying -- that much is clear, even if Charles can’t help thinking he’s far too young to know if he’ll ever want anyone besides Charles. His brow comes to rest against Charles’, a warm press of skin on skin. “I tried to walk away from this once already. It didn’t work.”

A fine tremor runs through Charles’ body, a tenuous shiver, like being brushed by a warm breeze, the hairs on his skin standing on end. “All right, then,” he says finally, swallowing his heart, and angles in to press a kiss to Erik’s mouth.

It’s chaste at first, just a gentle brush of lips; then Charles pushes forward a little more, and Erik parts his lips and kisses back. The kiss deepens, Charles running his tongue over Erik’s teeth and stroking Erik’s own tongue; Charles pulls his leg back towards himself so he can place it on the floor on the other side of Erik’s body, then shifts forward a little in the armchair, closer, making space for Erik. _I love you,_ he thinks as he curls his fingers into Erik’s hair, as Erik’s hands shift to Charles’ sides, resting there, tentative, testing the boundaries. _Very much._

Erik makes a soft sound against Charles’ mouth and finally relaxes into the kiss, his hands smoothing lower down Charles’ sides, nearer his hips. 

_How far is too far?_ he asks, teeth catching Charles’ lower lip.

 _I don’t know,_ Charles says, distracted, his breath hitching at the minute pain of it, pleasurable and sharp. _No hands touching below the waist, no frottage, no nudity?_ His body is definitely disinterested in following the rules; he can feel himself starting to get hard, his cock twitching in his pants. He tugs himself loose of Erik’s teeth, gasping a little for air. “I think common sense should draw most lines -- if its only purpose is to arouse, then it’s off the table. No point torturing ourselves.”

“Mmm. You mean I won’t get to see this body of yours?” Erik says, thumb pressing in below one of Charles’ ribs. “That would be a disappointment.”

“It’s probably a bad idea,” Charles says, trying to relax, not to get worked up and break his own rules already. “If you just -- walk in on me, or the reverse, and it’s not on purpose, that’s one thing. But general nakedness would be … it’s too easy to cross boundaries.”

“What if I want to dress you? Or to bathe you?”

“I … ” Charles draws in a slow breath, lets it out. “That would be okay.”

Erik’s fingers drag down Charles’ mouth, the pad of his forefinger catching at Charles’ wet lip. “And. Do I get to Dom you?” he asks.

The very thought of it makes Charles’ insides clench, and he wants to suck on the tip of Erik’s finger, wants to do a million and one things he himself has just ruled off the table. “If you want,” he says, raspily, opening his eyes, and Erik takes in a shallow breath, Charles’ arousal mirrored in the flush to Erik’s cheeks.

“Tonight,” Erik says, catching Charles’ jaw in his grasp, holding him in place, close enough their lips nearly brush. “After everyone else is asleep.”

“All right,” Charles says, and closes his eyes, giving in.

*

That evening Erik orders Charles to kneel in the middle of the bedroom floor, putting him through the same series of postures Charles intentionally flubbed last fall, the ones that gave him away. This time Charles does them perfectly, lets himself sink into them, until he loses all sense of time and place, only his awareness of Erik in control remaining, the warm sensation of being taken care of.

Erik bathes him, washing his bare skin with careful hands, and when the shower water runs cold he bundles him up in a thick towel and leads him back to the bed, Charles heavy-lidded and languid, letting himself be guided up onto the mattress to lie down on his side, hands curled up near his face as Erik climbs up beside him. He thinks his affection like a cloud, soft and clinging, and Erik draws the duvet over them both, draws Charles into his arms, and holds him until they both fall asleep.

It’s perfect.


	34. Thirty-four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter
> 
> Also, check out this freaking fantastic art that Dri did for us, for that scene from the last chapter, by the lake: http://i.imgur.com/gBqnaaG.jpg 
> 
> Isn't she amazing? Go let her know how awesome she is at drisrt.tumblr.com :)

_Erik_

Erik opens his eyes the next morning to find Charles watching him, lying there with his hand still on Erik’s hip and his eyes open, gazing at Erik’s face. Erik blinks the blurriness from his vision and the image comes in clearer, the softness of Charles’ features in early morning daylight and his pale irises roving from Erik’s eyes, to his mouth, to his brow, and back again.

“Hmm,” Erik says, sliding his touch up from Charles’ hand, past his wrist and toward his elbow. “How long have you been awake?”

“A little while,” Charles says quietly, a small, soft quirk at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t worry, it’s not late. I woke up early for once.” His head is still on his pillow, body relaxed, and Erik wonders if he’s just been lying there, watching him sleep, the whole time.

“Are pigs flying, too?” Erik dips his hand down past Charles’ arm to touch his belly instead, pushing up the hem of his t-shirt to feel warm skin quivering beneath his fingertips. It still almost doesn’t seem real. 

Charles makes a pleased sound, his eyelids drooping a little.

“You could always go look, but you’d have to get out of bed to go to the window,” he says, his hand slipping from Erik’s hip and hooking properly over his waist. “Good morning, by the way.”

Erik makes a meaningless noise in response and tilts his head forward to kiss him. Charles’ legs shift under the covers and bump up against Erik’s, his toes cold against Erik’s ankles; Erik means to keep the kiss brief but he gets distracted once he’s there, chasing after just one more moment of Charles’ lips, and Charles lets him, yielding even as he presses forward, drawing Erik against him and kissing him deeply.

Erik had forgotten quite how good a kisser Charles is.

Charles moans, tugging Erik closer -- and he goes with it when Erik wraps an arm around his waist and turns onto his back, pulling Charles half on top of him. Charles is heavy, solid, tugging on Erik’s lower lip and sighing in a _really_ affecting way. 

“Mmm.” Erik tries to blot all thoughts of sex from his mind, but it’s difficult when Charles is … like this, warm and alive and a little bit hard against Erik’s hip. “Your breath is terrible,” Erik says when their lips part, mouth quirking up, and Charles rolls his eyes.

“What do you expect, first thing in the morning?”

“Someone should invent overnight breath mints.” Erik hooks his leg around Charles’ thigh.

“Now there’s a million dollar idea,” Charles says, smiling down at Erik and propping his head on his hand, elbow planted on the bed beside Erik’s shoulder; then he blinks and looks sharply towards the corridor, right before there’s an audible if distant sound of knocking -- at Erik’s bedroom door, on the other side of the adjoining bathroom.

“Shit,” Charles says, jolting as if he’s been shocked and rolling off Erik and over to the side, dishevelled and a bit wide-eyed. “Alex is at your bedroom door.” 

“What the fuck does he want?” Erik hisses, but a second later, when the knock comes again, decides that question’s better-directed at the boy himself. He gives Charles another look and says, “Wait here,” kicking back the covers and swinging his legs out of bed. 

At least thinking about Alex has lost him his arousal, though he notices as he walks through the adjoining bathroom that his pink cheeks and tousled hair give him away even if the front placket of his boxer shorts is flat. There’s no time to unmake his bed, either, so he just pauses behind the closed door to comb his fingers back through his hair, forcing it into a semblance of order and trying hard not to think about Charles, sitting up in the bed in the other room, watching, as he opens the door.

“What?” 

Alex is standing there with arms crossed, his expression almost as dark as it was the night before; he looks Erik up and down before saying, rather crossly, “Sorry to wake you. I wanted to talk to you.”

Erik doesn’t speak, just looks at him with lips pressed together, having long since learned from Charles and Shaw’s very divergent examples how remaining silent is often the best strategy for letting someone dig their own grave.

“Look,” Alex says, his chin jerking upwards, defiant. “I don’t like you, and you don’t like me. But I figure, I apologize for my behavior, and we’re square. Okay? I apologize. Dr X has been good for me, shouldn’t be surprising he’s good for you. So. Are we cool?” 

It’s … not what Erik had been expecting. He resists the urge to look to his left, to catch Charles’ eye across the bathroom, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on Alex’s. “Sure,” he says after a second, though the old, suspicious part of him can’t help wondering if this is a trap.

“Okay. Fine. See you at breakfast.” Alex turns and walks away, rigid-backed and still angry-looking, somehow, as if it’s a part of him he hasn’t managed to dig out. 

Erik closes the door, slowly enough that he can hear the latch as it clicks into place, and lingers there a second before he finally turns and crosses back into Charles’ room, where Charles is sitting up in bed, his expression distant, as if he’s thinking something through. Erik stands at the foot of the bed and folds his arms over his chest, waiting, but when Charles doesn’t say anything he finally prods, “So?”

Charles looks up, his frown softening. “Oh,” he says. “Well. That was unexpected. Good, of course.” He shrugs. “Clearly the chat I had with him yesterday had an impact.”

Erik lifts his eyebrows. “I don’t need you to make friends for me.”

“Nothing of the sort. I merely pointed out to him that he was doing the same to you as he was complaining is done to him, and that he knows nothing about you or your life. Alex isn’t a bad person, he’s just … headstrong. Rash.”

“Ah.” It’s the kind of thing people usually say about teenage Dominants in movies and TV shows, but Erik’s never heard it applied in real life before. Not that he’s particularly invested in Alex, or what Alex thinks. “I’m going to go get started making breakfast,” he says after a moment. “Any special requests?”

“Pancakes, perhaps?” Charles pushes back the covers to swing his legs out of the bed, getting to his feet. “Though perhaps you’d better dress first,” he adds, and smiles a little, almost shyly. He comes to stand by Erik for a moment before squeezing his hand, once, and walking off into the bathroom. It’s sweet, Erik thinks, then wonders at the thought, because it’s not the sort of thing he’d usually think himself -- not about anyone. He’s half-tempted to follow Charles off into the bathroom and be a thorn in his side, making conversation while Charles tries to take a piss and brush his teeth, but. Plenty of time for talking later, when Charles won’t be annoyed with him for it.

After Erik’s changed into something more suitable for the public eye and handled his toiletries, he heads downstairs to make good on his promise. One of the Rogers -- the name Erik’s taken to calling the agents, since he can’t be assed to remember their real ones -- is already down in the kitchen and has brewed a pot of coffee. Burned it, too, from the taste, but Erik’s not complaining, sipping from his second mug of the stuff and finishing up breakfast as the group finally trickles downstairs in pairs and trios, Jean, Kitty and Anna-Marie first, then Alex and Armando, closely followed by Bobby and Warren.

“Foooooood,” Bobby groans, lurching around the others and over to the kitchen island to flop onto a seat, Warren coming in after him and going to fetch glasses. “Erik, you are a saint. Are those weird pancakes?”

“Help yourself,” Erik says, gesturing with the spatula to the growing pile of thin European-style pancakes. “There’s fresh fruit, butter, and syrup in the fridge. Honey is … somewhere. If you want savory, you’ll have to ask.”

Bobby gets up and shambles to the fridge, taking out the bottle of syrup and bringing it back to the table, stabbing at the pile of pancakes and dragging some over to his own plate. “Thanks.”

“Juice?” Kitty asks, and offers Erik a glass, which Erik accepts -- the better with which to wash down the acidic taste of the Rogers’ coffee imposter.

He makes crepes filled with sautéed kale, green onion, and a glistening over-easy egg for himself and Charles, dusting a pinch each of freshly-ground pepper and sea salt over the exposed golden domes of the eggs and carrying the last plates over to the table just as Charles arrives in jeans, a button-down and one of his old-man cardigans, smiling at them all, the rest of the teens already arrived and eating with the dogged determination of the growing.

“Good morning,” Charles says, taking his seat at his plate. “Erik, this looks lovely, thank you. Did everyone sleep well, or perhaps I should ask _if_ you slept?”

“Yes, Dad.” Erik maintains the fiction of it with an exasperated roll of his eyes, though he can’t help the way his gaze automatically darts back to Charles just afterward, not quite able to look away -- or, indeed, to stop thinking about how not an hour earlier he’d seen Charles without all these trappings of adulthood, curled up in bed with him, the two of them cozy in their own world, the one place where they can actually be equals.

“Yeah,” a couple of the others manage around their breakfasts, and Jean says, “How did you sleep, Dr Xavier?”, all bright-eyed cheery enthusiasm.

“Very well, thank you Jean,” Charles says, picking up his knife and fork to start on his pancakes. “Erik, come sit down, you’ve worked hard enough already this morning. It’s far too early for the feeding of the five thousand.” 

“The what?” Erik says, taking the empty seat just next to Charles and bringing a fresh cup of coffee with him. “I don’t understand half of your pop culture references, I really don’t.”

Jean laughs, but it’s not unkind. “It’s from the bible,” she says. “Jesus feeds five thousand people with just five loaves of bread and two fish. It’s a miracle.”

“Oh,” Erik says, and then after a moment, in an attempt to offset his own ignorance, he adds, “Seems like that would violate the laws of physics.”

“It would,” Charles says, smiling at Erik, “but since Jesus is canonically the son of God, he can determine how physics works for himself, or so it would seem. In any case, eat your hard-earned breakfast, Erik.” He looks around at the others. “Once we’ve eaten I’ll go over today’s schedule with you all, especially since it’s our last day here, but for now, I’m starving.”

Erik looks down at his plate, the sunny yolk of his egg smiling up at him and Charles’ knee pressed against his thigh under the table, warm and solid, and eats.

*

_Charles_

After breakfast the kids scatter to pack up their things for later, leaving Charles to clean up after them -- something he doesn’t mind, not really. He’s used to doing the clean-up at home since Erik is the one who usually cooks, and so he potters around the kitchen gathering plates and cups to go into the dishwasher, distracted by the memory of waking up so warm this morning, inside and out. This new thing with Erik … it might be a bad idea, might be the start of a slippery slope. But Charles can’t help but feel good about it, anyway, better than he has in a long time.

He’s gathering together the pans Erik used to make the pancakes when he feels another mind approaching, and he half-turns to see Agent Reyes pausing in the doorway, watching him clean up. “Good morning, Agent,” Charles says. “Coffee?”

“No, thank you,” she says, staying where she is, one slim shoulder pressed against the door frame. “It makes me jittery. I wouldn’t mind a glass of water, though.”

“Sure.” Charles fetches a glass from the cupboard and fills it from the cooled filter jug in the fridge, then takes it over to her, holding it out for her to take, his fingers slipping a little in the condensation. “There. Now, did you need something?” She feels purposeful, and purposeful in Charles’ own direction, something Charles has long since learned to pay attention to. “Anything I can help with?”

“Mmm.” She takes a sip of her water and crosses her arms, glass held against one elbow. “I saw you and Erik coming up from the lake yesterday.”

Oh. Charles feels the words like a hook in his gut, an immediate worry springing into his mind. Was there anything she shouldn’t have seen, anything they shouldn’t have been doing? He manages to keep from flinching, but he knows his expression has shifted towards the defensive so Charles deliberately tips it further towards confusion, looking in her mind to see if there _was_ anything damning. “Yes,” is all he says, frowning. “Erik had needed a bit of space, and I went down to check on him.”

Reyes holds his gaze, her expression placid. “It’s difficult for Collins and me to protect you if we don’t know where you are. You should bring an agent with you next time.”

She’s probably right, but it’s a hard pill to swallow. “I was under the impression that the grounds were under surveillance, so inside was safe,” Charles says. “I apologize, clearly I misunderstood. It won’t happen again.”

He dips into Agent Reyes’ mind to get a feel for what she’s thinking, and is relieved to find that she isn’t thinking about anything incriminating, thank God -- all she saw was a man and a teenager walking back from the garden, side-by-side, nothing that made her wonder about them or want to ask questions. It’s difficult to relax now, though, Charles’ body already keyed up for fight or flight, waiting to get called out on his hypocrisy in getting involved with Erik all over again, sex-free or no.

He wonders if this is what things will be like for the next however many weeks while they’re still being guarded -- having to have eyes on them at all times, unable to do anything even vaguely affectionate for fear of overstepping. If it had seemed oppressive before, it seems doubly so now that he has something to hide. Especially given how bad he and Erik are at staying within reasonable boundaries.

“Thank you for understanding,” Reyes says, her arms untwining and her weight shifting back onto two feet, her expression shifting into a polite smile. “I can’t say I’m surprised Erik went down by himself, of course. Perhaps in the future you can remind him why we’re here.”

Charles smiles back, the emotion only a little artificial. “I’ll try, but getting Erik to accept things he dislikes is a skill I’m only a little better at now than I was when he first came to live with me. You’ll have better luck persuading the tide to go out.” 

“Perhaps so. I remember being that age. Always thought I knew best, and that no one over the age of thirty remembered what it felt like being young. He’ll learn.”

Charles winces, and turns back to the sink and his gathered pans, starting the water running hot and squirting some dish soap in with them. “Hopefully not the hard way,” he says, picking up the sponge. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll admit, I’m not thrilled to have constant supervision either, but I do understand the reasoning behind it.”

“Thank you, Charles,” Reyes says, and behind him he hears the sound of her shoes on the hardwood floor, retreating down the hallway and deeper into the house. The water is frothy with bubbles now, and he concentrates on cleaning the dishes instead of the rapidfire beat of his heart in his chest, fear ratcheting through him at the thought -- if she had followed them down there, if Charles hadn’t been paying attention …

Of course, there’s little to no chance of Charles ever failing to notice someone’s presence like that, other than someone he’s very familiar with indeed; it’s not something that should worry him, and yet thinking about the way he had kissed his own fingers over Erik’s mouth, the energy between them, that they were outside where anyone could see them … they need to be more careful.

He finishes cleaning up with a furious kind of energy, his hand curled tightly around the sponge to keep it from shaking, and then wipes up his hands to go and find a student to train.

*

After the talk with Reyes, the last day goes by so quickly that when the time comes Charles can hardly believe that it’s already over. And yet, soon enough they’re at the mutant center dropping the others off, the van rental man comes to pick up the minibus -- and then it’s just Charles and Erik, home again, letting themselves into the apartment with their bags slung over shoulders, the stomach-warming tension of being alone together twisting inside Charles, his skin hyperaware and waiting to be touched, for Erik to reach out.

Alone, that is, except for the government agents who are still following them around, Reyes and Collins bringing in their own bags to take up to the guest bedroom where they will be staying for the foreseeable future.

It’s doubly frustrating now, far more so even than when they first arrived, something Charles hadn’t thought possible; but here they are, and the effect is even further magnified, Charles feeling as if he’s walking on eggshells in his own home, trying not to look at Erik too obviously and watching himself more carefully even than he was before. Now that there’s something for them to see.

“We need to be careful,” he murmurs to Erik when they’re upstairs together in his walk-in closet, ostensibly hanging up the clothes from the trip that didn’t need washing, though Charles has a button-down held loose and forgotten in one hand, the other hand resting against Erik’s waist. “They’re trained observers. Maybe we should put … everything … on hold until they leave.”

“I don’t know how much difference that will make,” Erik says. He gazes down at Charles, head tilted slightly to manage it, all his weight shifted onto one foot so he’s leaning into Charles’ hand. “Can’t you use your power to hide us from them?”

Charles shakes his head, letting out a short breath. “I don’t like messing with people’s minds if I don’t have to.”

“Well, it’s your decision,” Erik says. “You have more to lose.”

It’s -- well, Erik’s not wrong, but Charles doesn’t want to have to make this decision, so he shakes out the shirt and reaches for a hanger, slipping it back into place amongst its brethren on the rail. It’s not a difficult decision, not really, though it’s one he’s afraid he’ll regret. “We’ll just … be careful,” he says finally, unable to swallow the thought of having given in and accepted the _thing_ between them and yet being unable to do anything about it, of having spent weeks doubting and wondering and worrying about it only to be stymied at the last hurdle. “We’ll … well, you’re trained in espionage. I’m sure we’ll manage.”

Erik cracks a grin. “That’s right. I’ll protect you,” he says, and darts forward to press a tiny kiss to Charles’ temple. Charles sends him a waft of mental affection before he’s even thought about it, reflexive, and touches Erik’s arm, strokes down his forearm to his hand, squeezing it for a moment before simply holding it.

“My hero,” he says, his tone dry. Nonetheless he’s smiling just a little bit, too, can’t help it, the relief of not having to restrain himself all the time like flinging off thick layers after winter, the spring sunshine finally reaching his skin.

They go downstairs not long after -- they can’t hide in Charles’ room for too long, though Charles would far rather stay in his closet, kissing amongst his jackets and pants, leaning up against the racks of his dress shoes. Erik immediately gravitates towards his Macbook, settling on the couch and opening the lid to wake it.

“Charles,” Erik says after a few minutes in a low tone. His gaze flicks between Charles and the agent who is sitting in the far armchair, reading the newspaper; there’s something about the timbre of his voice that catches Charles’ attention immediately, a tautness to it that can’t be ignored. “Will you come here for a moment?”

“Sure,” Charles says, and walks over from where he’s been listening to the answering machine to come sit beside Erik, leaning in towards his laptop. “What is it?” he asks, hiding his concern and keeping his own voice light.

Erik slides the laptop over so it’s half in Charles’ lap and lets Charles read the message that’s on the screen.

>   
> **From: swineherd@mixmaster.com  
>  To: magneto@mixmaster.com  
>  Subject: are you busy this weekend?**
> 
> I haven’t heard from you so thought I’d check in since I know we were trying to make plans to meet up. I have other friends who do want to hang out with me, you know -- I can make alternative arrangements if you’re not around. Let me know and we’ll get something in the diary.
> 
> sh

It takes Charles a moment to put two-and-two together, the body of the email so innocuous -- then he checks the sender, and pauses for a long moment, trying to decide what to say.

“If you want to go out this weekend, you don’t need my permission, you’re old enough now,” he says, trying for casual. Inside he’s feeling rather more concerned, his fears about meeting up with someone as clearly dodgy as this person swineherd coming back with a vengeance.

“I thought as much,” Erik says, meeting Charles’ gaze out of the corner of his eye. “I’ll let him know, then. I think Friday.”

Charles just nods, deciding it better to keep his mouth shut for now and decide what to say later, once he’s had time to think it through. He knows Erik can tell Charles is still worried about it -- Erik is determined to go all the same, though, that much is obvious from his mind as well as the firm set of his mouth and the quick tap of his fingers on the keys as he works out his reply.

“Just make sure you’ve got everything you need,” Charles says finally. He forces himself to relax into the couch, as if it’s no big deal. “You don’t want to be underprepared.”

“Thanks for the tip. I know you have personal expertise in this area.”

Charles shrugs at the sarcasm and smacks Erik gently in the arm with the backs of his fingers, rolling his eyes. “I worry about you. So sue me.” 

He thinks about getting up, going to fetch a drink, check his own emails, retrieve his book from his bag upstairs -- but he wants to read Erik’s reply before he sends it, and so he waits as Erik finishes typing, taking the laptop wordlessly when Erik offers it to him.

>   
> **From: magneto@mixmaster.com  
>  To: swineherd@mixmaster.com  
>  Subject: RE: are you busy this weekend?**
> 
> Friday at 9 pm. Usual rules of engagement apply. I’ll email you the location at 8:30 Friday. That should give you plenty of time to get to where we’re going if you’re starting from Midtown.
> 
> E

Charles hands the laptop back and Erik hits ‘send’, the email vanishing off into the ether.

“All right, no turning back now,” Charles says, and tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his gut saying that this is a bad idea.

*

By the time Friday comes around Charles is even more certain that it’s a bad idea; in contrast, however, Erik has only become more focused, concentrating on thinking of everything that could possibly happen and planning for it, until he has plans layered on plans, until he’s certain he can deal with any eventuality. Charles wishes he could be that sure, because right now he’s trying to convince himself not to knock Erik out and just pretend that they’ve already been when Erik eventually wakes up.

“We could still stand him up,” he says as Erik pulls on his hoodie in the front hallway.

“To what end?” Erik asks, zipping up the front with a sharp motion of his hand. “We need to know about Solomon. We need to know what Creed is up to. And we need to know if Frank’s really who he says he is. This is the only way I can think of to accomplish all three directives in one go.” 

He holds out his hand and Charles’ cell phone zips out of his pocket, into Erik’s grasp, where Erik flips the switch to turn it to silent mode. 

“In a movie this is always where I would be yelling at the protagonists not to be so stupid and to let the cops take care of it, that’s all,” Charles says. “Which is ironic, given I’m actively shielding us from the agents who are supposed to be watching over us.” And leaving them convinced Charles and Erik are watching TV in the den, with the strong inclination to leave them entirely alone all evening. “I’m really not sure this is something we should be doing ourselves.”

Erik hands Charles’ phone back to him, and then points his forefinger at Charles, bumping the tip of it into his chest. “Omega-class telepath.” He points to himself. “Also omega-class. We can handle it.”

“That’s what someone in a movie would say,” Charles says. He can feel his mouth turning down hard at the corners, but he slips his phone into his pocket anyway, letting out a silent sigh and finally reaching for his own jacket, shrugging into it with short, sharp motions.

“Stay out of sight when we get there,” Erik says. “Use your power to make him not see you -- and read his mind. Make sure he isn’t planning anything I should know about. Get as much information as you can from him … and there should be quite a bit of that, considering his main source of income. Anything about Solomon, and anything about what Hellfire might be planning.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to grandstand, let him know I’m there?” Charles asks, and heads for the front door -- no point in delaying if they are going, and it seems they are, no matter how much he wishes they weren’t. He’s under no illusions that swineherd won’t recognize him, and all the better, frankly, if Charles can scare the bastard into compliance through simply showing himself. “By the sounds of it he’s risk-averse. Wouldn’t it help keep him from screwing you over if he had me to worry about?”

“You should be able to read it in his thoughts if he has any plans like that,” Erik says. “No, if he knows you’re there he’s just as likely to call the whole thing off. He doesn’t trust you. And why should he? It’s no secret what you think of all this.” The door swings open and Erik heads out ahead of Charles, his hands tucked into his jeans, glancing back over his shoulder as he says, “Better if you’re the secret weapon.”

Charles has nothing to say to that. They walk to the subway in silence, shoulders knocking together, and when he sits down next to Erik he appreciates in a deep way the familiar press of his body against his, feeling it when Erik shifts in his seat or crosses his legs. He can hear Erik thinking that the train’s too crowded to risk reaching for Charles’ hand, although he wants to, desperately, with a keen desire made worse by knowing he can’t. But at least by now, they’re both used to being denied what they want.

“He’s probably already here, making sure I haven’t hidden bombs in the bathrooms,” Erik says when they get off the train at the other end and head towards the taco restaurant in Chelsea where they’ll be meeting swineherd. On these streets it’s quiet enough that they won’t be overheard at this time of night, nobody paying them the least bit of attention -- thank God. Charles is wound up enough without adding that to his list. “He won’t show himself until time, but you should shield yourself now.” 

“It’s fine, he won’t see me.”

Charles casts his attention forward, searching in people’s minds for the smell of frying meat. Once he’s found it, in the thoughts of a young couple waiting for their takeout order, he uses that as a locus point to try and find swineherd himself, searching the thoughts nearby until he finds someone concentrating harder on having his back to the wall than on his food.

“He’s over there,” Charles says, looking sidelong at Erik, “being annoyed at you and shopping for computer hardware.” He points toward the restaurant window at a slouching figure half-hidden behind a fake plant, hands moving swiftly across a laptop keyboard. “He’s a thoroughly mercenary individual, isn’t he?”

“Seems to be,” Erik says. Charles can feel Erik’s pleasure at the display of Charles’ skill -- how much easier this is, Erik thinks, with him here, Charles’ telepathy putting them a step ahead already. He leans in against Charles, smiling at him, and says, “One day he’ll make the mistake of crossing me and I’ll have an excuse to fry that damn laptop. He takes it everywhere.”

Charles huffs, masking their presence even as they get close enough to look directly in through the window, the shop busy with the evening’s trade. Swineherd’s table is the only one with any spare seats. Charles stares at him for a long moment, taking in the bland, medium appearance of the man -- medium colored, medium height, medium build, like a factory-designed average human being, popped perfectly out of the mold. He can’t help but wonder if the man was born like this, or if he had surgery to make himself this bland-looking.

“Can you keep me out of sight a little while longer?” Erik asks, breaking into Charles’ concentration; he’s frowning up at the restaurant, the menu prominently displayed in one of the windows. “I want to buy a taco first, and I’d rather not give him the element of surprise.” 

“Honestly, Erik, now is really not the time to be thinking with your stomach!”

“Don’t be a wet blanket.” Erik nudges him with his elbow. “You should never go on a mission on an empty stomach. Come on, keep me in the lifestyle to which I am accustomed.”

Charles sighs and takes out his wallet, handing a five dollar bill to Erik as he heads for the restaurant door, pushing it open and muting the ring of the bell from swineherd’s awareness. Erik places his order, and they stand off to the side to wait, shoulder-to-shoulder, Charles’ eyes still fixed on swineherd and his laptop. “He’s working for someone,” he says. “Swineherd, I mean. Someone suggested he speak to you about the location.”

“That’s not surprising,” Erik says. “The question is, who?” 

Charles frowns, focusing. “Someone called Caliban. They’ve never met in person, by the looks of things; there’s no face attached to the name. Do you know him?”

“Never heard of him.” Swineherd lifts his head, looking out the window, presumably for Erik, then back down at his laptop screen again. “What are his intentions for me tonight?”

“Nothing other than following you to the safehouse,” Charles says, shifting from foot to foot before finally giving up on being patient. “Looks as safe as it’s going to be to me. Are you going to make him wait while you eat?”

“Tempting,” Erik says, “but no.” His order is ready now, called out over the speaker, and he slides off the stool to go and pick it up, peeling back the foil to take a bite. “I’ll try to ask a lot of leading questions so he thinks useful answers. Just get as much from his mind as you can.” His mouth is full as he turns toward Charles again, putting his back to swineherd and blocking the two of them off from the rest of the world. “You stay here once we leave; we won’t be going far.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, I’m coming with you,” Charles says. He folds his arms across his chest and frowns at Erik, then gets even more frustrated that it just makes Erik fond, as if Erik doesn’t recognize the danger here at all, utterly insensible to how stupid this whole thing is. “I’m not waiting for you like a puppy you’ve tied to the lamppost.”

“Are you sure?” Erik asks, raising an eyebrow, challenging. “It’s illegal, you know.”

Charles rolls his eyes. “For God’s sake, Erik, I’m here, aren’t I? Someone has to keep you from doing something even more bloody stupid.”

“As you wish,” Erik says, and he tilts his head in swineherd’s direction.

They edge their way across the room, albeit slowly -- the restaurant’s crowded now, close to closing hour, plenty of people stuffed in elbow to elbow. Plenty of witnesses, if it comes down to it, either for them or against them. Charles maintains the invisibility until they’re almost at the table, then finally drops it from over Erik, keeping himself imperceptible, muted. He knows why it makes sense, but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to make a point, nonetheless -- and yet he stays hidden, can’t quite persuade himself to ignore Erik’s advice. Erik, after all, is the one who knows what he’s doing here tonight.

*

_Erik_

It’s a unique sort of experience, to be standing behind swineherd, just out of sight -- knowing that swineherd could turn and see him, but not before Erik could draw a knife and slit his throat, spilling his blood in a hot ferrous flood onto the tiled floor. It’s been a long time since Erik’s been in any position of power over someone Hellfire-affiliated. It feels … good, a bone-deep satisfaction the likes of which he hasn’t had since he was six and bit down on some Dom’s dick. A bit violent, but revenge usually is.

“Hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” Erik says at last, breaking the silence.

“There are always things to be doing,” swineherd says, flicking from whatever email server he’d been looking at onto Google, innocuous and bland, before twisting in his seat to reveal his usual expression of mild disgruntlement, which deepens when he sees the taco. “Seriously, you’re carbing up before our walk? How far are we going?”

“You’ll find out, won’t you?” Erik smiles mildly at him and takes another bite of his taco, gesturing toward the door. “Shall we?”

It’s hard not to look at Charles, visible out of his peripheral vision, and Charles must hear him being distracted, because after a moment Charles vanishes, like he’s just -- stopped existing altogether. His sudden absence unsettles something deep in Erik’s stomach, even if he knows Charles is still there; it might be less distracting, but now Erik really does feel alone here.

Swineherd gets to his feet, slipping his laptop into his bag and slinging his bag strap over his shoulder. “Let’s,” he says, and follows Erik out of the restaurant onto the street.

The safehouse is in an apartment building only three blocks away. Erik chose the taco restaurant because it’s one of the only places in the area he’s familiar with; Janos Quested discovered it after a meeting with the Boston cell and took Erik and Harry Leland down for late-night tacos, spicy and juicy, unlike anything Erik’d ever tried before. They’re just as good as Erik remembers; he’s finished his taco two blocks in, balling up the aluminum foil in his fist and throwing it toward a trash can as they walk past. He misses, but his power snags the foil before it can hit the sidewalk and redirects it into the bin properly. 

“So,” Erik says, tucking his hands into his pockets, “this contact of yours. I’m interested in meeting him.”

Swineherd shrugs. “He’s not interested in meeting you.”

“He wants to use my safehouse, he’ll have to keep me involved. It won’t do him much good on its own.” Erik bites back the smirk that threatens to overtake his expression and turns his gaze down toward his own feet, his shoes striding in tandem rhythm with swineherd’s black Doc Martens.

“Because?”

“DNA verification. Unless you have plenty of Hellfire officers in your back pocket, no one’s getting in without me there.”

“You’re fucking with me,” swineherd says, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk; when Erik turns to face him swineherd is scowling, his arms crossed over his chest and eyes sparking. “You couldn’t have mentioned this earlier? It’s a bit of a fucking dealbreaker, dipshit.”

Erik lifts one shoulder, drops it again. “I told you when you asked. I said you won’t get in there without me. It’s not my problem if you want Hellfire security but have no idea what that means. Guess your information was bad, after all.”

“Fucking great,” swineherd mutters, and starts walking again, adjusting the strap of his bag on his shoulder, hunched against the wind. “Come on then, might as well take a look so I can report back.” He’s the very image of frustration, and Erik falls in step next to him again, wondering where Charles is now -- behind them? In front of them? If Erik reached out to his right, would he touch Charles’ arm?

“Like I said,” Erik goes on, as if this tangent had never happened, “I’m interested in meeting your contact. Or if not meeting him, at least being involved. The security situation nonwithstanding, I’m sure my skills would be useful. I’m _very_ well-trained.” 

He can see the building the safehouse is in now, rising up with its brick façade between its neighbors. There’s a light on in the old apartment; they switch on and off automatically, to make it look like someone’s home.

“Look, kid,” swineherd says, his tone not as sharp as it might be. “The more people who know about this shit, the less safe it is, understand? My contact can’t exactly timetable this around your homework schedule. And you live with the telepathic boy scout. It’s a clusterfuck waiting to happen.”

 _I’m not a boy scout,_ says Charles’ mental voice, sounding almost indignant, and Erik can’t help smiling, too relieved just to be aware of his presence again.

“The telepath isn’t a problem, like I said before,” Erik tells swineherd. “He’s a -5S. I’m 7D. He does as I say.” He sends a quick mental apology toward Charles, but has to go on, or else he’ll just leave swineherd wondering just how safe his interactions with Erik really are. He can feel a displeased sort of sensation from behind his right shoulder in response, but Charles says nothing. “If I already know what’s going on, your contact might as well keep me on board instead of outsourcing to someone whose loyalty might not be as assured. I know it’s not your decision, but -- pass that along. I want to help.”

Swineherd shrugs, his broad shoulders stretching out his t-shirt. “I’ll pass it along, but it’s up to him if he takes you up on it,” he says, pushing his glasses back up his nose with the tip of one finger. “Generally I find my clients prefer their teams to be out of diapers.”

There’s nothing to say to that, because they’re here now, at the front steps of the building, a large brownstone, over ten stories high. Erik takes the front steps two at a time and uses his power to unlock the front door, pushing it open and holding it as swineherd climbs the steps behind him. 

“We have the fourth floor,” he says when swineherd catches the edge of the door. “Not too much of a climb, considering.”

“Neighbors?”

“The one above is eighty years old and deaf. The one below is a mutant. They’re both paid off, and the money comes from an offshore account that sends them direct deposits annually and won’t be empty for thirty years. It’s never been a problem.” 

They start up the main staircase, the steps carved from limestone and scuffed from use. It’s an old building, renovated before Erik’s time. He hasn’t been here at all since he was thirteen and Shaw held a party for another mutant group. Erik was the entertainment. 

At that memory, a warm hand slips into his own, fingers curling around Erik’s palm and squeezing. Erik’s heart skips a beat, and it’s all he can do not to tighten his hand around Charles’ in return, too aware of swineherd on the steps just below him, watching. _That’s awful,_ Charles thinks, along with a sense of his disgust and regret-for-Erik.

 _He used to send me here to meet with people he was trying to woo into something or another,_ Erik tells him. _I was supposed to say I was sixteen, unless they were into children._

He came a few times when he was younger, as well. He remembers being eight or nine, and there was a man Shaw sent him to seduce. Not a pedophile, just a regular Dom, and he tried to be kind and turn Erik down but Erik knew all the right tricks, could make him want him anyway. Shaw had security cameras installed; Erik could feel them in the walls, watching. 

Shaw used to use the tapes to blackmail people into doing what he wanted. It worked, too. No one wanted anyone to find out they’d fucked Erik. Shaw said it was because they were embarrassed they fell for such a disgusting slut. 

Charles doesn’t even say anything, he just lets Erik feel the loathing he has for Shaw, his utter refutation of anything Shaw ever said on the subject, a fierce and burning protectiveness that is almost overwhelming in its strength, a little too powerfully projected -- Erik misses the next step and trips, falling forward, and catches himself with a loop of his power caught around the metal hand rail just in time. 

“Are the stairs booby-trapped too?” swineherd asks snidely, raising an eyebrow when Erik looks back at him.

“Careful,” Erik says, glaring at him. “I’d hate for something to happen to your hard drive.” 

“Something happens to my hard drive, something happens to your face.”

Erik snorts, but lets swineherd have the last word. They’re at the fourth floor now, stepping out onto the landing. The door to the safehouse is just like all the others in the building, mahogany with a brass handle. Erik opens it, again with his power, and lets them in to the short carpeted hall just within, terminating in a second door -- this one solid steel. Past that Erik can feel the snaking wires of the bombs placed at all four corners of the door, detonators primed to go off the second an unauthorized intrusion is detected, the coppery glare of the computer behind the DNA verification hardware and the retina-scanner.

“It has life-detection software,” Erik explains to swineherd when the first door falls shut behind them. “You won’t have to worry about someone killing an officer and bringing their thumb and eyeball here.” 

He presses his own thumb to the black pad regressed into the wall and feels the sharp prick of the needle in his skin, drawing blood. Overhead, the security camera shifts, a mechanical eye peering down at them.

“Jesus,” swineherd mutters, as the camera focuses, refocuses, matching Erik’s face to the database. “Shaw was a paranoid old fuck. How did the CIA even get into the other safehouse to begin with if he had all this shit?”

“Brooklyn wasn’t secure,” Erik says, leaning forward to let the retinal scanner do its work, shining bluish light into his right eye. “Not all of the safehouses were. If we knew the CIA was coming, we would have come here, but ….” He trails off as he straightens up; swineherd knows how that story ends, after all.

A keyboard slides out from a hidden door in the wall, and Erik types his own name in, then ‘2’ for the number of guests he’s bringing. The security camera glances between the two of them, then to Erik’s right, where presumably Charles is standing, invisible to human eyes but not to a computer.

“Verified,” a disembodied voice chimes, and the door swings slowly inward.

“Well, all’s well that ends with all your body parts still attached,” swineherd says, and gestures for Erik to go inside. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

Erik enters, and feels the motion sensor snap into activity when it registers his presence; a second later the lights flicker on overhead, illuminating the foyer. It’s not as dusty as Erik had expected, but even so, it feels like walking into a ghost town, the furniture rising out of the floor like dark landmarks, ancient and still.

It’s elaborate, after Shaw’s preferred style; there’s expensive artwork hung on the walls, likely bought on the black market, and the floor is polished to a gleam -- or would be, if it weren’t covered in dust. Erik blinks, and tries to shake off the memories clinging to him like a grimy film, threatening to take over. 

“Three -- no, four bedrooms,” Erik says, leading swineherd and Charles on into the living room. The sofas and armchairs here are antiques, lovingly restored and covered now in plastic to keep them from being ruined in disuse. “There’s a wireless router in the kitchen, encrypted of course, and the TV gets cable.” He gestures toward the huge plasma-screen hanging off the wall. “Central heating and air conditioning. Floors are heated in the winter. Bulletproof windows, automatically-scheduled lights. The telephones here and in the master bedroom are both secure lines.”

“Any internal traps?” swineherd asks, wandering further inside, and Erik looks down at the thin layer of dust on the floor only to see two pairs of footsteps, one veering off towards the painting above the fireplace.

 _Is this a_ Picasso _?_ Charles asks indignantly.

 _Yes,_ Erik says, _and take care swineherd doesn’t notice your footprints. You’re leaving a trail._

 _Balls,_ Charles says, and the footprints vanish.

“No,” Erik says to swineherd. “Once you’re in, it’s assumed you belong here. There are methods to keep someone in by force, of course, but I don’t think you’ll be needing those.” He walks toward the bedrooms and the lights turn on ahead of him, like a carpet unrolling. He pauses there, though, not sure he wants to go further, but swineherd walks past him and into the first bedroom without pausing, calling back, “Well, this is all pretty much what my contact is looking for.”

“Glad to hear it,” Erik says, and he makes himself start walking again, leaning against the doorframe of the room swineherd’s in, crossing his arms over his chest. It’s one of the smaller bedrooms, with just a queen-sized bed, but even here there are full-length mirrors along one wall and on the ceiling. Erik looks at swineherd, not at the trunk at the foot of the bed; if they decide to use this apartment Erik will have to come by first and clean out all the whips and chains.

“All right,” swineherd says, turning to face Erik. “I’ll let you know what my contact says -- the DNA scanner thing is a potential issue, but we may be able to program new people into it which would overcome that problem.”

“The system will allow two incorrect input values per hour. If the third try is off, the whole thing blows,” Erik says. “Keep that in mind when you’re testing. You might need to make a week of it.”

He steps back, out into the hall, and heads toward the living room again, simply hoping that if Charles is there he’s savvy enough to get out of the way before one or both of them run into him. It’s only as he’s coming from this direction that Erik’s power catches a metal object sitting out on one of the end tables, previously obscured visually by the sofa. He picks up his pace, blocking swineherd’s line of sight as he holds out his hand low in front of his stomach, catching the camera in his grasp as it zooms from the table toward him. 

“So,” Erik says idly, trying to think loud thoughts to catch Charles’ attention again. The camera he slips into his pocket, well out of sight. “You really don’t know anything about Solomon? I find that hard to believe.”

“Look,” swineherd says, and folds his arms across his chest, his tone one of impatience. “Just because you want to know something doesn’t mean I do; Solomon is a slippery bastard and anyone who knows anything is either paid very well to keep it a secret or is beaten half to death to reinforce the idea that keeping quiet is good for your health, according to the rumors I’m hearing. I’d love to aim you at him, watch the bloodbath, but I’m not suicidal and I know which side my bread is buttered. You’ll have to find someone dumber than I am.”

 _He’s telling the truth,_ Charles says silently, sounding disgruntled -- probably because it means they haven’t found out most of what Erik persuaded him they needed to know in order for Charles to approve the trip. _He only has tidbits, nothing of any real value. Solomon is definitely male, is based in the US, is definitely mutant. That’s more or less it._

“For an information merchant, you don’t have a whole lot of information,” Erik says bluntly. Not that this is the kind of information most people could afford to purchase, anyway. “Speaking of merchandise: do you have the names I asked for?”

Swineherd reaches into his pocket and draws out a plain-looking USB stick, tossing it over to Erik, who catches it with his power. “There,” he says, clearly unbothered by the criticism. “Knock yourself out.”

“Thanks,” Erik says, and then, on impulse, just to see what swineherd will say -- will think -- “Is Caliban on this list?”

“Why, you missing your childhood sweetheart?” swineherd asks snidely, tucking his hands into his presumably-emptied pockets. “No, he’s not in New York that I know of. You looking for him, too?”

 _He’s playing it cool, but you’ve startled him,_ Charles says, his silent voice almost startling Erik himself into looking around for him -- it’s bizarre, to know he’s here but not where. _He’s wondering if you’ve got someone else selling you information, and if he has a leak._

“Oh, I doubt it’d be that hard for me to get in touch if I had to. I’m a bit of a special interest case in Hellfire these days. No-kill order. Haven’t you heard?” Erik smiles brightly at swineherd, turning the flash drive over between his fingers.

Swineherd shrugs. “I’d not rely on that if I were you. There’s more Hellfire Clubs out there right now than I’ve taken shits.”

“So the groupies say.”

“So I say, which is the closest you’re going to get to gospel truth in this shady market,” swineherd says, and makes an impatient noise in his throat. “Okay, mother’s meeting adjourned. Provided the john works, I think we’re done.” He takes his phone out of his back pocket and holds it up; there’s a fake whirring noise as he takes some quick pictures, moving around the apartment. “I can find my own way home.”

“Suit yourself,” Erik says, and he goes, leaving swineherd behind in the huge, empty apartment with all its hidden relics of Erik’s past. It’s a strange comfort, though, knowing that swineherd is neutral enough that he really won’t think too much of what’s in those trunks, if he looks, or the various bondage racks in the master bedroom. What was the word he used to describe child rape, back when he still thought Erik was the anonymous Magneto? _Distasteful._ That’s right.

When Erik comes out into the short hallway between the doors Charles is leaning there against the wall, lips pursed and arms folded across his chest. “Hey,” Charles says softly.

Erik pulls the steel door shut behind him and feels it latch. “Hey.”

“Is he going to be able to get out?” Charles asks, raising an eyebrow. “I know you don’t like him, but that seems a bit extreme.”

“It opens just fine from the inside,” Erik says, and he reaches a hand out for Charles as he passes by, tugging on his arm to pull him off the wall. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” He pushes the second door open and pauses to let Charles exit first, ahead of him. Charles leans a little into Erik’s side, a reassuring weight as they start down the stairs.

“Do you really want to keep coming back here, when all those bad memories are here too?” Charles asks, his voice reasonably calm -- more therapist than self. “It seems like you might be poking a sleeping bear, given your tendency towards flashbacks.”

“Aren’t you the one who said I needed to expose myself to bad memories in order to habituate to them?” Erik says, and at the third floor he slips his arm around Charles’ waist, letting his hand lay loose against Charles’ hip as they continue down. “Isn’t that the whole point of exposure-response prevention therapy?”

“Not when you’re also spending time around potentially dangerous criminals, who might take advantage of you,” Charles says. He hooks two fingers through Erik’s belt loop, and Erik is startlingly gratified at the casual gesture, one more common of subs in longstanding Dom-sub couples. “With me, in a safe environment, yes. Not here.”

“I guess we’ll have to practice more,” Erik says. He rubs his hand up along Charles’ side, Charles’ skin warm through his t-shirt. “I want to do this. And -- honestly, it’s pathetic, if I can’t go in there without having some kind of panic attack. I need to get over this; I’m not a child anymore.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Trauma doesn’t just go away because you want it to,” Charles says. “It’s not like getting over dropping your ice cream and being upset you can’t eat it. But we can work on that. I’ll see if I can help telepathically, too.”

They get down to ground level, and Charles nudges Erik in the side with his elbow. “You’re going to have to let go.”

He’s right, of course, but that doesn’t make it any easier to release his grasp from around Charles’ waist and separate them, leave them as guardian and ward once more as they step out onto the street again in full view of the rest of the world.

“What did you get from his mind while we were up there?” Erik asks as they turn onto the sidewalk, heading back toward the subway.

Charles flicks away the question. “Not much relevant that you don’t already know. Anything not relevant I’m not sharing. It’s not my business or yours.”

“Does he have a real name? Surely his mother didn’t bless him with ‘swineherd.’”

“He does.”

“ _And?_ ” Erik presses, looking at him with lifting eyebrows. “You have to tell me that much. What if he kidnaps you and holds you for ransom? I need to know who to turn in to Moira MacTaggert.”

Charles rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling, just a little. He seems to have relaxed now that the situation has passed without incident -- he’s probably hoping this will be an end to it. “His first name is Neil. The rest I’m not telling, because knowing you you’ll just Google him and get him pissed off. He’s much better with computers than you are, which is saying something, and I value the integrity of my digital life. It’s bad enough you posting manipulated images of me to Facebook without him draining my accounts and setting me up as a pimp.”

Erik taps the card reader in the subway station rather than bothering actually getting out his card, electromagnetism sizzling between his fingertips and the magnetic reader before the turnstile lets him through. “I’m curious,” he says when he’s on the other side, turning around to wait for Charles to dig his wallet out of his back pocket. “How did he get in touch with Victor Creed that time? From talking with him online before, it didn’t seem like he had any active Hellfire contacts.”

“I didn’t see that,” Charles says, swiping his own card and following Erik through the gate. “I’d have had to go digging around in his head, since he wasn’t actively thinking about it, and finding exactly what you’re looking for in a whole brain’s worth of stuff is much harder than the movies imply it is. I don’t know.”

“Caliban,” Erik says as they head down to the platform, shaking his head slowly. “I really have never heard of him, unless you count the Shakespeare character. Someone who considers their mutation to be a physical deformity, maybe. Hey,” he quirks a smile in Charles’ direction, “you sure that Rémy LeBeau isn’t a secret criminal?”

“Rémy? No,” Charles says, with an air of exasperated amusement. “You could hardly call his eyes a deformity, and he’s no criminal. Not unless that thing he does with his tongue is a crime, which it probably should be.”

“ _What_ thing with his tongue?” Erik says sharply, but Charles just laughs tiredly, shaking his head and miming buttoning his lip. “What thing?”

They make it back to their own apartment around eleven. It’s bizarre to be coming back with Charles at his side, still high off the successful completion of a mission -- only this time he isn’t alone in it. They’re still concealed from the agents, best as Erik can tell. He can sense them both in the living room, their metal dull and still.

“Bed?” Erik says when they’re standing in the gallery, his hands moving to touch Charles as soon as he’s able, smoothing up from his hips to his waist and pulling him closer.

“Just to sleep, remember.” Charles doesn’t resist, making himself pliable, easy to gather in against Erik’s body. “As agreed.”

“I know,” Erik says. He can feel the shiver that runs through Charles’ body, though, when Erik’s hands slide around his back, the two of them nestled in together, a perfect fit.

“Upstairs, then,” Charles murmurs, and pulls away, but only so he can lead Erik up the stairs to bed.

*

**Re: re: This week**  
Elias Braden-Newell  
 _to me_

> Dear Erik,
> 
> Apologies, as ever, for the delay in my getting back to you; I am a terrible correspondent because I am forever distracted by the necessities immediately at hand. No doubt this is why I never got married -- I entirely forgot to write any love letters in the first place. Ah, well.
> 
> In regards to your points about Sebastian Shaw not defending himself -- while a very glib man, I think he is the sort who does not believe in having to explain his actions to those he sees as beneath him (ie, everyone on the planet). He knows full well that no matter what he says or does he’ll be going to jail for the rest of his life, and so he is enjoying himself in the process of seeing it so by tormenting you. He would make a better revolutionary if he were more able to keep his ego out of the equation.
> 
> May I ask why you stepped in to defend him? It might be a sensitive subject, in which case forgive me, but I was shocked when I saw the footage, knowing how you must feel about the man. While no doubt Charles would pat you on the back and tell you you are a good boy for behaving so morally as to defend an evil man against further evil, personally I would not have lost any sleep if you had not. We need to clear away all the old detritus before we can rebuild the reputation of mutant separatism.
> 
> One more question, if you’ll allow it after my nosiness -- are you intending on applying to Berkeley for college when admissions open in the fall? I must admit to a rather personal interest in the subject so you’ll forgive an old man for being partial to his own alma mater!
> 
> Yours, etc,
> 
> Elias 
> 
> Elias Braden-Newell  
>  Geofferey B. Tobias Distinguished Professor of Mutant Studies  
>  Professor of Social Psychology  
>  The University of California at Berkeley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: References to past child abuse/rape.


	35. Thirty-five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No cw this chapter.

**Subject:** Re: re: re: This week

> Dear Elias,
> 
> I’m taking my cue from your signature in the salutation. If I’m being presumptuous, correct me.
> 
> I defended Shaw because I don’t think Victor Creed has earned the right to his blood. I earned that blood over twelve years of slavery, and I intend to spill it personally. I was about to take advantage of this patrimony when the military interfered. Perhaps it’s a good thing that isn’t clear on camera.
> 
> Berkeley is on my shortlist, actually. I’ll be applying there, as well as Stanford, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, Yale, U Chicago, UVA, Carnegie Mellon, and North Carolina. I’m interested in double-majoring in mechanical engineering and either physics or something from the humanities, maybe philosophy or polisci. Something that will leave my options open, since I still can’t decide between pursuing science or law.
> 
> Does this mean you might proofread my personal statement?
> 
> Erik

*

_Charles_

It probably shouldn’t feel like a bomb waiting to go off, letting his sister and her husband into his apartment to watch movies and eat junk for his birthday celebration. There’s nothing for them to find, of course -- he hasn’t done anything illegal, he and Erik aren’t sleeping together, just -- loving one another. He hasn’t broken his promise to Raven. Yet tonight Charles feels rather like he’s tiptoeing around a landmine when he opens the door to find Raven and Hank on the other side, a bottle of wine in the crook of Hank’s arm, Raven smiling just a little when she sees Charles.

“Happy birthday,” she says, and steps in to give him a hug. “How are you?”

“Well, thank you,” Charles says, making himself relax. Raven is thinking positive thoughts tonight, relieved at seeing him looking well, and she squeezes his middle before letting go. “How are you?”

“We’re both good,” she says, and then before Charles can tense up Hank steps in closer to give Charles a hug, too, his fur ticklish against Charles’ face, smelling of shampoo.

Charles is very very glad that both he and Erik took such thorough showers this afternoon, cleansing themselves of the scent of each other, before embracing again very lightly, to make sure they smell only as much of one another as would be appropriate, no more. Sharing a bed this past week will surely have left its markers, even if no bodily fluids were exchanged.

“Happy birthday. It’s good to see you,” Hank says. He releases his hold and pushes his glasses back up his nose with the tip of his claw-like fingernail, his feline mouth curved up in an easy, unsuspecting smile. “It’s been too long.”

“It has,” Charles says, and manages a quick, bright smile to cover his wince before waving them further inside, past where Agent Reyes and Agent Collins are standing in the parlor doorway, watching the new arrivals. “Come in, we’ve got everything set up in the other room.”

Once they’re away from the door Charles relaxes just a little -- it may be irrational, but he can’t help but feel that if Raven were going to notice anything, it would have been at first sight, as if the fact that Charles and Erik are back together -- sort of back together -- were written across his forehead in indelible ink for her to read. It’s … complicated, the thought of trying to balance this secret relationship with Erik against Charles’ love for his sister, his want to see her, too, warring with the absolute necessity of her never finding out. If she did, Charles knows she would go to the police, and … well.

Charles doesn’t want to find out if he would betray her so far as to alter his own sister’s memory, if he had to.

Erik is in the den, perched in his usual spot on the sofa with a few steel ball bearings spinning dizzily overhead, an anxious tic; they drop into his open hand the moment he spots Charles, Hank, and Raven, however, and Erik slips off the sofa to stand properly, gaze sliding from face to face.

“Hey,” he says after a moment, as if he’s found whatever it is he was looking for.

“Hi,” Raven says, her tone friendly, though Charles can hear her looking Erik over, checking he appears well and untroubled -- after all, it is the first time she’s seen him since he moved back in with Charles. “How are you?”

“Busy,” Erik says without missing a beat. “Early Action deadlines are November 1st for college applications. And I’m taking the SAT in two weeks.”

“I remember doing the SAT, it sucked,” Raven says, and finally moves forward, dropping onto the middle portion of the sofa, beside Erik, who has reclaimed his seat. “Are you sure you can spare us the time to watch movies instead of study?”

Hank follows Raven and sits beside her on the other end of the sofa, and so Charles, exiled, makes his way around to his armchair, settling down into it as Erik says, “I’ve pretty much done all I can do at this point. Either I know the material or I don’t.”

“There is such a thing as too much revision,” Hank says, and for a few minutes they just -- talk, light chatter about Erik’s schoolwork and Hank’s research and Raven’s latest production, Charles interjecting when he has a comment, but mostly just listening, taking it all in. It feels wrong, somehow, for them to be having such a normal conversation, when he’s so worried Raven will catch them out.

“You’re very quiet,” she says suddenly, turning to look at Charles, and he twitches, caught off-guard, before he can stop himself. Raven snorts. “Why so jumpy?”

“I was a million miles away, don’t mind me,” Charles says, and smiles, a little awkwardly.

“Oh? Thinking about what?”

About whether or not Raven will magically intuit that just four hours ago Charles was kneeling in the shower while Erik bent over him with the razor, shaving Charles’ cheeks smooth with slow precision, nude and streaming water as it fell around them. “How many age jokes you’re going to make tonight about my age,” he says, and Raven laughs.

“Come on,” Erik says, leaping to his feet. “There’s pizza in the kitchen. And salad, if you’re keen on keeping your arteries unclogged.”

Charles gets up immediately, rather relieved to have the excuse. “Let’s bring it in here, then we can relax while we eat.”

Leaving Raven and Hank where they are, Charles walks into the kitchen and around the corner so he can lean against the wall and let out his tension for a moment. He needs to be less strained if he’s to keep Raven from noticing something is up.

Erik comes in a moment later and glances back at Charles as he turns the corner of the kitchen, stepping out of Hank and Raven’s sight. “All right?” he murmurs in a lowered voice, reaching for the stack of pizza boxes.

“Just anxious,” Charles says, equally quiet, and moves forward to help, taking out some glasses from the cupboard. He pinches them between the fingers of one hand and picks up the bowl of salad in the other. “It’ll be fine. I’m being paranoid.” He shrugs, glancing back towards the den.

“Everything’s fine so far,” Erik says, balancing the plates and bowls carefully atop the boxes, silverware laid across the top to secure them there with his power. “Try to relax.”

Easier said than done, Charles thinks, but doesn’t say, as they go back into the other room, laying the food out across the coffee table.

For a few minutes everything is rustling, passing boxes and plates and glasses around until everyone has their portion, until Raven finally says, “So, Charles -- as it _is_ your thirtieth birthday,” and grins when he groans, her teeth flashing white in her blue face. “Don’t be like that! As it’s your birthday, I’ve organized a present for you.”

“Oh?” Charles asks, looking up from his pizza, his eyebrows rising along with his curiosity.

Raven picks up a slice of pizza, holding it carefully to keep the toppings from falling off. “I need to make sure you’re free next Friday,” she says, then takes a bite from the tip of the pizza, her next words a little muffled. “Are you?”

“Yeeees,” Charles says.

“Great,” Raven says, and smiles like a cat that’s caught a mouse. “I’ve got you a date for next Friday, then.”

Oh. _Oh._ Charles doesn’t dare look at Erik, because he’s too busy marshalling his own expression into one of surprise rather than dismay; what Raven could be _thinking_ \-- except it’s all too clear what she’s thinking, that Charles needs to get back on the horse and date people other than Erik, move away from the mistake and be in a position where that’s no longer alluring, too busy dating adults his own age to fuck his ward.

“I don’t need help getting dates, you know,” he says finally, awkwardly, not sure quite how to pitch his voice.

“Apparently you do,” Raven says, with a determined grin, waving away his protest. “Come on, it’ll be fun. I swear you’ll like him.”

On the sofa, Erik has become very interested in his salad, stabbing repeatedly at a cherry tomato with his fork. Charles can hear his annoyance, irritation with Raven mixed with a kind of aggravated amusement at the predicament they’re in; at least, Charles thinks, Erik isn’t going to give them away by getting overtly angry.

“I really don’t need you to set me up,” he tries again, but Raven just shakes her head.

“Come on. You’re not seeing anyone right now, unless you’ve been hiding it, so what can it hurt? You might like him, I think you will, and he’s a 5D. Just give it a try, okay?”

Charles isn’t sure what to say. On the one hand, if he refuses Raven will worry that he’s still hung up on Erik, and may try even harder -- or look even more closely, which could be disastrous; on the other, if he accepts, he’s bound to spend an evening on a date with a man he can’t start anything with without destroying any kind of relationship he might ever have with Erik, romantic or otherwise, and upsetting Erik for accepting in the first place. There’s no good choice.

“Erik might have made us plans,” Charles says, looking over at Erik, adding to him, silently, _if I say no, I have to have a reason._

But Erik just smiles, a huge, false smile, meeting Charles’ gaze across the room as he says, “Charles would love to go. I don’t have anything planned that can’t keep.”

What? Charles feels irrationally betrayed, even as he says, “Oh, very well, then,” giving Erik a look he hopes conveys his confusion and dismay. Erik, however, is thinking that this is the least he can do -- that he can’t box Charles into anything with him, anything illegal, without giving him opportunities first to escape. It’s … sweet, in its own way, but entirely unnecessary.

 _I love **you** , you idiot,_ Charles says, as Raven claps her hands together, pleased with the outcome of her scheme.

“You’ll like him, Charles,” she says, settling her weight against Hank’s side with almost feline satisfaction. “Now that that’s settled, what are we watching?”

“The third _Star Trek,_ ” Erik says. “It’s already up on Netflix if you want to hit ‘play’.” He nods toward the remote, which is sitting next to Charles on the end table, and adds with a touch of humor, _Raven said he’s 5D. You can’t pass up such a rare opportunity to snag yourself a high Dom_.

 _Traitor,_ Charles says, reaching for the remote and setting the film to play. He turns away from the others, towards the television, and tries not to look like he’s brooding -- over what the hell he’s supposed to do with this, if Raven keeps trying to make him dates and Erik keeps pushing him towards other Doms with some sort of misplaced sense of chivalry; if Charles is going to have to keep dolling himself up and go out with people he has no intention of ever seeing again. It’s infuriating to be trapped like this, and so Charles spends most of the movie sulking and pretending to himself that he’s not, all the while knowing there’s absolutely nothing he can do about any of it.

Later, after Raven and Hank have left, Charles turns to Erik with a frown, almost more saddened than anything else. “You don’t have to give me an out, you know,” he says quietly, overtly aware of their government shadows sitting in the other room. “I made a commitment to you. This isn’t just a fling.”

“But it’s not a real relationship, either, is it?” Erik says back. He starts gathering up the dishes that have piled on the coffee table, stacking them balanced in one hand. “We don’t know what this is.”

He takes Charles’ dirty plate as well and heads off toward the kitchen, leaving Charles to follow after him like he’s being drawn on a string, shadowing behind Erik. He stands at the table as Erik takes the dishes to the dishwasher.

“Erik, ‘real’ in this case only refers to whether or not it exists, which it does,” Charles says, curling his fingers around the back of the chair in front of him. “It may not be a standard relationship, but the major components are there -- I love you, and you love me. That we can’t be public about that doesn’t change the fact that it is real. What would is if that is bothering you to the point where you no longer want it to be.” It’s painful to think of Erik ending things, so soon after they got started once more -- to have Erik turn away, this time, instead of Charles. But Charles can’t pretend that he doesn’t worry sometimes that Erik will wake up one day and realize how many other choices he has, how many other potential relationships that he could let the world see. Charles takes a breath and makes himself ask, “Is that what’s going on here?”

“No,” Erik says, and he straightens up from the dishwasher, meeting Charles’ eyes. “No, of course not. I just want to make sure you’re happy.” A breath’s pause, Erik’s lips tilting up slightly. “That’s all.”

“By forcing me to go on a blind date I was trying to get out of?” Charles asks, and rolls his eyes, both amused and irritated at the same time. “There are easier ways to do it than pushing me on other Doms, Erik. Try asking me.”

Erik shakes his head and snorts, looking back down at the dishwasher again as he puts the last of the cutlery in where it belongs and closes the machine back up. “All right. Fine. You can go on your date, and you’ll hate it, and I’ll hate it, and when you get back I’ll kiss you ‘til you bruise and make you swear never to mention his name again. How’s that?”

“Maybe I’ll like him so much I won’t come back,” Charles says, raising an eyebrow challengingly at Erik. “And whose fault would that be?” He’s not a parcel to be passed around, and he’s not interested in being sent to taste-test different relationships in case he finds one he likes better. He can think of better ways to spend an evening.

“Raven’s,” Erik says unhesitatingly. He crosses the kitchen to where Charles is still standing and settles both hands on Charles’ shoulders, one knee in the seat of the chair between them as he leans in to kiss Charles on the mouth. “You won’t like him better than me,” he says when their lips have parted, not moving away. “You love me most, remember?”

“Most of everyone I’ve met so far,” Charles says, but it’s more a show to satisfy his own grumpiness than out of any truly lingering vexation. He presses forward and kisses Erik again, keeping an ear out for approaching agents; there’s one coming in their direction, and so after a moment he steps back, separating them and looking in the direction of the door to make sure Erik notices, too; when Collins wanders in he sees only the two of them sat at the kitchen table, talking idly about Raven and Hank’s visit. Nothing incriminating, nothing suspicious.

The fact that they can’t even be safe together in their own home is … frustrating, rankles behind Charles’ ribcage like the sour taste of a crab apple. No matter what Charles said to Erik earlier, there are some aspects of their relationship that, real or no, are troublingly difficult. As much as Charles may protest that they are a real couple, there’s no doubt in his mind that nobody else would see them the same way.

*

It’s difficult to imagine somewhere Charles would want to be less this evening than waiting in an Italian restaurant for his blind date to show up, but he spends a good five minutes doing just that to try and remind himself that this is no big deal -- if it appeases Raven, and helps give Charles a bit of cover from accusations that he’s involved with Erik, then he can live with it. For another thing, going out once does not mean he has to go out with this Dom again. Charles will simply have to be a boring date and leave at the end of the night only a few hours poorer.

It doesn’t help, of course, that he can still feel Erik at home, trying to distract himself but ultimately restless and unhappy that Charles is out with somebody else, even if Erik’s the one who pimped him out for it in the first place. It makes Charles feel off-key, off-balance, and he’s reaching out to try and reassure Erik when he’s interrupted by the waiter bringing a tall blond man over to Charles’ table.

“Here you are,” the waiter says with a smile, and Charles gets slowly to his feet, offering his hand to the newcomer in a kind of stunned silence.

The man Raven has set him up with is gorgeous. Tall, fair-skinned and blue-eyed, he’s broad-shouldered and trim-waisted in an entirely different way to Erik, densely muscled; he carries himself straight and proud, but there’s a warmth to his smile that’s just … wow. Charles is very, very distracted.

“Hi,” he says, as they clasp hands and shake, taking in his date’s neat button-down shirt and smart trousers, understated but formal. “I’m Charles.”

“Steve,” the man says, and when he smiles his teeth are incredibly white. “I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long.”

“Oh, no,” Charles says, “five minutes or so, but I was early.” He reclaims his hand and sits back down slowly, knowing his cheeks must be a bit flushed -- he feels rather flustered, his calm deliberation scattered to the four winds. He hadn’t expected Raven to set him up with someone awful, of course, but … she must have gone out of her way to pick someone exactly Charles’ type, all the better to keep him from getting back into bed with Erik. “Um. I already had a look at the menu, but I haven’t decided what to order just yet.”

“I always order the same thing here,” Steve says, flipping open his menu just to close it again and meet Charles’ gaze across the table. “Best steak in the city, hands down. … You aren’t vegetarian, are you? I can order something different, if you are.”

Charles shakes his head, and looks down at his menu, opening it to look again at the options. He knows he’s being rude, but -- well. If it weren’t for Erik, Charles would be very interested indeed, and he can’t help but be very aware of that fact. It’s not Steve’s fault he’s too late to have a chance, and it’s worse because Charles can hear Steve thinking that Charles is attractive, his eyes flickering over Charles’ face as he pretends to look at the menu and imagining drawing it on paper, how he would shade the lines and contours of Charles’ cheeks and mouth, the fall of his hair.

“I think I’ll have the steak too, then,” Charles says, looking up at Steve and resolving himself to an evening of … not disappointment, because he loves Erik more than anyone else in the world. But of having dangled in front of him something he could once have had, in another life.

Once he’s accepted that, things are easier; Steve is a good conversational partner, witty and warm, with a dry sense of humor that doesn’t shy away from the self-deprecating. He’s effortlessly Dominant, too, in small ways that come from a deep comfort in who he is and who he is to other people -- his casual ease in the room, the way he orders for both of them now that he knows what Charles wants, and a certain kind of magnetism as he talks that draws Charles in despite himself. Steve is a 5D, strong enough for Charles to feel it a little when he pays attention.

And yet. Charles is still, all the time, aware of Erik in the back of his mind, impatient and possessive, and of the deep yearning in himself to be home with Erik, curled close within the circle of his influence. No matter that things are complicated. That feeling, at least, is simple.

At the end of the night Steve looks at Charles across the detritus of dessert and says, with gentle honesty, “You’re lovely, and I like you a lot. But I get the feeling that you’ve got something else going on. Am I right?”

Charles sighs, and smiles, propping his chin up on one hand, relieved not to be the one to say it, but a little concerned, too, that he’s so easy to read. “I like you a lot, too,” he says. “But … well, you’re not wrong. I’m just not in a great place to start something right now, no matter how badly Raven wishes I was. I’m sorry.”

“Well, I can’t pretend I’m not disappointed, but I do understand.” Steve shifts, pulling something out of his pocket; it’s his card, which he hands to Charles across the table. “If you ever change your mind….”

“I’ll call you,” Charles says, taking the card and tucking it into his wallet. “I’ll pay for dinner, it’s the least I can do in return for your good company tonight.”

Steve protests, of course he does -- if he were any more perfect he’d still be shrink-wrapped in his original factory packaging, and so they wind up agreeing to split the bill, something that at least assuages some of Charles’ conscience about wasting Steve’s time. Agent Reyes is waiting for him near the door -- always discreet, something Charles appreciates in a bodyguard, he thinks with a strong hint of irony -- and they get a cab home, though Charles would have preferred to walk, for the purposes of security.

Then again, perhaps Charles will need additional security when he gets home to an increasingly fretful and frustrated Erik.

*

_Erik_

Erik senses Charles as soon as he steps into the elevator on the ground floor, the gentle pulse of his blood and the familiar bright circle of his ring surrounded by a metal box that carries him up, up, up, toward Erik.

He closes his laptop and gets to his feet, striding out of the kitchen into the den. One of the Rogers is in here, sitting in Charles’ favorite armchair and scribbling away on a notepad. “Get out of here,” Erik orders him, a little harsher than he otherwise might have, but his nerves are all frayed and frazzled as it is. “I need to talk to Charles.”

“I’m not your servant,” the man says, looking up with an irritated expression on his face; his fingers tighten around the pencil in his grip. “You could try being polite, kid. We’re here for your benefit, not our own.”

Erik rolls his eyes and puts more Command behind it. “I said _go._ ”

“I’ll be talking to Dr Xavier about your bad attitude,” Roger says, but he gets up, unable to resist the order, and heads off in the direction of the parlor, out of the way.

Satisfied, at least for the moment, Erik heads out into the gallery, where he’s standing waiting when Charles finally slides his key into the lock and opens the door.

Charles doesn’t look surprised to see Erik there -- he probably felt his presence before he even got out his keys, and he gives Erik a tentative smile, stepping inside so that his Lady-Roger can follow him into the apartment. “Hi,” Charles says, without looking away from Erik.

“Hi,” Erik says. His returning smile feels fake on his lips. To the agent he says, “I can take it from here. Go make sure the upstairs is secure; I thought I heard someone trying to break in.”

A lie, and an obvious one, but it’s Erik’s understanding the Rogers are required by contract to investigate any suspicious happenings, observed _or_ reported. Lady-Roger doesn’t so much as sigh, but Erik can tell she’s rolling her eyes on the inside as she heads for the stairs, glancing back at the two of them before she goes up, disappearing into the shadows on the upper landing.

“How was your evening?” Charles asks, starting to unbutton his jacket.

“Uneventful.” Erik steps closer and takes in a shallow breath, wrinkles his nose. “You smell like cologne.”

“That’s because I’m wearing cologne,” Charles says. He sounds a little amused now, shrugging off his jacket and walking over to the closet to hang it up. “Don’t worry. It’s mine.”

“You didn’t have to _bathe_ in it,” Erik says, and when Charles emerges from the closet he snags onto Charles’ wristwatch with his power, tugging him toward the den.

“Well, that’s offensive,” Charles says. He resists against Erik’s pull, a little, though it doesn’t do him much good -- he’s pulled along into the den anyway, his captive hand leading the way. “There’s no need to be rude, Erik.”

“You don’t wear cologne,” Erik says, turning around once they’re in the den and leading Charles around by the wrist to make him take a seat. Charles looks up at him with an expression more annoyed than anything else, which is even more annoying to Erik.

Charles sighs, folding his arms across his chest. “Sometimes I do.” He lifts his chin, which is set firmly, stubbornness making itself visible on his face. “Erik, we talked about this. You’re acting like I asked Steve out in the first place, which you know isn’t true.”

“He’s better for you,” Erik says. “He’s your age. He’s gainfully employed, I assume. If you fuck him, you won’t go to jail.”

That’s the crux of the matter, really. Erik feels his chest tighten up, clenching against the rapid throb of his heart. As much as Erik could have prevented Charles from going on this date in the first place, in the end he … in the end, if Charles is going to finish this and leave again, Erik wants to know about it sooner rather than later.

“All of that is true except the first part,” Charles says, and he unfolds his arms, reaching out to take Erik’s hands in his own. “Nobody is better for me than you. More convenient, maybe. More appropriate, maybe. But not better.” He squeezes Erik’s fingers tight. “Okay?” Charles is projecting a cloud of warm affection and want, deliberately enveloping Erik in the sensation of it, and Erik feels something inside him relent, a little. He goes to sit down next to Charles on the sofa, taking in another, deeper breath of that cologne.

He looks at Charles, tilting his face toward him just enough to meet his eyes. “I can’t take you out on a date. I can’t kiss you in public. We can’t have sex -- you can’t even tell anyone you’re dating me celibately. It just seems like -- this can’t be what you want.” It feels like there’s a giant hand squeezing his heart, nails digging in.

“It’s not ideal,” Charles allows, leaning in just enough to bump his shoulder against Erik’s, solid and grounding. “But we knew that going in, Erik. Are you changing your mind about us because of it?”

“No. I’m just asking if you have.”

“Erik,” Charles says, then stops, sighs again, and lays his head down on Erik’s shoulder, tucking his forehead against Erik’s cheek. He’s heavy, and warm, and Erik just wants to wrap his arms around Charles and never let go, to keep this close feeling forever. “No, I haven’t changed my mind,” Charles says very quietly, settling there in direct defiance of his usual paranoia about the Rogers walking in on them, as if Charles couldn’t sense them a mile off. “I love _you_. One night having dinner with a stranger hasn’t changed that. He’s not you.”

Erik turns his face toward Charles, tilting his chin down to kiss the top of Charles’ head. “Good.” Then he kisses Charles’ mouth, instead, his lips soft even as the kiss is hard, forceful. Charles kisses him back like that, his hands twisting in Erik’s hair and pulling him closer; Erik leans into it without hesitating, decides -- to hell with Roger -- and uses his tongue to make Charles part his lips, licking against the backs of his teeth and shifting over to straddle Charles' lap there on the sofa, pushing him back against the cushions and grabbing Charles' hair in his fist to hold him where he is. He swears he can feel Charles' heart beating through his shirt and waist coat and into his chest, or maybe it's Erik's heart; he can't tell the difference.

A muffled, hitching sound vibrates through Charles, and he tips his head back a little further, baring his throat; his hands jerk up to grab at Erik's hips, dragging him firmly down onto Charles' thighs. After a moment though he lets go, turns his head despite the hard yank this must put on his hair and murmurs, breathless, "No, Erik. That’s too far, we can’t. Someone’s coming."

Frustration lights briefly in the back of Erik’s mind and he reaches out with his power, checking -- there's an agent heading toward the den, walking with purpose, _fuck_. He casts his mind around for a solution; they can't go to the bedroom, it's too obvious and one of the agents will follow them upstairs. They certainly can't stay here, much as Erik would like to fuck Charles down into the sofa. Can’t do that either, of course.

Not that it matters. Erik only just manages to pull back, pushing Charles away and forcing them to opposite sides of the sofa before Roger steps into the den, purposeful at first, then slowing, pausing for a moment looking at them both -- they must look flustered, flushed maybe, Charles’ hair a mess from Erik’s hands.

“Is everything okay in here?” Roger asks, voice slow, neutral.

“It’s fine,” Charles says, reaching up to run his own fingers through his hair, messing it up even more -- covering for its disarray. “Erik and I were having a discussion about politics, is all. We can get rather … heated about it.”

Erik isn’t sure he can keep a straight face so he turns his away, lifting a hand to obscure his profile from Roger. His heart pounds in his throat and he’s too keenly aware of Charles sitting so close, still, the wetness of Charles’ mouth still on his lips.

“I see,” Roger says, looking between them once again, probingly before _finally_ walking on towards the kitchen, glancing back once before vanishing into the other room.

 _This is reckless,_ , Charles says silently, giving Erik an intense look, all concern and nervousness and aggravation. _We nearly got caught!_

Erik makes a soft, exasperated noise and drops his hand, head tipping back against the sofa cushions. “We can’t live in our own house,” he mutters.

Roger comes back out of the kitchen, giving them another sidelong look, considering; Charles doesn’t say anything until Roger has left the room, but then finally he says, “You know why they’re here. I know it makes things difficult, but we can’t just give two fingers to the government and go risking things like that. I’m just as much to blame as you, I’m not doing things right at all.” He falls silent, a troubled expression on his face.

They sit there for a few moments, awkward and quiet, before Erik reaches over and curls his hand around Charles’, squeezing once. “They’ll be gone soon,” he says, coming to a sort of decision in his mind, even if he’s not sure quite what that decision entails, or how he’ll get from step A to step Z. “We won’t have to put up with them much longer.”

“I hope so,” Charles says. He adjusts his hand in Erik’s, twisting his grip until he can squeeze back. “I did -- I had a good time tonight, with Steve. But it’s not the same.”

‘Right.” Erik really doesn’t want to think about what that might mean, that Charles had ‘ _a good time_.’ He trusts Charles. Hell, he suggested this. Even so, that doesn’t mean he likes the idea of Charles around other Dominants, making comparisons, maybe illuminating all the ways in which Erik is deviant and defective because he grew up wrong and still hasn’t learned how to put all the pieces of himself back together. He shouldn’t be sitting here, worrying he’s still got too much submissive in him to keep Charles’ interest long-term.

“You’re an idiot,” Charles says, and leans over to press a kiss to the corner of Erik’s mouth, his shoulder bumping Erik’s. “You’re neither deviant nor defective. You’re you, and that’s what matters to me. Okay?”

Erik smiles, a little, glancing at Charles out the corner of his eyes. And then he shifts, moving on the sofa to settle down on his back, legs hitched up over the arm of the couch, too long to fit, and his head resting in Charles’ lap, there between Charles’ warm firm thighs. Charles swallows, his adam’s apple bobbing in his throat, more visible from this angle; Erik disentangles his hand from Charles’ to guide Charles’ hand to rest on his brow instead, Charles’ thumb skimming Erik’s hair. “Hmm, so … you don’t mind it like this, then,” he asks, settling his hands on his stomach and meeting Charles’ gaze, watching him.

“No, I don’t mind,” Charles says, and his hand moves, stroking back over Erik’s head. “I like looking after you.” His other hand comes to rest on Erik’s belly, still and unmoving, a warm weight. “Just be yourself. That’s all I want.”

They lie there, like that, for quite some time, until the clock has ticked past quarter-til-midnight and Charles finally goes, kissing Erik on the mouth before he disappears upstairs to get ready for bed. Erik hates the distance between them as Charles walks away, stretching out like taffy, necessary because of the eyes and ears behind every wall that would destroy them if they could.

Erik follows him a while after, hand skimming along the guard rail. When he gets upstairs the female Roger is still up, her light on and her door ajar, so he walks past Charles’ room and down to his own, letting himself in. His old bedroom feels cold and soulless without Charles’ presence. Erik lies down on his bed fully-dressed, staring up at the ceiling with the lights off.

He almost falls asleep like that. Dozing, he keeps imagining Charles is lying next to him, Charles’ weight pressing against Erik’s side and his breath on Erik’s skin. When he gets out of bed it’s half an hour past midnight and the guest room is dark, finally; the upstairs agent is asleep. Erik doesn’t go straight to Charles, though. First, he made a promise, that he’d get the Rogers out of here. Erik doesn’t have FBI security clearance, but he does have one very particular set of skills.

The lights are still on downstairs, kitchen and parlor, where they told the agents to set up. Erik crosses the gallery into the living room and gets a bottle of Scotch out of the liquor cabinet, snagging two glasses between his fingers and taking them with him when he crosses back out into the hall.

The male Roger is sat in the parlor, laptop on his knees watching some television show on streaming. He glances up when Erik comes in and then down at the glasses, frowning. “Aren’t you a little young to be drinking?”

“This?” Erik lifts the bottle and grins, then shakes his head. “No, this is for you. The second glass is just me being optimistic.”

He sets the glasses down on the table near Roger’s elbow and unscrews the cap on the Scotch, pouring three fingers’ worth of the amber liquid into one of the glasses. Roger’s paused the television program, at least, and when Erik glances at him Roger’s eyes are on the drink.

Erik picks up the glass and offers it to him. “No ice. It dilutes the experience.”

“While this is a nice apology and all,” Roger says, “I’m on duty. No alcohol allowed.”

“Oh. Well, more for me.” Erik takes a sip and gives Roger a tiny, crooked grin. The Scotch is the smoothest Erik’s ever had, like swallowing a hot silk ribbon. He can feel it smoldering in the pit of his stomach like a lit coal.

“For God’s sake, kid,” Roger says, and he reaches out to take the glass off Erik, tugging it from his grip and then turning to set it down on the side table behind him, exasperation in every line of his face. “That’s illegal and I’m an officer of the law. Have some common sense, won’t you?”

Erik ignores him, dropping down into the armchair nearest Roger and crossing his legs at the knee, top leg swinging slightly. He thinks about trying to out-Dom Roger, but he did that once already. It didn’t have the required result. What was it Shaw said, anyway? It wasn’t the act of Dominating that did it. It was Dominance. Being Dominant. He talked about it like it was magnetism, never mind that Erik played sweet and submissive so well.

“Does that line work for you?” he asks, injecting a flirtatious edge to his tone and smiling again, lifting one hand to draw his fingers back slowly through his hair.

“What?”

“Don’t be rude, put that away while I’m talking to you,” Erik says. The laptop shuts in Roger’s lap and drifts up and away, sliding neatly onto the table next to the bottle of Scotch. Erik relaxes a little more, getting into the role now and leaning forward, propping his chin in his hand and his elbow on his knee. Roger frowns, starting to tense up. “The whole … FBI thing. It’s practically a career in Dominance, isn’t it?”

“Why, you thinking of signing up?” Roger asks, raising an eyebrow, but his voice is shutting down, too, firmer, sterner. “There’s a lot of hoops to jump through. Not sure you’d qualify for any sort of security clearance, I’m afraid.”

“That’s not what I meant. I meant, _you._ You must be, what -- at least 4D? 5D, even.”

“2D,” Roger says. “What are you getting at, Erik? You’re up to something -- what do you want?”

Well, Erik thinks, never let it be said the Rogers aren’t straightforward about things.

“Ah,” Erik says, dropping his gaze for a moment before he gets up, pushing himself out of the chair with both hands on the armrests before he even looks back to Roger again. Go big or go home, he thinks. Roger’s only 2D. He can’t be more difficult than some of the guests Shaw made Erik entertain for blackmail.

“That’s just it, Agent Collins,” Erik says softly, quiet enough Roger has to lean in a little to hear him. He takes one step nearer and that’s all he needs to put his leg between Roger’s, knee against the seat of the chair, so close there’s no backing out now. “There’s only one thing that I want.”

Lean in, his hand on Roger’s leg smoothing up toward his hip, bracing his other hand against the back of the chair. Roger’s thigh is taut beneath Erik’s palm, and when Erik’s fingers skim the inside of his thigh he feels the muscles there twitch; he’s turned on by it, turned on even more when Erik brushes a kiss against his neck, right above his beating carotid, Roger’s stubble scraping Erik’s lips.

“Christ,” Roger says, and his hand is on Erik’s chest, pushing him back a few inches until Roger can stare him in the eyes, his face flushed, breathing heavier than before. “This is so far from appropriate you’d need a satellite to relay the message,” he says, and pushes Erik further away, a jerk of his hand, unmoderated, and Erik straightens up. “No, kid. Definitely no.”

Erik’s gaze flicks down, just long enough to check. He was right about one thing. “You do want me,” he says. “I can see that much.”

“Stop it,” Roger snaps, and jumps to his feet, taking a few steps away from Erik, putting space between them. “I’ll be talking to Dr Xavier about this in the morning, Erik, but for now get the hell out of here before I arrest you for -- for -- I’ll come up with something, okay? Get.”

Erik holds both hands up, a gesture of surrender. “All right, all right. As you wish, _sir_.” He goes before Roger can change his mind -- as much about taking Erik up on his offer as arresting him -- leaving the liquor behind and going upstairs. He changes into his pajamas in his old bedroom then slips back down the corridor to let himself into the master suite, where Charles is a dark lump under the blankets.

Erik pulls back the covers and climbs in next to him, closing his eyes and leaning into the warmth of Charles’ body, his heart still racing from downstairs but too certain he’s accomplished what he wanted all the same. Soon Erik won’t need to worry about locking that door after them. Soon it will just be him and Charles again, the way it is supposed to be. When Charles opens his eyes Erik meets them, laying there beside one another, the tension between them growing palpable, the feeling of something about to happen.

*

_Charles_

They’re both silent for a while, the only sound that of their own breathing, soft and regular. Charles thinks about rolling over and turning out the light, but he doesn’t want to move -- like this he can imagine that everything is simple, that it’s just the two of them out at sea, unobserved and unfettered by other people. He can feel himself slipping towards sleep, when he hears Erik take a deeper breath, then say,

“Charles ....”

“Mmm?”

“Look at me.”

It has the tang of an order, and so Charles opens his eyes to find Erik watching him, face close, his gaze meeting Charles’ intently, looking for something. “What?” Charles murmurs.

“Before we got together,” Erik says, his expression immutable, “what did you fantasize about? With me?”

It’s a dangerous question, but Charles says, anyway, too drowsy to make himself more cautious, “I wanted to stroke you all over. Just … run my hands over every inch of you, touch you. Jerk you off. Your body is so … ” He trails off, just thinking about it.

Erik’s biting his lower lip, watching Charles with an intensity of gaze that’s not unusual for him but is intoxicating all the same. “If I were legal,” he says. “If seventeen were the age of consent, would you -- would you fuck me right now?”

“That depends,” Charles says, his breath coming a little shallowly. “Are there still government agents in the next bedroom?”

“No. Just you and me.”

“Then yes,” Charles says, closing his eyes.

He can hear Erik’s annoyed huff right before he says, with more force, “ _Look_ at me, Charles.”

Charles obeys, of course he does -- the order runs through him in a long thrill of pleasure at having something to obey, and he feels Erik’s eyes on him again like being pinned down, held and made to comply, sweet and heavy. “This is dangerous,” he says.

“Do you want me to stop?” Erik asks, and it’s still just his fingertips touching Charles, still and unmoving; Charles’ gaze is on Erik’s mouth, impossible not to think about kissing him, about ….

“No,” he whispers, watching, waiting for Erik’s lips to move, to say something else. “But we can’t … ”

“I won’t touch you.” Erik’s hand draws away, curling closer to Erik’s body instead. “But you can’t touch me either. Agreed?”

It’s following the letter of the law, not the spirit -- Charles wants to say no, to turn over and go to sleep, shut this down before it goes any further. Except that he doesn’t really want that. He says, “Agreed.”

Erik lets out a soft breath, barely audible. “Good.” They’re still gazing at one another, neither of them quite blinking, and Charles watches Erik’s tongue flick out to wet his lips. “What would you do to me? If you could do anything.”

Charles’ breath is not nearly so steady. “Kiss you,” he says, his voice raspy. “Pull you on top of me. Rock up against you.” Just the thought is heady. His cock feels warm between his legs, twitching in his boxers.

“Mmm. I miss that. Knowing you … _feeling_ you wanting me.” Erik’s interest is fixed entirely on Charles now, to the exclusion of all else, the sharpness of that focus like a drug in Charles’ mind.

“I always want you,” Charles says, shifting to get more comfortable, parting his thighs a little more to make space. “That’s part of the problem.”

Erik smiles, slow, like molasses. “I know. I want you too. Always. What next?”

Charles can imagine it so clearly, it’s almost painfully sharp -- he swallows, his head tipping back a little into the pillow, baring his neck as he says, “I would -- run my hands down your back, into your pants, take hold of your cheeks. Squeeze them. Tease you.” Erik’s ass is firm and tight from all his running, and Charles can almost feel it in his grip, has to shift and spread his legs a little wider now as his cock starts to fill in earnest just thinking of it.

Across from him Erik is still watching him, laying there on his side so close, easily within arm’s reach -- Charles stares back, wonders if Erik is getting hard, too, wishes he could reach over and find out for himself. “I’d touch your hole,” he says, shocked at himself for saying it out loud.

The sound that comes out of Erik’s throat is tight, choked.

“I’d want you so badly,” Erik whispers, like it’s a secret. “I’d want to rush it, but I -- I’d want to make you desperate, first. So I’d grind down on your cock. I’d mark you, somewhere no one could see. Here.” Erik’s fingers touch his own chest, just above his collarbone.

Even imagining the pain makes Charles need to bite his lip to keep from moaning -- it’s been so long, even since he’s used his own hand, and this is just … he knows he’s dipping his hand in the candy jar but he can’t help it, can take it back out without taking any but can’t resist licking off the sugar from his fingers. “I’d want you to ride me,” he says, raises his knees under the covers to hide the obscene shape of his cock tenting them. “Hold my hands down and use me -- ”

“Don’t,” Erik breathes out, and he reaches over like he’s going to touch Charles then stops himself, fingers curling into a fist. “I want to see you.”

Charles does choke out a little sound, then, his cock twitching, and before he can think better of it he pushes the covers down off his legs, lets his knees fall, so that Erik can see him laying there on his back with the thin cotton of his boxers stretched over the thick line of his erection, pressing up against it until the fabric is hugging every inch of it, hiding nothing. Charles is panting as he stares at Erik, at Erik’s face, his parted lips and dark eyes, the color in his cheeks as he looks at Charles, gaze lingering for a long time on Charles’ groin.

“God,” Erik says, voice tight. “God, I want to fuck you so badly. I want your cock in me right now.”

“Tell me what it would be like,” Charles says, his cock jerking by itself and a little wet spot starting on the fabric, hot and damp against his humid skin. “Tell me about it.”

Erik takes in a shaky breath, and says, “I’d ride you hard. Hard enough the neighbors might hear it when the bed frame hits the wall and when you moan my name. I’d use your cock to get myself off and wouldn’t let you finish. Not until I do.”

God, god -- just the images in Erik’s head are enough to make Charles feel close to coming, and he won’t let himself touch his cock, can’t -- this is too much, too far, and there’s such a heat in the pit of his stomach that he can’t help it when his hips buck a little off the bed, wanting -- “Are you hard?” he asks, desperate.

“Yes. Fuck, yes.” Erik’s breathless, his pupils large and his cheeks flushed, knuckles white where his hand is still clenched on the bed between them like he’s doing all he can to keep from reaching for Charles. He grasps at the covers instead with his other hand, yanking them down so his body is exposed as well, so Charles can see his huge cock straining against his flannel pajama bottoms, hard and wanting him. “I want to touch you. I want to see you come.”

“No,” Charles says, though it’s the hardest word to say, and he lifts his hand to his mouth to bite at the side of it, the pain helping to distract him, even as his cock twitches again, wetly. God, he wants to pull down Erik’s pajamas and lick him from root to tip. “We can’t. This is too far already, we should stop.”

“What would you do if I weren’t here?”

“Probably roll over and fuck the mattress until I came,” Charles says honestly, choking on a laugh that’s more breath than substance, his stomach clenching up with the urge to follow through. “Fuck, Erik … ”

Erik shivers visibly, staring at Charles like he’s never quite seen him before. “Pretend I’m not here, then.”

“I can’t … ”

“Please. I’m not here.”

It’s too much, too -- Charles gasps and does as he’s asked, rolling over onto his belly and bracing his legs wide apart, his forearms planted on the bed so he can rock down into the mattress, hard, the first grind excruciatingly good, friction all down his hard cock making Charles’ breath come out in a sob.

He can feel Erik watching him, avid eyes and a rich, throbbing arousal that grows as Charles fucks himself against the bed, thrusting against it over and over until his boxers have half-slid down and his body is singing and he looks over at Erik and comes, hard, Erik’s eyes fixed on Charles’ moving hips and the glimpses of his bare cock as he moves, Charles crying out as quietly as he can as he spurts all over the sheets, a tight-wound spring releasing inside of him and Charles is sobbing with pleasure and relief, collapsing against the bed and breathing in the scent of his own semen in the air.

Erik’s voice is thick and unsteady when he says, “Turn over. Let me see you.”

Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Charles rolls over out of his wet spot and onto his back, exposing the smeared mess at his stomach and the top half of his slowly-softening cock protruding out over the elastic of his boxers, bare and swollen. He feels exposed and glorious, sexy, as Erik makes a soft noise and looks at him, gaze dragging up Charles’ body, taking it all in.

“Look at you,” Erik murmurs, low and hot, and then he kicks the sheets the rest of the way down, getting out of bed, his own cock still visibly hard in his pajama bottoms as he crosses the room toward the bathroom.

Charles knows what he’s going to do, can feel it in his bones but he’s too wobbly to follow -- so instead he slides into Erik’s mind, close and intimate, can feel his own aftershocks even as he watches through Erik’s eyes, as if he were doing it to himself, as Erik shuts himself in the bathroom and sits down on the closed toilet seat, fumbling to pull his beautiful cock out of his flannels and spit into his palm, stroking himself hard and fast.

It’s long, and thick, straining between his legs and between Erik’s long, elegant fingers, and Charles watches as it flushes darker, twitching in Erik’s grip before jerking and shooting out thick white streaks of come, spattering Erik’s flannels and his hand, Erik biting off a groan as he remembers the agent on the other side of the shared bathroom door, breath heaving.

 _You’re so gorgeous,_ Charles says, aroused again despite the fact there’s no chance of him getting erect again any time soon, laying there on his back still with his cock hanging out, not wanting to move. _Fuck_.

He feels Erik grin as if it were his own cheeks hurting, and watches as Erik tears off a length of toilet tissue to clean himself up, tossing the balled-up paper into the trash bin before he shuts off the light and emerges back into the bedroom. His gaze goes straight to Charles as soon as he’s back and shutting the door behind him, raking along Charles’ body as if none of this made any difference, as if he could fuck Charles right now despite having just got off.

Erik gets back into bed, the mattress shifting under his weight, and leans over to brace one arm on the bed near Charles’ shoulder as he kisses him on the lips. “I want you to tell me the next time you do this,” he says softly, not drawing back. “I want to know about it, every time you touch yourself and think of me.”

“Okay,” Charles murmurs, and kisses him back, before getting up to go clean himself.

He looks at himself in the mirror and knows that this was too far, that he shouldn’t have allowed it, but still --

\-- he can’t bring himself to regret it at all.

*

_Charles_

Charles is surprised the next morning when he’s getting ready to leave for work only to have Agent Collins falling into step behind him instead of Agent Reyes. Until now they’d kept exclusively to their assigned protectees, so for them to swap now is … troubling, when done without warning.

Silently Charles dips into Agent Collins’ thoughts to see why the switch, and when he sees what’s there he feels a sharp pang run through him -- embarrassment, hurt, displeasure all at once, like a stone falling into his belly.

“Good morning,” he says quietly instead of commenting on the change, keeping his emotions under the surface as they step into the elevator and Charles presses the button for the ground floor.

Collins folds his arms behind his back, standing a handsbreadth away from Charles, his gaze on the shutting doors. “Good morning.”

There’s a palpable atmosphere in the elevator car of things wanting to be said. Charles holds out for a few floors, but finally he thinks -- we’re going to have this discussion at some point, anyway.“I apologize about Erik’s behavior last night,” he says. “It was inappropriate, and I’ll speak to him.”

Collins glances at him sidelong, his mouth a tight thin line. “Look, Dr Xavier. I’ve dealt with tough gigs before, and I can manage them. I can manage this, too. But that kid’s going to get himself in trouble acting that way, and it’s not okay.” He shrugs, suit jacket shifting over his shoulders, the motion revealing the shape of his holster underneath. “I’m not responsible for his sexual health, thank God, but this ain’t the way for him to be carrying on.”

Charles wants to laugh, because of all the times in Erik’s life -- this is the only time Erik has ever been celibate, of his own free will or otherwise, and it’s funny in a sick, sad way that Erik has never been less likely to catch a disease or be injured by a sexual partner than he is right now.

“I completely understand,” is what he says out loud, however, as they slide to a halt on the ground floor, the doors sliding open with a soft susurrus of metal brushing metal. “I’ll speak to him about it, but I can’t guarantee you he’ll stop -- I’ll do my best, but these days Erik has a real mind of his own, and he’s not easily swayed.”

“All right,” Collins says, stepping out first to check the lobby is safe before letting Charles follow. “I’ll let you get on with that, then, but if he presses me too hard I’ll have to report it as endangering our purpose here. Okay?”

“Okay,” Charles says, with a sigh, as he heads towards the outside doors. It stings to see Collins’ memory of Erik flirting with him -- no matter that Erik is doing it for effect, Charles still can’t help a twinge of annoyance, of frustration, and he can’t stamp it out no matter how hard he tries. It’s all too reminiscent of Erik’s old habits, the way he used to go after any Dom still breathing, and Charles is self-aware enough to admit that it bothers him.

They get into the car that’s waiting at the curb, and Collins raps on the glass to tell the driver to go; here in the backseat it’s no less uncomfortable than it was in the elevator, sat beside Collins, who is still ruminating on Erik’s behavior, churning it over in his head like a pebble in his shoe that he can’t shake out.

“One other thing,” Collins says after a few minutes, when they’re stuck in traffic four blocks down. “This isn’t just about me. He doesn’t act right with you, either, and you let him get away with it. He isn’t going to learn boundaries like that.”

Charles manages not to wince only by sheer concentration, turning his gaze away from the window and onto Agent Collins instead. “We’re close, I’ll openly admit that,” he says, folding his hands in his lap. “But there’s nothing untoward going on. Erik needs someone to love him unconditionally, Agent. He’s never had that in his life, and I can give him that. Without it Erik would not be the strong, self-confident person he is today -- when I first met him he was small, and afraid of everyone and everything, unable to function in normal society. I would say this is an improvement, wouldn’t you?”

Collins makes a soft, indecipherable sound. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just pointing out that you have a blind spot where it concerns him.” A pause, and then: “My niece is a survivor, and I saw this same behavior from her. So I get it. But that doesn’t make it normal, or healthy. I’m not the expert here, but it seems to me you’re not doing him any favors letting him act out like this.”

“I appreciate your candor,” Charles says, though it’s like having salt poured on a half-closed wound -- Collins isn’t wrong, especially given the relationship Charles and Erik have. But it’s something Charles has committed to, has -- to a certain extent -- made peace with, and so he refuses to think on it any more now. “I’ll bear it in mind, but please do remember that I have a doctorate in these issues. My relationship with Erik is atypical for a doctor and patient, but I am acting with his best clinical needs in mind as well as our interpersonal ones.”

He turns to look back out of the window, trying to suggest that this conversation is over -- and after a moment Collins lets out a quiet huff of a breath and says nothing more until they reach Charles’ office, and then all he says is, “Let me get out first, Dr Xavier.”

*

Later, once he’s ensconced in his office with Collins down the hall in the seating area Charles rereads his blog post of the night before, still pleased with his point, though it’s not one of his best pieces -- it’s an opinion at best, but one he believes in and is interested to see the comments on. It’s a good distraction from the awkwardness of earlier, and so he clicks on the comments icon at the bottom of the post, girding himself for a range of opinions.

> CEREBRO: **Self-policing in the mutant community: help or hindrance?**
> 
> It’s well known that communities where there is significant prejudice from external groups tend to self-police their issues, and the mutant community is no different. While we don’t tend to all live together in small areas delimited by our heritage, unlike most ethnically determined groups (since mutants are born in all races and tend to stick with their families), mutants have a tendency to try and control issues amongst themselves rather than referring them to traditional law enforcement.
> 
> It’s brought about a culture where frankly the police often never even hear about problems, or problem people, because nobody wants to talk to them about it -- and mutants feel like if they do they’ll be betraying the trust of the community. So is it any wonder that it’s only the worst of mutant crimes that become publicly known and that give us all a reputation for going big or going home?
> 
> It’s infuriating as an integrationist to know that we ourselves don’t see ourselves as being part of the wider community, able to take advantage of the services _paid for by our taxes_ , no less, that mutants would rather keep quiet than report a fellow mutant, instead relying on community power -- or community justice, which is nothing more than vigilantism -- to control them.
> 
> Beanstalk disagrees with me that mutants should see the police as the go-to place to report crimes. He cites statistics, numbers, stories of people he knows who have had problems when involving the police in mutant matters. I can’t disagree with him that there are problems inherent in the way this country is policed that often lead to the sorts of reports we see on the nightly news when we’re at home after a long day at work, but I still believe that unless we start using the things we’re entitled to and making them change by using them, they won’t. Nobody changes if you don’t challenge them to. Until mutants start using the police for their purpose, the police won’t be able to help.

 

There are thirty-seven comments. Charles answers the first four quickly, standard responses to questions about the statistics he mentions; the fifth, however, is more involved, and he rereads it twice, checking the links as well.

 

 _Anonymous_ replied:

> This ‘Beanstalk’ sounds educated; you should listen to him. We don’t avoid the police because we don’t want to make other mutants look bad. We avoid the police because crimes with mutant victims are 12 times less likely to be prosecuted ( _source_ ). We avoid the police because we will inevitably be asked what we did to deserve such treatment ( _source_ ). We avoid the police because another mutant perpetrator in jail is another mutant statistic to be used against us in turn, when we accidentally vandalize a building in a moment of extreme upset ( _source_ ) or telepathically give the people around us migraines in our grief ( _source_ ). It’s not about using our taxes for their intended purpose. It’s about making sure our tax money isn’t used against us.

 

Charles frowns, considering for a moment how to respond, before clicking on ‘reply’.

 

 _Cerebro_ replied:

> I don’t disagree with you that there are issues with the way that mutant-related crimes are managed and prosecuted in this country, in fact quite the opposite -- but my point is more that by avoiding the issue we perpetuate it instead of fixing it. By creating our own policing structure, by refusing to report crimes and keeping it all ‘in the family’, we exclude OURSELVES from the wider community and make it harder to then be INcluded later on in other ways. Creating a separate island in the middle of the rest of humanity is not the way to change how mutants are viewed and treated -- instead it exacerbates it. Recent trials have also shown that local police forces running outreach programs with strong mutant involvement ( _source_ ) have seriously decreased the numbers of crimes committed by and against mutants, and gone a long way to balancing the conviction rates from their current mismatch.
> 
> We cannot complain about being segregated if we segregate ourselves. And vigilantism specifically sidesteps the processes and layers put in place to prevent miscarriages of justice. Appointing ourselves judge jury and executioner leads to a lot of chances to punish the wrong person or take out grudges on others without the weight of forensic evidence.

_Anonymous_ replied:

> You seem intelligent for an integrationist, so I won’t talk down to you. Here’s how it is: how many people will have to die or be imprisoned in this ‘trial period’ of legal integration before things are fixed? (That’s assuming they can be fixed--assuming your ideal world ever comes to fruition, which needless to say I highly doubt it will.) Humans do not have our best interests at heart. Quite recently a friend of mine was involved in legal proceedings, in which he was the mutant victim of crimes committed against his person by other mutants. It should come as no surprise to anyone that the majority of the trial consisted of trying to prove he brought every last bit of it upon himself by virtue of existing.
> 
> That’s what happens when we trust humans with our welfare. Mutants are not held accountable by a jury of our peers. We are held accountable by a jury that still sees us as the Other, as the academic _Them_. We are cost-benefit calculations and likelihood ratios of future violence. We are weapons to be viewed as a threat, or to be used against our own kind by the hand of the oppressor (as in your local police’s mutant issue squads). Personally, I refuse to be anyone’s weapon--and so should you.

_Cerebro_ replied:

> I think you put too much emphasis on being a mutant in determining who your peers are -- this is perhaps one of the biggest differences between integrationists and separatists, a matter of social identity, and often where the biggest disagreements come from, in my experience. By defining your ‘peers’ as ‘other mutants’, you’re ignoring everything else that makes you who you are in the social strata of this society -- your personal wealth, the color of your skin, whether you’re male or female, Dom or sub, working, middle or upper class, the way you speak and dress, the level of your education -- I don’t believe that a working class black male sub who works at Office Depot is more the peer of an upper class white female Dom who is a successful lawyer than anyone else is, simply because they both happen to have additional abilities. By thinking in this way mutants are setting THEMSELVES apart, and others will follow suit.
> 
> If you don’t challenge the system by using the system it will not change. The only way out is through -- choosing to sidestep the system will only lead to it evolving and growing without you, and without serving your needs. A personal example: when Beanstalk decided last year to pursue a mutant pickpocket on foot after my wallet was stolen, _I_ was the one who nearly got arrested because I had to intervene to keep them from battling in the street like this was some sort of video game. If he had just reported it to the policeman standing right on the corner, even as he ran by, none of that would have happened. Instead I got collared for using telepathy on an ‘innocent bystander’, until we finally got it straightened out.
> 
> You will no doubt see that as reinforcement for your point of view, however had we involved the police properly there would have been no confusion. Not that Beanstalk would admit that, of course!

_Anonymous_ replied:

> Intervening to save your Dom from a dangerous pickpocket? My my, who says chivalry is dead?

 

It’s not the response Charles was expecting -- he checks the IP address but it’s definitely the same person, and so he sits and frowns at his computer screen, a bit taken aback. He’d been expecting academic debate, or discussion at least, but that was … weirdly patronizing, for someone he had started to respect.

He has to see another patient not long after that, and the anonymous commenter doesn’t reply again, so Charles has forgotten about it all by the time he gets home that evening, finding Erik sat in the library working on something for school. It’s … Charles prefers, today especially after this morning’s conversation with Collins, not to think about the fact that Erik is still in high school.

“Hi,” Charles says tiredly, leaning against the table. “How was your day?”

“Fascinating,” Erik says without looking up, still tapping away at his keyboard. “Class, college applications, surfing the internet. Did you know there’s an entire integrationist blogosphere out there?”

Charles gives Erik a sidelong look. “There’s a blog out there on most subjects, I would imagine,” he says. “Why, are you starting your own?”

“Oh, Charles,” Erik says, and he finally meets Charles’ gaze over the top of his laptop, one elegant brow raised. “When have you ever known me to be a slacktivist?”

Well, that’s insulting, Charles thinks, then looks, and realizes -- “You were the anonymous commenter,” he says, understanding dawning on him, and he knows he must look a bit like a slapped fish but he hadn’t even considered -- even if he probably should have.

Erik snorts. “Took you long enough. Blogging, Charles? _Really?_ ”

Charles had never really thought about Erik ever reading it -- it feels like worlds colliding, and he isn’t quite sure what to say, thinking of all the times he’s written about Hellfire, or even Erik’s case itself -- and all the things he’s written about Beanstalk, for that matter. God, apparently this is his day for having all his choices dissected by others.

“I enjoy having an outlet that doesn’t rely on my public perception,” he says a little stiffly, feeling rather awkward about the thought that Erik has probably read it all, has probably seen all the posts Charles never wrote for his eyes. “I want to put my point across without being dissected for my money or my degree.”

“Mmhmm,” Erik says, and he picks up his pencil, tipping the end of it against his lower lip and grinning wide enough to show teeth. Charles tries not to get distracted by Erik’s mouth, although the oral fixation is … diverting. “Tell me, how long have you been seeing this Beanstalk character?”

“Don’t be daft,” Charles says, leaning back against the bookcase and folding his arms across his chest, head resting back onto the cool wood. “You weren’t meant to read any of that.”

“Oh, but I did,” Erik says, and this time he bites down on the pencil, clicking it against his teeth, and shuts the top of his laptop to rest his elbow on the table and his chin in his hand. “I read through your entire blog. It looks like you’ve been dating him since December. Nonstop, too. Is it serious?”

Charles resigns himself to being teased about this until the end of time. “Erik, it’s been a long day,” he says. “Can we do this tomorrow?”

“If you insist,” Erik says, and he slowly unfolds himself from his chair, dropping his pencil atop his notebook and stretching his arms overhead, the action drawing up the hem of his shirt to expose a sliver of bare golden midriff, flat and muscled. “I thought we had something really special.”

“Erik,” Charles says, a little sharply, glancing sidelong at the door to the hallway. “There are still government agents living in this apartment with us. Be more careful, okay?”

“They’re in the other room,” Erik says, and he steps forward across the library, catching Charles with one hand on his hip, pressing him back against the bookshelf and stealing a quick kiss from his lips. His mouth is hot, his tongue flicking out against Charles’. Charles stiffens, caught off-guard, and Erik’s hand pushes up the bottom of Charles’ shirt, dragging along the plane of his stomach. That touch briefly dips lower, almost too low, and his palm grazing past the denim lap of Charles’ jeans before he steps back, eyes half-lidded and his gaze warm. “If they weren’t here, and if circumstances were -- different -- you know I’d suck your cock right now.”

“That’s not -- Erik, you agreed to the way we’re doing things,” Charles says, frustrated and feeling hot under the skin at the same time, prickling, tingling with it -- he can feel Erik’s own frustration, too, magnifying Charles’. “If you’re not happy then we can call it quits, but that’s -- don’t torment me. I don’t need that today.”

Erik glances down for a moment, and when he meets Charles’ eyes again the teasing is gone from his expression, his face wiped clean. “Fine. But there’s no point pretending that’s not what we both want. Neither of us are saints.”

It stings more sharply than it would have done before last night, Charles’ mixed emotions about their mutual masturbation making him flush pink.

“I’m not pretending,” Charles says, lowering his voice, hand reaching out to touch Erik’s upper arm, gripping it for a moment and willing Erik to feel it, Charles’ own want and love and the sense of something stoppered up, pressure under the cork wanting to burst. “But this is the way it has to be, and we both agreed. No matter how much I want you, this is the only way I know how to do this without crippling myself.”

Erik lets out a soft breath, and then he kisses Charles again, more chastely this time, teeth catching briefly at Charles’ lower lip. “That doesn’t make it not … hard.”

“I know,” Charles says, petting Erik’s arm, hand stroking up and down his tricep. “We need to be more careful, though. Collins brought it up this morning, said that you were too intimate with me, that I needed to establish more boundaries. He also mentioned last night. Before you came up to bed, that is.”

“And?” Erik’s brows lift.

“What were you thinking, Erik?” Charles asks with a sigh. “Inappropriate doesn’t even begin to come close. What if he’d taken you up on it? Would you have followed through?”

“Of course not.” Erik scowls. “What do you take me for? I just want them to fuck off back to wherever they came from. I should think you’d agree.”

“This isn’t the way to do that,” Charles says, folding his arms across his chest. “All you’re going to do is piss them off -- if the FBI bosses still want them here they’ll stay here, simple as that. All you’re doing is making it harder to live with them.” And stinging Charles’ irrational feelings of jealousy as well, but there’s no point going into that.

“As you say.” Erik sounds sardonic, but he doesn’t argue further, just leans in to brush his lips against Charles’ forehead, his hands light on Charles’ hips. “I have homework to do.”

“Then I’ll leave you be,” Charles says. He lets Erik step back, over to the table, watching him with a bruised sort of feeling inside until Erik picks up his pen, and then Charles leaves to go have a soak in the bath, hopefully wash all of this away.

*

Things are still a little off later that evening, when Erik has snuck into Charles’ room and lain down beside him, wordless in the dim light of Charles’ lamp. Charles doesn’t say anything either for a long time, just finishes his chapter and then sets his book aside, sliding down his pillows to lie down on his back, his head turned towards Erik, hands folded over his stomach.

“So,” he says.

“We should go to the farmer’s market tomorrow,” Erik says. “I need to get a few things for dinner.”

“All right,” Charles says after a long pause, wrongfooted by the casual domesticity of it, half-expecting Erik to be trying to persuade Charles to help him scare off their escorts. “When?”

“Three? I’m helping Madelyne with her calculus homework in the morning. I don’t know how long it will take.”

Erik shifts, rolling onto his side to face Charles properly, tucking one arm up underneath his pillow. They’re close like this, Erik’s eyes dark without the overhead light on, and it’s so … this, this is what Charles wanted the most when he proposed their new relationship. Arrangement. This intimacy, feeling close emotionally without everything else getting in the way.

“That’s fine by me,” he says, feeling Erik’s breath brushing his cheek. He stays where he is, just looking at Erik for a long, slow minute, letting himself relax into this feeling. “I do love you. I’m sorry I’m making things hard right now.”

The corners of Erik’s lips tilt up very slightly. “I know. And I understand why you’re doing this.” His hand moves under the covers, until just his fingertips are brushing Charles’ arm. “It’s hard, but it can be enough. For now.”

“Good,” Charles says, and he closes his eyes, focusing on that touch, light and warm and somehow all the more electrifying for knowing -- they went further than this once. It’s only a matter of time before they do it again.

*

> Dear Erik,
> 
> Of course you may use my first name; I’m ashamed not to have offered before. We are, I think, more friends than acquaintances now, so it is only proper.
> 
> While I entirely understand your reasoning, I think you may find that if you are the one to end Sebastian Shaw, and that is known, then it may lower rather than raise your standing in the separatist community, especially if you intend to be more, shall we say, mainstream than the majority of Hellfire. While I am not an advocate of a pacifist approach to gaining our freedoms -- we have all seen how well that has gone over the past fifty years -- still I think that killing Shaw would make you his victim, getting revenge, rather than his survivor and in some ways heir. Let the brutes kill the brutes -- stay above the animal kingdom and you will be far more respected.
> 
> I would be very happy to look over your personal statement, of course, and I do hope that you’ll let me know when you are due to come and visit Berkeley -- I would be extremely pleased if you would stay with me while you do so, and allow me to show you around. A mind like yours deserves the best environs -- and teachers, if I may be so modest -- to really reach its full potential. Let me put Berkeley’s best foot forward for you in person.
> 
> If you accept, please let me know and I will make any necessary arrangements.
> 
> Yours, etc,
> 
> Elias


	36. Thirty-six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific chapter warnings in the end notes - please do check if you have triggers.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely [bourbonss](http://bourbonss.tumblr.com/) for her amazing art for this chapter, which you will see below! Her attention to detail is incredible, so much love for her art <3

Subject: **Visiting Berkeley**  
To: Elias Braden-Newell

 

> Dear Elias,
> 
> You might be right about the public reaction if I kill Shaw. But I think you can understand why I feel it necessary. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to watch him rot away in prison without his power, of course.
> 
> I talked to Charles about visiting Berkeley and it looks like I could come over Columbus Day weekend in October. Charles won’t be able to accompany me because he has a pre-existing commitment that day, and asked me to forward his regrets. I’d be honored to take you up on your offer of accommodation. I’m particularly interested in visiting your research lab if it’s open over the weekend.
> 
> I will send you my itinerary once I’ve bought plane tickets.
> 
> Erik

*

_Erik_

Summer vacation was fun enough last year, when Erik had his marathon training to occupy him during the days and plenty of parties and casual sex to take up the remaining hours while Charles was away at work. This year, however, once he’s finished the SAT and has drafts of all his personal statements out with advisers and teachers awaiting comments, he finds himself with remarkably little to do. He gets bored of video games early on, and there are only so many books he can check out from the library per week; after a few days of milling around at loose ends he goes through a phase of inventing increasingly elaborate recipes to bake, bringing Charles home every night to a new kind of pastry or cake awaiting his verdict, each the product of eight hours of work.

He’s elbow-deep in another one of these creations when the bell rings one afternoon in mid July.

“I’ll get it,” Erik says before Roger can get up from his chair, dusting flour off his hands and forearms as best he can but nonetheless trailing a faint white cloud along behind him as he heads to the gallery to answer the door.

The girl standing outside looks as if she’s never been more bored in her life, the expression on her face all but flatlined, overshadowed by the peak of her cap. She’s wearing a messenger uniform, which explains how she got up to the penthouse level -- the concierge must have let her through. “Letter for Lehnsherr,” she says in a thick New York accent, pulling a clipboard out of her satchel and offering it to him. “Sign please.”

Who the hell sends post via messenger anymore? Erik thinks, but he takes the clipboard and signs his name in the box all the same. He glances at the box labeled ‘sender’ but it -- unlike any of the others -- has been left blank.

“Who from?” Erik asks, passing the clipboard back over.

“I dunno, do I?” she says, taking the clipboard without so much as glancing at it and extracting a letter from her satchel, which she drops into his hand. “I’m just the delivery girl. Have a nice day.” She turns on her heel and walks the four steps over to the elevator, standing with her back to Erik until the doors open and she can walk inside to leave.

Erik turns the letter over in his hands, standing there in the open doorway, his baking temporarily forgotten. He lived with Shaw long enough to recognize expensive paper when he sees it -- or feels it, in this case: even the envelope is high-end, made of a thick creamy paper that doesn’t rasp under his skin when he smooths his thumb along it, oddly heavy. It’s simply labeled with one word, written with black fountain ink in an elegant calligraphy: _Erik_

“You’d better let me take a look at that,” Roger says, coming up to stand behind Erik’s shoulder and reaching for the letter. “Could be anything. Anthrax.”

“They screen for that at the agency, I expect,” Erik murmurs, distracted, but he jerks the envelope down and out of reach before Roger can touch it, spinning around to look at him. “It’s fine. I know who sent this. Thanks.”

“It’s my job,” Roger says, still holding out his hand. “Look, I won’t read it, but you really should let me check it for funny business first. It won’t harm you to wait a minute while I do.”

Erik hesitates, but he can come up with no good reason not to comply. While he senses no metal, the envelope is too thick to tell if it contains anything besides paper. “Fine,” he says at last, offering it over a bit begrudgingly.

“Thanks,” Roger says, and takes it over to a side table to lay it down, pulling out his pocket knife to slit open the top. “I really should read it, though,” he says to Erik, glancing over his shoulder as he tugs the letter out. “It could be a threat, in which case we’ll need to report it.”

“It’s not a threat.”

“Let me be the judge of that,” Roger says, and shakes out the paper. Nothing falls out. “Looks safe so far,” he says, going to unfold it, but Erik snatches it out of his grasp before he can.

“You said you wouldn’t read it,” Erik snaps. “If it’s a threat, I’ll tell you. But it’s not. It’s --” _from Shaw_ “ -- a love letter,” he finishes awkwardly, and Roger pauses, his eyebrows rising.

“Someone couriered you a love letter?” he asks incredulously, his voice clearly stating he doesn’t believe Erik the slightest. “That’s an expensive proposition.”

"You do know what neighborhood we're in?"

“Look,” Roger says, letting out a small sigh and propping his hands in fists at his hips, sounding incredibly frustrated. “It’s my job to check this stuff out. I’m here for your protection. So just let me do my job and I promise not to pass on any embarrassing revelations from this letter, okay?”

"Maybe I'll let you read it when I'm done," Erik says, although he intends to do no such thing. He lifts a brow in Roger's direction and heads off toward the library, Roger and his metal following close behind. He settles in the sole armchair, back to the wall so Roger can't look over his shoulder, and unfolds the letter to read.

 

> Dear Erik,
> 
> I perhaps should not have been surprised to hear from our mutual acquaintance that you are interested in helping with this particular project; from what I have heard of you it is very much in your wheelhouse, and so I was pleased to receive your offer, especially given your experience in these areas.
> 
> As I know you are busy with your own concerns (SH told me that you have been assigned a government bodyguard recently, which I imagine comes with its own frustrations) I will keep this letter brief and to the point. I would be very happy to include you on the project staff.
> 
> Taking part will involve irregular hours at sometimes short notice, as the project cannot run on a set schedule, and this may sometimes be inconvenient for you but we would need to be able to rely on your swift support when needed if you are to be useful. It is a responsible position that needs your total dedication in order to be successfully executed.
> 
> I am also aware that your guardian, Dr Xavier, may not approve of this venture given his protectiveness over your time and attention. You would need to overcome this obstacle yourself, as I cannot become involved or rely on his ongoing approval.
> 
> Please let me know via our acquaintance if this is acceptable to you, and if so I will arrange a project meeting for you to be brought up to speed.
> 
> Yours faithfully,
> 
> Caliban

 

Erik's brows lift near the beginning of the letter -- written, as on the envelope, in a perfectly-scripted black calligraphy -- and don't go down again until he has read it twice over. It’s not what he had expected. Yes, to swineherd he’d pretended there was no question as to what Caliban would desire of him, but privately he’d assumed Caliban would see it as too great a risk to involve someone with Erik’s level of … notoriety.

“So?” Roger asks finally, sounding rather exasperated.

Erik glances up at him and folds the letter. “It’s private.”

Roger lets out a loud exhalation and says, “All right. Look, I understand you don’t like us being here, I really do, but you could try and work with us a little, Erik. We’re not here to make your life difficult, we’re here to try and protect you, and Dr Xavier, too. I know you care what happens to him, even if you’re too stubborn to let us help you.”

“Are you going to read my email, too?” Erik says coldly, and Roger rolls his eyes, finally turning away and heading off towards the kitchen.

Erik waits until he’s out of sight to pull out his cell phone, calling Charles from speed dial. It rings twice before Charles picks up.

“Hello, Erik? Is everything okay?” Charles sounds very professional, his tone almost formal, which suggests he might have a patient in the room with him.

“I can call back later if you’re busy,” Erik says, tapping the letter against his thigh.

“Give me the summary?” Something rustles at the other end, and Erik can hear Charles saying, away from the phone, “We’ll get started in a moment, my apologies.”

Erik glances down at the paper in his lap, unfolding the top half of it to look again at the calligraphy, the curves and angles of his own written name. “I got a letter by courier today,” Erik says. “From …” Roger comes back out of the kitchen with a glass of water in hand, giving Erik a sharp look “... Frank.”

“Hmm,” Charles says, clearly keeping back from saying something himself. “Okay. I’ll have a look when I get home. I’ll call you if I get a chance between appointments.”

“All right. I’ll see you tonight.” Erik hangs up and rises from the chair, tucking the letter into his back pocket and evading Roger to go up to his old bedroom, the only place in this house besides Charles’ room or the bathroom where the Rogers cannot follow.

He stays there the rest of the day, and gets through five episodes of _House of Cards_ before he feels the front door open and shut downstairs and the sensation of Charles’ mind reaching out to his own, tangible only, he knows, because Charles allows it to be. _Home,_ Charles says silently, with the accompanying sensation of his coming upstairs, heading towards his bedroom to change. The question mark that comes after it is wordless, an inquiry after Erik’s wellbeing that Erik’s come to recognise through years of exposure to telepathy.

Erik closes his laptop and gets out of bed, bringing the letter with him as he heads down the hall to Charles’ bedroom, checking for the Rogers’ metal -- they’re both downstairs -- before he raps his knuckles lightly against the doorframe.

Welcoming, a sensation of hinges swinging open. _In my closet._

Erik lets himself in, pushing the door shut and turning the lock behind him. He almost melts it, just to be safe, but decides that’s a hair more paranoid than necessary. He finds Charles exactly where Charles said he’d be, toeing off his dress shoes and unfastening his cufflinks, shirt cuffs falling open at the wrists.

“The letter’s not really from Frank,” Erik says. “I don’t know how much you gathered from our conversation earlier.”

“I didn’t expect he was much of a letter writer,” Charles says, looking over at Erik as he unbuttons his shirt, slipping it off to go in the laundry. “I didn’t get much chance to look, I’ve had patients all afternoon. Tell me about it?”

Erik’s eyes are drawn down to Charles’ bared torso as if by magnetism; he forces himself to snap his gaze back up to Charles’ face. “It’s from Caliban. He’s invited me to help with the fugitive project.”

Charles clearly tries not to, but there’s a moment where Erik can see the grimace cross over his face before he evens out his features, managing a tight smile as he says, “Well, that’s a surprise. I would have thought you’d be too much of a liability, given your high profile.” He reaches for a t-shirt, tugging it on over his head.

“I thought so as well.” Erik shifts to lean against the doorway, resisting the urge to step closer and run his fingers through Charles’ fluffed-up hair, fixing it. “But apparently not. I’m going to accept the offer.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Charles says. He reaches down to unfasten his belt and fly, stepping out of his dress trousers and shaking them out before reaching for a hanger. “I know you think this is important for you to be involved in, but to me it just sounds risky and, frankly, suspiciously timed. Given everything that’s going on, all of a sudden you’re given the chance to get involved in a mutant underground railroad, tiptoeing on the wrong side of the law? It’s a big coincidence to swallow.”

“I do know that,” Erik says. “I’m not an idiot. But if it is a trap, I want to know why. If it’s Hellfire, well -- they could have tried to kill me at the Hague, and they didn’t.”

Charles doesn’t say anything to that, his lips tight as he refrains from comment -- he hides it well, but Erik can read a deep unhappiness in the tense line of his shoulders, the sharp motions of his hands as he pulls on a pair of jeans. Finally Erik pushes off the doorframe and goes to set his hands lightly on Charles’ hips, brushing a kiss against his warm brow. He doesn’t miss that Charles would like to order Erik not to go, to force him if necessary, the way he might if all they were was guardian and ward. That he doesn’t … it says something to Erik. That there’s a respect there, even if they still aren’t sleeping together in any sense but the literal.

“I love you,” he says quietly, and rubs his hands up toward Charles’ waist, then back down again. “Everything will be fine.”

“Hmm,” Charles says, but he touches his palm to Erik’s cheek anyway, stroking his thumb over Erik’s cheekbone, before wrapping his other arm around Erik’s middle and pulling him into a hug, holding him close. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says aloud, silently adding, _like this entire venture, preferably._ His body is warm and solid against Erik’s, his arms tight, as if he could hold Erik back by main physical force.

Erik smiles, just slightly, and turns his face in toward Charles’ hair to breathe in the scent of him. “I’m going to go downstairs,” he says, and knows Charles will gather from his mind that he means to email swineherd, as per the letter. And to finish the rest of his baking. “I want you to come down with me.”

“Okay,” Charles says, comfortable and easy, and Erik wishes with all his might that the agents downstairs would just -- fuck off, finally, so that it could always be like this.

 

*

_Charles_

“What’s this?” Charles asks the next day, turning the camera over in his hands; it’s not one he’s seen before, and as far as he’s aware Erik doesn’t own a camcorder. He could be wrong, of course, and the evidence is here in his grip, a plain silver video recorder, unlabelled, nothing to suggest what’s on it. “Did you want to start recording your sessions?”

They’re sat in his professional office together for their therapy session, the change of setting something Charles suggested, hoping it will make it easier to continue with psychotherapy now that they’re together again. Here, Charles is used to being Dr Xavier, professional and controlled -- unlike at home.

“It’s nothing to do with therapy. I found this at the safehouse,” Erik says. He’s unusually tense today, his arms folded across his chest and his feet flat on the floor, shoulders taut even though he’s leaning back against the sofa. “I haven’t looked yet. But depending on what parties were filmed with it, there’s a chance we could identify some important underground members who may be affiliated with this Caliban thing. Maybe even Caliban himself.” _Or Solomon,_ Erik is thinking, though he doesn’t say as much aloud.

“Hmm,” Charles says, looking down at the camera with considerably more apprehension now. “Surely you would know them already, though? And it’s not as if they’ve been meeting there before you let them in. They needed you to get past security.”

“I don’t have a perfect memory. I saw hundreds of people at these parties. Most of the time, I wasn’t paying attention to their names and faces.” Erik takes the camcorder back from Charles and leans forward to pull his laptop out of his satchel, plugging a USB cord into the camera’s port. He hits the power key on his laptop and glances back up at Charles, meeting his gaze. “This isn’t something we can just ignore. It’s evidence that’s in our hands instead of swineherd’s, and only because I got to it before he did. It’s valuable because of that if nothing else.”

It’s a sound plan, even if Charles would prefer to argue that they should give the video to Moira -- but they can always do that later, or Erik can send it to her anonymously, if they can’t think of a way to give it directly.

He feels rather anxious about it, but finally he says, “All right,”, shifting closer to Erik so he can see the screen more clearly. “Let’s have a look.”

Perhaps, too, he thinks, it will be useful exposure therapy for Erik, reviewing these memories directly and seeing people he sees in his nightmares as they really were -- human, awkward, most likely, rather than as dark and terrifying silhouettes.

The video starts up in the middle of a party, taking in a room full of people -- Charles recognizes the room as the empty living room they were in when they went to the safehouse with swineherd, but now it’s vibrant and alive, men and women dressed up to the nines talking at high volumes, the words blurring together so nobody is clearly audible. It takes a moment for Charles to realize what’s making him frown, uneasy, but then he sees -- everyone there is a Dominant, the way they dress and stand and act giving it away like smoke signals even through the screen.

“There aren’t any subs,” he says, glancing at Erik.

“Subs didn’t come very often,” Erik says, sounding distracted, his gaze still fixed on the screen and the glow of the video reflected in his irises. “I expect the way Hellfire felt about them was common knowledge. The only subs I ever saw were either someone’s date or someone’s escort.”

The camera pans around the room, and Charles feels a sudden sick lurch in his stomach as he sees Emma Frost talking to some other Domme by the doorway, her dress a pristine glittering white; then it moves further, and Charles lets out a soft sound as it settles on another familiar face.

“What’s your name?” the cameraman asks, sounding surprised. “Bit young, aren’t you?”

“I’m sixteen,” Erik says, though he doesn’t look a day over ten. He’s wearing that horrible collar still, the black leather fit snugly around his slender neck. Just the sight of him is -- Erik is so _young_ , skinny and waifish, with dark circles under his eyes, his hair soft and duckling-like in stark contrast to the waspish shape of his waist, clearly cinched in with a corset intended for someone who had stopped growing. Charles wants simultaneously to stop the playback and to reach into the video to pluck out this young, damaged Erik and keep him safe, take him out of there.

“Sure you are,” the cameraman says, keeping the lens pointed at Erik. “You here with someone, sweetheart?”

Erik tips his head down and shakes his head slowly, lifting his hand to his mouth to lightly bite the tip of his thumb, a gesture that would seem shy if it weren’t for the way Erik’s gaze glitters as it darts up at the cameraman from beneath his lashes. “I came with the Hellfire officers,” he says softly. “But I’m not _with_ them.”

This is … Charles watches uncomfortably as the cameraman pans down Erik’s body, then back up, and says, “Oh? Does your daddy know you go to his parties and flirt with strangers, then?”

Erik in the video laughs, and Erik on the sofa shifts next to Charles, adjusting the laptop on his thighs. The child Erik’s laughter doesn’t reach his eyes, though, and his smile fades too quickly as he glances off to the side at someone offscreen.

The camera follows his gaze, and it’s unsurprising and unpleasant at the same time to see Sebastian Shaw stood only a short distance away in his own conversation, martini glass in hand, as the cameraman says, “Shaw, huh? Does he share you, sweetheart?”

“Why don’t you ask him and find out?”

Abruptly, Charles reaches out and hits the spacebar to pause the video, feeling his face running sheet white, horror etching itself into his every muscle, his stomach clenching.

“We shouldn’t watch that,” he says to Erik, turning to look at him where he’s sat beside Charles. Erik looks as sick as Charles feels, his skin a waxy grey color, and it takes him a second to flick his attention back to Charles.

“What? Oh. … Right.”

Charles reaches further, and this time he curls his fingers around the edge of the laptop lid, then pulls it closed, until the apple symbol goes dark and the macbook goes to sleep. “Are you okay?” he asks, wondering if he should remove the laptop altogether, put it somewhere Erik can’t see it. For now, though, he wraps his arm around Erik’s shoulders, tugging him in against his side and pressing a kiss to Erik’s temple, hard.

“I think I need this,” Erik says, not-answering Charles’ question and turning his head toward Charles instead. It forces Charles to break the kiss.

One of Erik’s hands grasps the back of the computer, white-knuckled. “Exposure. Cognitive-behavioral … thing. That’s exactly what this is, isn’t it? So I should watch it.”

“Erik … ”

He’s not wrong, entirely, that seeing it, exposing himself to what happened to him and seeing the reality of it, might be helpful, but … Charles isn’t sure he can bear to put Erik through the pain of it, to feel that along with Erik and know there’s nothing he can do to make it stop -- or at least, nothing without taking away the choice to watch it from Erik. It’s not the attitude of an objective therapist. But then, Charles is hardly objective any more.

“You don’t have to do this. It’s … well, exposure therapy is often unpleasant,” Charles says, leaning his forehead against Erik’s. “It’s up to you, of course it is, but … be certain, first.”

“I’ll never be certain,” Erik says grimly. “I -- “

He presses his lips together, eyes falling shut for a brief moment, lashes moving anxiously against his cheek. Charles can sense the unhappiness rolling off him in waves, the seasick queasiness but also Erik’s determination not to be swept away by it.

“I’m doing it. It’s my life. Thinking about my own life shouldn’t feel like this,” Erik says decisively, eyes snapping open again.

“Okay,” Charles says, and he squeezes Erik’s shoulder where he has hold of it -- then glances uneasily down at the laptop, and feels an intense pulse of nausea rising inside of him, strong enough that he knows Erik feels it in the way Erik stiffens against him, nostrils flaring. Charles grits his teeth, letting his toes crumple up in his shoes so that Erik won’t see his hands fist. “Okay.”

“You don’t have to watch,” Erik says after a long moment, after he’s cracked the laptop open again and has typed in his password, the screen yet lit with the still image of Shaw at the party. “I can … do this.”

“I really don’t want to,” Charles admits, shame adding to his nausea until he’s not sure how he’s keeping it all in. “I ought to, though, if you’re going to. I’m your doctor.”

“Yes, well, I’d like you to keep wanting to fuck me after this, too.”

Charles can’t help it, he chokes on a bark of laughter, perhaps a little overwrought; he meets Erik’s gaze, and sighs, rueful and feeling rather like he’s failed some kind of test. “Well,” he says, and isn’t sure how to continue from there, falls silent again. “Well. I don’t want you to be alone with this, either. I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

Erik shrugs one shoulder. “I have headphones.”

It’s better, but still … “Would it help,” Charles says slowly, “if I were to lie down with my head in your lap, facing towards you? Then I can put my arm around you but I won’t see the screen.” He can’t help but suspect, as well, that if it came to it Erik would prefer for Charles not to see this, either, to keep it as something other people never see about him. He’s so sensitive about his past, and about his Dominance now, that Charles seeing him hurt, vulnerable, _submissive_ , would almost certainly do damage to Erik’s confidence. It would be better this way, for both of them. “Would that help?”

“I think that would work just fine,” Erik says with a tiny smile, and so Charles manages an awkward quirk of his own mouth before he shuffles himself further down the sofa, tucking his legs up onto the cushions -- shoes kicked off to protect the upholstery -- and lays himself carefully down in Erik’s lap, the top half of his torso ending up draped across Erik as Charles arranges himself, the laptop shifted out of the way until Charles is settled.

Charles slides his arm between Erik’s back and the back of the sofa, his hand pressing against Erik’s spine, then makes himself relax into it, muscles forcibly softening. “Is this okay?” he asks, his forehead and the bridge of his nose brushing against the cotton of Erik’s shirt.

“It’s good,” Erik says, and one of his hands settles after a moment on Charles’ head, fingers slipping into his hair. “Thank you.”

He shifts for a moment, presumably retrieving the headphones, and Charles closes his eyes, swallows, hard, and concentrates on anything else but what Erik is about to watch.

 

*

_Erik_

“All right,” the cameraman says, a tinge of excitement in his voice now, and he moves past some other people Erik doesn’t recognize to stand beside Shaw, waiting until he’s acknowledged. Shaw’s eyes, when he turns, are cold and dead, even when he smiles in that typical charming fashion. “Yes?”

“I was just chatting to your boy here,” the cameraman says, “and he suggested you might be imposed upon to share him. Is that so?”

“Erik is a very accommodating boy,” Shaw says, looking sideways, off-screen, where Erik assumes he himself must have been standing. “You’re welcome to use him, just keep from causing any long-term damage.”

Erik takes in a shallow breath and is suddenly struck with the keen memory of how it felt, trying to breathe against the corset constricted around his middle, the way the steel bones creaked as he didn’t dare manipulate them with his power. Charles’ hand is still there, a warm weight pressed against his (uncorseted) waist. _I’m here,_ Charles says silently, his breath heating Erik’s stomach even through his shirt.

“Thank you, very generous,” the cameraman says, and Shaw gives him a tight, dry smile before turning back to his conversation. The camera swings back around to see Erik, who has clearly been watching this entire exchange with interest but whose gaze snaps down the second the camera catches it.

Christ, Erik thinks. Did he really think even this stranger would have beaten him for looking him in the eye too often?

“Sir?” Erik says politely.

“What do you do?” the cameraman asks; a hand comes out from behind the camera and strokes over Erik’s hair, his cheek, taking hold of his chin to lift it and pose it for inspection.

 

 

Erik leans forward a little, staring entranced at his own face on the screen. If he looks closely enough he thinks he can see the shadow of a bluish bruise near his temple, mostly-obscured by his hair. What happened? He remembers this, he remembers -- he remembers this man. He remembers feeling the computer inside the camera as it watched him. No need for Shaw’s blackmail footage, not when the Doms are making their own. Had Shaw given him a head injury a few days earlier? Erik remembers hitting his head on the footboard of a bed. He remembers being slammed skull-first into a table. Being shaken against a wall, and thrown through a glass shower door. Impossible to say if any of those caused this faint discoloration, or if it’s just a trick of the light.

“I’ll do anything,” Erik says, and it’s vertiginous, watching himself say that, hearing it on his own voice and seeing the fake flirtatious smile on his mouth. He’s said the exact same words a thousand times since, with the exact same tone and the exact same grin, even after leaving Hellfire. All those Doms he sought out for himself and to whom he made those same promises. And for what? Because he missed _this_ so very much?

“Well then,” the cameraman says, and that hand shifts, thumb coming to press on Erik’s lower lip and pushing inside, not waiting for them to part but almost puncturing its way between them, into Erik’s mouth. “Why don’t you get down on your knees and suck my cock, pretty boy?”

If Erik didn’t know any better, he’d think he was actually thrilled by the invitation -- he sinks immediately down to his knees, both his hands going for the cameraman’s groin and smoothing against the placket, against his inner thighs, trying to feel for his cock. It’s obvious when Erik finds it, too, from the sudden, incredulous look he shoots up at the camera and the ridiculous way he bites at his lower lip.

“You’re so big,” Erik says in false amazement, rubbing his palm against the swollen flesh through the fabric.

 _Fucking liar_ , Erik mouths silently in real life, but in the video the cameraman says, “Is it all going to fit?”, his hand stroking Erik’s hair again, petting him like a child -- which, of course, he is.

Erik doesn’t answer him, and uses his power to undo the zipper. At the time, it never would have occurred to him not to. He only ever saw mutants, except on missions, and Shaw used to reward him for using his power for every little thing.

“Good, take it out.”

Erik on the screen obeys, and Erik on the sofa looks at the other people in the room, the ones who are pretending not to notice the ten-year-old boy on his knees sucking cock. The other ones who notice, who like it, but then look away quickly to pretend that they don’t. And, of course, the ones who are staring outright, fascinated, one man palming himself through his trousers. Erik hadn’t noticed the other people at the time. It hadn’t occurred to him that they might consider this abnormal.

Erik looks back at himself, now kissing and licking the cameraman’s cock, the film zooming in toward his face when he finally takes it properly into his mouth. Erik notices his eyes are closed. What was he thinking about? Where did he go?

“Yeah, go on,” the cameraman is saying, all the usual inane rubbish Erik barely noticed at the time, the camera unsteady now as he thrusts into Erik’s mouth. “Suck me.”

Erik glances away from the screen, feeling strangely sick to his stomach. That reaction is … unusual, for him. He looks down at Charles instead, Charles’ forehead tilted toward Erik’s stomach, one hand curled near Erik’s hip. He could be sleeping, if it weren’t for the shallow way his shoulders rise and fall. It’s a perfectly submissive posture, and maybe it should make Erik feel worse given what he’s watching on screen, but instead the riot in his gut quiets a bit and he feels … better. Only a small amount, but still.

Settling his hand back on Charles’ head, Erik looks up at the laptop again. His younger self is putting on a real show for the camera, moaning as he takes the cock all the way down his throat, smearing the head and its pre-come around his mouth, his cheek, gaze half-lidded now like some kind of addict. Erik doesn’t remember when he started doing that. When he tipped over from fighting back to pretending he loved it.

Charles’ hand is stroking Erik’s back, slow, small motions of his fingers, his mind projecting a sensation of reassurance, of calm.

“Ugh,” the cameraman grunts, and he comes in Erik’s mouth, thrusting deep inside to blow his load; Erik can see the white smear of it on his tongue when the cock pulls back before pushing in again, working through it. Erik swallows, of course. He hasn’t done anything else since that fateful time when he was five years old and puked on Shaw’s cock.

God, Erik’s heart is racing. It’s all but stuttering in his chest as he watches himself lick the cock clean before sitting back on his heels, hands folding in his lap to await further instruction. His lips are slick with spit and there’s a tiny bead of come on his chin, but Erik hasn’t wiped it away. He wants -- he wants to make himself stand up, to step bodily into the video, into that safehouse, and use his power to rip everyone there to shreds with every scrap of metal he can find. Detonate the bombs on the safehouse door. Melt the cameras in the walls.

“He’s a good boy, isn’t he,” Shaw says from off-camera, and though the shot doesn’t move to look at him Erik knows it’s Shaw’s hand that comes into view to caress Erik’s hair, stroking over it as Erik turns towards him like a struck dog towards its owner. “Come on then, Erik -- let’s show people what a good boy you can be in a proper setting.”

Shaw tugs Erik to his feet, and then the shot goes to his face as he says, “Bring the camera.”

 _I remember this,_ Erik thinks abruptly. _I remember --_ Flashes of it, sharp bits and broken pieces, fractured memories of a dozen different guests he’s entertained here before but a few of them matching this scene. He tries to link them together in his mind to a coherent whole, a mosaic, but too much is still missing. Memories he forgot not because he had to, but because they were too much like so many others to be worth remembering.

The camera is unsteady for a bit, probably the cameraman tucking himself back into his pants, but then it moves, starting to follow Erik and Shaw down the hall. A few others are coming as well, taking Shaw’s words as the invitation they were.

“Here we are,” Shaw says, leading them into a bedroom Erik remembers with sudden, horrible clarity. There’s a bed, and leather ties at each corner, just the right length to hold a child in place, and beside it a chest filled with -- he recognizes the handles of the various implements that were used on him, horse whips and canes and cat-o-nine tails. He still has scars on his back from that whip, and others: white, raised strips of skin cutting through his flesh.

Erik in the video has stopped next to the bed, hands behind his back and head bowed, patiently awaiting further instruction. Erik knows how empty he felt like that, how subhuman it made him feel to require instruction to do … anything at all. How much he felt like someone’s playtoy.

“Strip, then lie down on your belly, Erik, and put your hands through the straps,” Shaw says, and Erik can hear the hubbub of the gathering crowd as he obeys. When he’s in position someone -- not even Shaw -- steps forward and ties him into place, spread-eagled, naked on the bed in front of all those people -- and Shaw says, then, “All right. Who would like to go first?”

Erik makes himself watch it all the way through, watches six different Doms fuck him, hit him, force strange objects into him. He doesn’t lose himself in it. No flashbacks. Maybe that’s not necessary, not when he’s watching it himself in high definition. He sees Shaw’s pleased smile when Erik first breaks down and cries out, and he hates him viciously for it. At some point his hand ends up twisted in Charles’ hair, clenching hard like he thinks Charles might try to pull away -- he pulls harder and harder, unable to stop himself, the longer he watches, and though it must be painful Charles doesn’t move or make a sound. He just keeps stroking Erik’s back, his breath leaving the front of Erik’s shirt warm and damp, and stays soft, submissive under Erik’s hand, like a counterbalance to Erik’s seeing himself so -- weak. Small. Hurt.

“What a good boy,” Shaw says again, stroking the back of Erik’s neck as another Dom lines up behind him, and the film cuts out.

Erik stares at the blank screen for a very long time, listening to the sound of silence through his headphones. He keeps expecting the film to resume. It doesn’t. At last he exits out of the program and lifts shaking hands -- fingers uncurling from their vise grip of Charles’ hair -- to tug the headphones off his ears, dropping them onto the floor. The back of his throat is too dry; he swallows three times before he manages to say, “It’s finished.”

“Okay,” Charles says, but he stays where he is, weighing Erik down to the couch, keeping him there. The only thing that moves is his hand, which comes to rub at the back of his head where his hair is tangled and shaped from Erik’s hold. “You got through it. You’re okay. That all happened a long time ago.”

“It feels like it was a different life,” Erik confesses, and he’s not sure how that can be so when at the same time he can remember things about that life as if they were yesterday. The way that omnipresent sense of dread hung over him like a dark cloud.

“Well,” Charles says, “in many ways it was,” and he shifts a little so he can look up at Erik, then gets his hand underneath him and sits up, still facing Erik on the couch, his hand braced on the other side of Erik’s legs. “You don’t live there any more. Things are different now. You’re not that boy any more.”

Maybe not, but Erik still resents the boy he saw in the video, the one who would let Shaw and so many others do that to him without raising a fuss. Who just … went along. _Encouraged_ it.

“Was I like that when I came to live with you?” Erik asks, glancing back at his laptop like he still expects to see himself there. All he finds, of course, is the image of his own desktop background.

Charles doesn’t bother pretending to ask ‘like what’. “You were very submissive, for the most part,” he says, his expression soft, neutral, “but you weren’t much like that with me. You were more scared than anything else, which was understandable. Your whole world had been taken away from you. You’d been trained to a point where you had learnt to survive, Erik. It wasn’t your fault, it was simply the only thing you could do.”

“I should have fought back.”

“They would have killed you,” Charles says simply, and he reaches out to squeeze Erik’s shoulder, tight, holding him there where Erik can’t easily avoid Charles’ gaze. “Shaw would have killed you, Erik. You know it and I know it and younger you knew it, too. Fighting back would have been suicide. I understand that you wish none of that had happened, and God knows so do I, but that doesn’t change the fact that the only way it wouldn’t have happened to you would be if you were dead. And I’m very glad that didn’t happen.”

Charles leans forward and kisses Erik’s forehead, then slides his arm around Erik’s back, pulling him into an embrace. Erik’s computer starts to slide off his thighs at that, but he catches it with his power in time and sets it gently on the floor as he leans into Charles, one hand pressed between the back of the sofa and Charles’ hip, his cheek against Charles’ ear.

Erik can feel his stomach trembling inside him, anxiety fluttering like butterfly wings against his chest, but he keeps it in.

“Why would those people -- he let them do it. But why would they?” His hands clench into fists against Charles’ back. “What was in it for them?”

“I don’t know,” Charles says. “I guess Shaw only invited people as sick as he is to his parties. I don’t know why they didn’t object. Some people are just … awful.”

But there were people there who didn’t fuck him. People who turned away and pretended not to see, who could have stopped it. Or maybe they thought Shaw would have killed them, too, if they took away his toys. Erik closes his eyes.

“Bystander effect,” he says after a moment. “I learned about that in AP Psychology. When something happens and someone is hurt, the more people there are around, the less likely anyone is to intervene. They all just figure that’s someone else’s job. Exonerates them of responsibility.”

“It’s similar, too, to the Stanford Prison Experiment,” Charles says, his arm tightening a little around Erik as he props his chin on Erik’s shoulder. “People are more likely to torture others when put in a position of power over them and in a group that absolves them of having to consider their actions as an individual. Shaw created environments where it was easy for people to do terrible things and not feel guilty.”

Erik remembers that, too. That and Milgram, the scientist who was able to get people to keep giving people electric shocks even when they thought the shocks would be fatal, all because they were told they should keep going. Both studies were done to try to understand why people like the Nazis did what they did, and why the entire German people would turn a blind eye.

Erik doesn’t think it’s an excuse. All it is is proof that the human race is evil at its core, that when given the opportunity, they will do evil things if they think they can get away with it.

“Not everyone is like that,” Charles says, stroking Erik’s cheek with his fingers. “But not everyone is as strong as you are, Erik. People are scared to stand up to evil, for fear of harm to themselves, or their loved ones. If you had to choose between saving a hundred strangers from being executed, or saving me, which would you choose?”

“I think it would depend on the strangers in question,” Erik says bluntly, but he knows what Charles is trying to say.

“I’m very proud of you,” Charles says, and he turns his face towards Erik, pressing a kiss to the soft space just behind Erik’s ear. “You were very strong, to watch all of that. I think we should put it away, though. You don’t need to see that again. We should send a copy to Moira, too, for evidence. Anonymously, of course.”

“You don’t think it’s bad enough that the whole court gets to listen to Shaw describing it in explicit detail?” Erik grimaces. “They don’t need to see it, too.”

Charles shrugs, a strange sensation when they’re pressed together like this. “I was thinking that she could use it to track down more of those people, and bring them to justice. It’s proof they were accessories to a crime, at the very least, and that some of them took part in the rape of a minor. It would mean they were punished for what they did to you. That’s worth it, surely.”

Even so. Erik’s not sure he wants to be … exposed, like that, in front of anyone. Not again.

“I’ll think about it,” he says at last, and he reaches for Charles’ upper arms to gently push him upright again, disentangling them. “Right now I need -- I just need to have some time to think about this. All right?”

“All right,” Charles says, letting himself be moved without complaint, and rubs at the back of his head again, absently, though he makes a wincing face as he touches it. “Shall I hold onto the camera for now?”

“No,” Erik says, perhaps a little too quickly. “I will.” He gestures with one hand and the camcorder detaches itself from his laptop, transferring back into his satchel. “Thanks anyway.”

“Okay,” Charles says, and he turns finally to look at the clock over his desk, still sat in that awkward pose with his back to the front of the couch, his legs tucked up to one side. “It’s past our usual time. Shall we go home?” he asks, looking back at Erik. “Give you a chance to think about something else.”

Erik’s not convinced home will distract him -- not enough, not from this. But he nods all the same, and as the day goes on he tries to focus on other things. The memories remain, though: the vision of himself plastered on the inside of his eyelids so that he sees it every time he blinks and remembers who he used to be.

 

*

Swineherd contacts Erik again the following week. A package is being delivered at Grand Central Station; it’s up to Erik to get it to the safe house and ensure it stays there until arrangements can be made to ship it out of the country. As Erik had requested, swineherd doesn’t tell Erik who the person is, or why they need to hide; Erik doesn’t want to know if their connections to Hellfire run deeper than the superficial. And most of all, he can’t afford to learn the person’s crimes were anything significant enough to infringe on Charles’ conscience. If Erik doesn’t know, then Charles doesn’t know. It’s the only way they can keep the delicate balance they’ve constructed, in which Erik steps back into the underground and Charles quietly looks the other way.

Erik tells Roger he’s going to his room to do homework. That’s the other thing Charles refused to do: he refused to cover for Erik telepathically while Erik goes on these expeditions. So Erik turns on the radio and exits through the window, using magnetism to cushion his fall.

At Grand Central, he situates himself on a bench in the main concourse with a copy of the _Times_ he bought from the vendor outside, opened up to obscure his face. The man he’s meeting has been told to carry a certain, uniquely-shaped metal object in his right trouser pocket, and Erik stretches his power out through the terminal, not actively searching but simply waiting for the novelty of the shape and the unusual alloy of its metal to ping his awareness.

He notices the presence of osmium after about fifteen minutes, sparking into his awareness coming down the escalator. Osmium is the densest natural element, which is part of why Erik chose it; it’s very difficult to ignore.

He folds down the top of his paper and glances toward the escalator. There is a man coming down it in a long trenchcoat -- cliché -- looking around himself like he’s scared he’ll be stopped at any moment, his narrow face pinched and worried. And in his arms --

\-- he’s carrying a small child, perhaps four or five years old, the little girl squirming anxiously in his hold, her long blonde braids tied down her back.

Hmm. Swineherd hadn’t mentioned anything about kids.

Erik stays where he is for the time being, watching. When they get to the bottom of the escalator the man steps over to the side, out of the flow of people walking, and sets the girl down on her feet, then bends, pretending to fuss with her coat; she’s still wriggling, unable to keep still, but Erik can see the man looking around, trying to spot anyone looking at them -- either looking for Erik, or looking for pursuit.

The little girl says something, pouting, and the man hushes her immediately, putting his hands on her shoulders.

Is he a loving father? Or is he like Shaw? It’s impossible to tell. Erik narrows his eyes at the set of the man’s hands -- did the girl shiver? Or is he imagining it, relics of his past, images from that camcorder still stark against the insides of his eyelids every time he blinks?

Erik folds his paper and gets to his feet, walking across the concourse at an angle to them, not wanting to be spotted from a distance, heading as if to ascend the escalator himself. As he passes by, within five feet of the pair, the man says, “Remember? We are playing a game. The game is secret agents, and nobody should notice us. That’s how we achieve our mission. Okay?”

“Okay,” the girl says, mulishly.

Erik keeps walking, just enough to be at the base of the escalator before he glances back over his shoulder like he only just recognized the two of them and approaches from behind, coming to step next to the man. “Arthur,” he says, smiling, using the man’s pseudonym. “When did you get back in town?”

“Oh!” the man says, startling, his eyes wide, and this close Erik can see that they’re a strange yellow color, tawny and oddly reflective. “Oh, uh, Max. We literally just came in on the train.” His hands are on the girl’s shoulders, tucking her in against his legs. “How good to see you.”

“You too,” Erik says easily, and hopes his own calm will rub off on the man; if he stays this jittery, they’ll start to draw attention. He turns his gaze down to the little girl, then back up to the man’s face, watching for a reaction. “Is this your daughter?”

“Yes,” the man says, looking down at her; she’s looking up, staring at Erik with bold curiosity. “Annabelle, say hello.”

“Hello,” she says immediately, then, “Daddy, I’m hungry.”

Erik smiles a little at her, and says, “We have plenty of food back at the house. Even ice cream. Would you like that?”

Annabelle makes a face, her mouth screwing up. “You’re silly,” she says, in a patronizing tone. “Daddy and me eat eckelecitricity, not _ice cream_.”

“Hush, Anna,” the man says, looking worried. “We’re secret agents, remember?”

Erik just grins, wider this time. “It’s all right, Arthur. Well, we’ll get you home and full of electricity, then. My car’s just outside. Shall we?”

He gestures toward the exit and starts walking, letting ‘Arthur’ and his daughter fall into step next to him. Arthur’s still twitchy, but it’s better now that they’re moving, less obvious in motion and with a specific goal in mind. Erik’s parked Charles’ car -- borrowed with permission, the plates altered -- in a garage a block away. He doesn’t have a license himself, not unless you count the fake one he had made in Max Eisenhardt’s name, but it’s hard for Erik to fuck up manipulating a machine made of metal.

“Here we are,” Erik says, unlocking the doors with the key fob. “I don’t have a car seat or booster seat. I didn’t know there’d be a child.”

“It’s all right,” Arthur says picking up Annabelle under her arms and lifting her inside with him, settling her in his lap. “She can sit with me.”

“Bzzt,” Annabelle says, grabbing for the seatbelt to help fasten it. Her eyes are the same color as her father’s.

Erik starts the car and pulls out slowly, paying parking at the automated booth and waiting there on the drive until at last he can turn into a break in traffic, heading downtown. It’s nice being in a car, he decides after the first block, the metal humming lightly around them. Easy to control, albeit slow. He still prefers the train.

“Where are we going?” Arthur asks after a while, his fingers drumming against his daughter’s knee. He’s still fidgety, watching warily out of the window, but less so, now that they’re out of the crowds. When Erik concentrates he can taste static in the air around them, coming from the two mutants in the passenger seat.

“Chelsea,” Erik answers. “There’s a safehouse there. We’ll meet a friend who will want to chat with you for a bit, and then I’ll be back in a week or so once we’ve got your ticket out.”

“All right. Thank you,” Arthur says, and he’s quiet the rest of the way to the safehouse, tense where Annabelle is relaxed and curious about everything around her, pointing at things out the window for her father to look at. Erik’s starting to feel a little less concerned about their relationship; it’s clear Annabelle trusts Arthur, for better or for worse. There’s nothing about her that seems dark or broken. She’s just a child.

Erik pulls up into a metered space outside the brownstones and they all pile out of the car, following Erik’s lead up the steps and indoors. Erik doesn’t speak on the way up the stairs. It’s not clear to him just how thin the doors are, and he’d rather not get caught talking about something suspicious by a nosy neighbor, paid off or otherwise.

Arthur stares when Erik opens the first door to the safehouse, letting them into the small corridor preceding the security mechanisms.

“Perfectly secure, as you can see,” Erik says mildly, glancing back at Arthur before he goes to let the machine read his DNA and retina, typing in ‘2’ for his visitors. “Nothing to worry about here.”

“What kind of place is this?” Arthur asks, looking in through the door and lifting Annabelle into his arms. “I mean, I’m grateful for all the help, but … it seems like we’re going to be locked inside a bank vault.”

Erik snorts. “Old Hellfire technology. Trust me; this is exactly where you want to be.”

He steps through the open steel doors and into the living room, which is in just the same condition as Erik and Charles left it before, though less dusty. It’s disorienting now, though, seeing it like this and remembering at the same time the way it looked on the screen of his laptop, glimpses of that couch, this armchair, seen through the lens of the camera as Erik got down on his knees and sucked a stranger’s dick.

“Hungry,” Annabelle says loudly, and Arthur says, “In a minute, baby.”

“Good, you’re here,” a third voice says, and swineherd steps out of the kitchen area into the living room, his arms folded across his chest, his face blank. “Good job, Max. Any trouble?”

“None whatsoever,” Erik says, settling down in one of the armchairs and crossing his legs at the knees. In the back of his mind, he takes a moment to note the significance of this -- that it’s the first time he’s ever sat in a chair here, in Shaw’s usual chair, no less. His place used to be on the floor. “Arthur, Annabelle, this is that friend I was talking about.”

“Hello,” Arthur says, all but tugging his forelock. “Thank you both for your help. We’re very grateful.”

“HUNGRY,” Annabelle shouts, and this time she’s not willing to be hushed; Arthur tries to placate her but she won’t quiet down, and he looks at Erik with pleading, apologetic eyes as he says, “Is there a plug socket she can sit at?”

Why not, Erik thinks, and instead of answering he turns his hand palm-up and pulls enough static from the air to create a sizzling, sparking ball of white-hot electricity, one he pushes over to the girl, who reaches out to it with both hands, laughing, and somehow _cups it_ into her mouth. “Mmmm!” she says, feet kicking at her father’s chest where he’s still holding her.

“Holy -- you’re Erik Lehnsherr,” Arthur says, staring at Erik now, his mouth agape. “Old Hellfire technology -- are you both with _Hellfire_?”

“Certainly not,” Erik says coolly. He doesn’t turn to look at swineherd, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on Arthur’s. “And none of the remaining members can access this place, if that’s your concern.” It would be a valid one, in Erik’s expert opinion. There’s no point in being offended by the accusation, it’s a reasonable assumption -- but that doesn’t stop Erik from feeling a bit annoyed all the same. He’s read too many speculative articles on the subject for it not to be a sore spot at this point. As if he’d still love them, after everything.

“We’re independent agents,” swineherd says, in a tone so disinterested he might as well be checking his nails. “So, no. Set the kid down in that corner if she’s still hungry, there’s a socket over there she can suck on.”

Arthur is still giving them both odd looks, but he does as instructed, setting Annabelle down where she immediately sticks her fingers into the socket, but it doesn’t seem to do her any harm. There’s static crawling all over her now, crackling a little as she eats.

“Now, let’s chat,” swineherd says, gesturing for Arthur to join him as he walks over to the armchair opposite Erik’s, taking a seat. “I have some questions for you about your old boss, Franco.”

“What would you like to know?” Arthur asks, folding his hands together in his lap, and swineherd begins. It’s all questions about a mob gang, Erik realizes after the first couple of minutes -- it surprises him, because Arthur hardly seems the type, clearly very traditionally submissive and anxious. Annabelle, if she were an adult, he could believe -- she’s very obviously Dominant -- but Arthur?

“It wasn’t by choice,” Arthur says to Erik after describing for swineherd the precise details of Franco’s preferred hangouts. “I just … got tangled up in things.”

“I don’t need to know the details,” Erik says, waving his hand. He probably knows too much already, should have left before swineherd started, but at least what he’s heard is only likely to reassure Charles at this point.

“Tangled up to the tune of getting paid fifty grand for your services,” swineherd says, unsympathetic, and Arthur flushes deep red, looking down at his hands.

Swineherd turns his gaze on Erik finally and says, “You may as well take off. I’ll get in touch with the next set of arrangements.”

Erik nods and rises from his seat, car keys leaping from his back pocket into his hand. “Good luck,” he tells Arthur, and he spares one last glance over his shoulder at the girl drinking electricity from the wall socket before he goes and lets himself out.

It’s not until he’s down the stairs and outside, buckling himself into Charles’ car, that he finally feels the tremors shaking up and down his spine. His hands grasp tight around the steering wheel and Erik forces himself to exhale, closing his eyes and tipping his head forward, fighting back the old fears and memories that threaten to overtake his mind. The urge to go back up there and steal that little girl away is paranoid, ridiculous, but it’s all Erik can do all the same to keep himself where he is, knuckles blanching white

 

*

_Charles_

Charles may have refused to cover for Erik on this little … excursion … but he still can’t help staying on a knife edge, waiting for him to come back, watching over him in his mind as Erik goes around Manhattan with these strangers in tow, then back to that blasted safehouse. He doesn’t relax even when he sees Erik is on his way back, because Erik still has to get back in without being noticed, and Charles knows the agents won’t take kindly to Erik running off unsupervised. He knows, too, that his nervous energy must be showing, so Charles takes himself off to his bedroom to wait. He might not cover for Erik, but he’s not going to give him away, either.

He feels it when Erik is floating himself back up the building, and Charles can’t wait any longer -- he gets up and heads upstairs to their shared room, getting inside and closing the door behind himself just as Erik slides the window open from outside, stepping in as if this were just a normal entrance.

“Hey,” Charles says, leaning back against the door with a sense of relief.

“Hey.” The window slides shut behind Erik and he toes off his shoes there on the floor, nudging them over with his toes toward the wall. He looks tired, but he smiles all the same. “Miss me?”

Charles rolls his eyes, letting out a sigh. “Nobody noticed you were gone,” he says instead of answering the question, looking Erik up and down even though he knows he would know if Erik had been hurt, would have seen it himself. “Though we really should get you a legitimate driver’s license. That way if somebody recognizes you when you’re out, you won’t get caught for something so stupid. We can book you some lessons.”

“Fine.”

Erik crosses from the window to pull himself up onto the bed, stretching out along its length with his head on the pillow and his ankles crossed near the foot, arms folding up behind his neck. Erik looks so -- _young_ , like the teenager he is, and it makes Charles uneasy, despite the fact that it’s news to no-one, that he’s known it all along.

“So what happened?” he asks to break the silence, and comes forward to sit on the edge of the bed beside Erik’s hip.

“Mmm.”

Erik’s eyes open and he reaches with one arm to snag Charles’ waist, pulling him over to lie sprawled half-atop of him, Charles’ hand catching himself against Erik’s firm chest. Charles frowns at him, his unsettlement making him less willing to be manhandled, but he doesn’t object, staying where he’s been put -- if he hears one of the agents coming he’ll be able to move in plenty of time, anyway.

“Well,” Erik says, hooking one finger through Charles’ beltloop. “It was a father and daughter pair. I -- wasn’t sure, at first, if it was … if he was like Shaw, but I don’t think he was. He seemed to really care about her.”

That’s rather better than Charles had worried it would be, but even so he’s still not comfortable with Erik’s involvement -- he can see in Erik’s mind the memory of the discussions around the mob, and what if someone found out Erik knew this sort of thing?

“I wish you’d take me seriously when I say this is dangerous,” he says, laying his head down on Erik’s shoulder. “This time the -- _package_ \-- may have been innocuous, but who knows about next time, or the time after that? I can’t protect you from so far away, not effectively.”

He doesn’t have to see Erik’s face to know Erik is rolling his eyes at him.

“I can protect myself perfectly well,” Erik says, his other hand resting now on Charles’ back, a warmth between his shoulder blades.

Charles wants to say something mean -- to point out that Erik has failed to protect himself before, that Charles can anticipate attacks and stop them before Erik would even have to defend himself -- but it would be petty, and pointless. So he says nothing, stewing in his own displeasure and trying to keep it contained.

Clearly not well enough.

“You aren’t going to go write about this argument in your blog, are you?” Erik says after a while.

“Oh, don’t start,” Charles says. “This is why I didn’t tell you about it in the first place.”

“I think it’s adorable, how much you talk about your Beanstalk. Seems like your commenters do, too.”

Charles can feel himself blushing, and hates himself for it at the same time. “He’s -- you’re -- a useful foil for talking about mutant-related issues,” Charles says, and he tries to roll off to the side, but Erik’s hands keep him there, and he subsides. “It gives me another perspective to argue with and debate around.”

“Have I been reduced to a literary device, now?” Erik says dryly.

“Perhaps.” Charles tries to sound detached, but he knows Erik can tell he’s embarrassed; Erik always knows, and right now that’s infuriating. He continues the pretence, even so. “You make me work harder at making my arguments logical and persuasive, anyway.”

Erik’s fingers drift up to tuck a lock of hair behind Charles’ ear, the backs of his nails brushing against Charles’ cheek. “Didn’t you write an entire post about me bringing you soup when you were sick, once? Seems rather … apolitical.”

“Shut up,” Charles mutters, and feels Erik snort underneath him, lungs hitching Charles’ body up then down again, unsettling him. “If you like, think of it as fiction. It doesn’t have to be about the real you.”

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” Erik says. “I like it. I like reading your perspective on things. It’s easy for you, since you can just read my mind, but for me I have to rely on what you say and do in order to know what you think about things.”

“You could just ask,” Charles says, but it’s softer now, his hackles lowering. He shifts, adjusting himself so he’s lying more comfortably across Erik’s body, his leg looped over Erik’s thigh. _I like having somewhere I can talk about you without being afraid of giving myself away._

 _Me too,_ Erik says, and after a while they fall asleep.

Charles dreams.

At first it’s just normal, everyday sorts of dreams -- work, home, broken fragments of his day split up into bite-sized pieces. Charles dreams he’s in the shower with Erik, and Erik’s hands are on him, washing him; Charles sighs, pleased, but when Erik kneels and looks up at him Charles sees that thick black collar around Erik’s throat, tight and cutting into his skin, strangling him -- Erik is leaning forward to suck Charles’ cock, he’s Charles’ slave -- Charles wants to claw off his own skin, shoves Erik away --

He wakes up in the darkness with a spasming jerk of his body, his breathing heavy and uneven, and when Charles’ eyes adjust there’s a figure standing over them, staring down at them with white teeth bared and gleaming in the light coming in from the open bathroom door.

“I knew something was going on,” Agent Collins says, his voice fierce and choked back, his hands in fists at his sides.

Charles feels the bottom fall out of his stomach even as Erik stirs and jerks awake beside him, twisting like a cat to stare at Collins too, then stiffening as rage fires up inside him.

“What are you _doing_ in here?” Charles demands, his voice higher pitched than he’d like; he feels paralyzed, shocked and horrified and as if he might be violently sick just hearing -- Collins is thinking about his niece the survivor, is looking at Charles like he’s -- thinking of him as a pedophile, that Erik is his victim --

“It’s not what you think,” Erik says quickly, but if Charles can see the way Erik’s face has gone white then surely Collins can too.

“I think it’s exactly what I think,” Collins says, snaps, his silhouette rigid and unyielding. “I saw Erik’s door wasn’t shut so I went to check on him and he wasn’t there, and you know what, I knew right then where I’d find him. Shit, what a mess. This is gonna be a real shitstorm to wipe up after.”

“Agent Collins,” Charles says, sitting up in bed and turning to face him properly, trying to pull some dignity around himself; it’s a sad effort, but better than staying on his back, like he’s waiting to be run over. “Listen to me. We’re both dressed, Erik comes in here to sleep sometimes when he has bad dreams. We’re not sleeping together -- do you think we’d have clothes on if we were? You might not approve, and that’s your prerogative, but we’ve not done anything illegal.”

“Charles is right,” Erik says from behind him. “I had a nightmare. Don’t they teach you not to jump to conclusions in fed school?”

He’s afraid, though; Charles can sense the fear seeping through his mind, the cold blood under Erik’s skin. He’s furiously going through their options, drawing up lists of excuses, ways to blackmail Collins if that doesn’t work.

“I’m not an idiot,” Collins says. “I’m a straightshooter and I call it like I see it, and this,” he gestures at the bed, at the both of them, “this I have to report. For fuck’s sake, Xavier, you’re supposed to be de-fucking-up this kid, not fucking him. I _respected_ you.”

“Please don’t read any more into this than is really there,” Charles says -- begs, really, because he knows all too well that he’s trapped, now, that Collins is determined to report them -- that this, if he doesn’t act, might well be the end of his freedom, the end of his life as he knows it -- the end of him-and-Erik, no matter how good Charles has tried to be and how long he’s kept them from having sex and consummating the crime. “I told you when you brought this up before, we’re close, but that’s not illegal!”

“Stop lying,” Collins says, jabbing his finger towards them, “and wait here while I fetch Reyes,” and he turns to leave --

Charles feels panic rise up in his chest, and he presses pause in his mind, Collins’ steps coming to a juddering halt, frozen in time.

“Oh God, oh _fuck_ ,” Charles says, slipping out of the bed and starting to walk towards Collins, then stopping again, until he’s pacing back and forth across two or three feet of carpet, his hand over his mouth, breathing harsh and heavy. He knows what he has to do if he wants to save himself, save Erik, but -- it’s against everything he believes, everything he’s ever tried to do, and the very thought of it makes him want to throw up, that acid taste rising in the back of his throat. “Fuck.”

He can’t, can’t, must, can’t wipe the man’s mind for doing his job and catching a criminal in the act. And yet --

He hears the sound of the springs in the mattress shifting as Erik gets out of bed, and when he turns to pace again Erik’s standing there, grabbing his shoulders with both hands and stopping him in his tracks, pale and wide-eyed.

“Stop it,” Erik says, but his voice is shaking too much for it to hold much weight. “It’s okay. I’ll -- let me talk to him. I can make him see reason.”

“Are you going to order him quiet?” Charles asks, clinging to Erik in return, knowing his own eyes are wild. “A hush order? That’s dangerous, it might not stick forever -- ”

He watches Erik’s throat shift as he swallows, Erik’s grip tightening on Charles’ arms. “If I have to. But if this doesn’t work -- if I can’t talk him down, you know you’ll have to wipe his memory. It’s the only way we can know we’ll be safe.”

“I don’t know if I can,” Charles says, that sick feeling still there, roiling in his belly and his throat, threatening to spill out. “Erik -- he’s not wrong, not really, it would be like punishing him for being right. I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You’ll have to. I won’t lose you.” Erik leans in, pressing his brow against Charles’. “I won’t.”

“You can talk to him,” Charles says, letting out a shuddering breath that’s almost a sob, and he lets go of Erik, says, “Go stand between him and the door first, don’t let him leave before you’ve started.” At the very least Charles can keep Agent Reyes from waking up next door if voices start raising -- that he doesn’t feel too guilty over.

Erik nods, and after a long moment’s hesitation he steps away, walking past Charles to go and put himself in the bathroom, blocking Collins’ path from the bedroom to the guest room. He looks thin and young all of the sudden, his clothes wrinkled and mussed from being slept in and his hair dangerously tousled. When he looks at Charles, the contrast between him and the adult man beside him is stark and shocking, despite their similar heights. Erik takes in a shallow breath, and then nods.

Charles releases Agent Collins, who stumbles then starts when he sees Erik in front of him now, fear and anger spiking in his mind.

“None of your tricks, Xavier -- I thought you were better than that,” he snaps, then, at Erik, “Get out of my way, kid.”

“No,” Erik says, reaching out a hand as if to prevent Collins from going on bodily, if he has to, such that Collins would have to forcibly push him aside if he wanted to pass through. “No. You aren’t listening to us. We can go somewhere alone, you and I, and talk about this where Charles can’t intervene if that makes you more comfortable. But you aren’t going to tell Reyes or anyone else.”

“I’m an _officer of the law_ ,” Collins says, knocking aside Erik’s hand with a sharp motion of his arm. “I have to report it, because it’s the law and it’s the right damn thing to do for _your_ wellbeing, whether or not you agree with me. Xavier’s done a damn good number on replacing your old family with himself as the center of your world, intentionally or not, but that ain’t healthy and it ain’t good, and I have a responsibility to do something about it. I’m sorry if that causes you pain, but that’s the facts.”

“And what are you reporting exactly?” Erik says snappishly, taking a half-step back when Collins tries to advance, blocking him again. “That you saw me lying in bed next to Charles? What damning evidence. He never fucked me. You might not like the way we relate to one another, but if he hasn’t fucked me, he’s done nothing wrong.”

“See, I don’t think that is all there is to it,” Collins says, stepping forward into Erik’s space, looming over him. “I think he _has_ fucked you, and I think I have a duty of care to find out if I’m right. So that is what I’m reporting: that this needs looking into. Better off all around if I’m wrong and you’re telling the truth, but damn me if I’ll just take your word for it.”

Erik meets Charles’ gaze briefly over Collins’ shoulder and Charles can feel the gears clicking in his mind, flipping over to a new plan. “Please,” Erik says when he looks to Collins again, that Dominant certainty gone and replaced with something more fragile, more like the Erik Charles used to know. “It was bad enough what happened with Hellfire. I can’t -- Charles hasn’t done anything _wrong_ , and I couldn’t take it if they tore his life apart trying to prove he was anything like them. Please don’t. I need him.”

Charles’ heart clenches at the feeling Erik puts into it -- just as real as the force, the arguments, painful to hear even as Charles tries not to move, to make any noise to distract Collins from Erik’s attempts at persuasion.

It’s in vain, however; Collins shakes his head and says, “Look, kid, this is exactly what I’m talking about, this thing here -- this ain’t good for you, or healthy. I’m going to do what I think is best. Now get out of my damn way.”

And Charles knows this is the moment to choose, between taking his punishment or saving Erik.

It’s no choice at all, even as he hates himself for it.

He can see the moment Erik notices Collins’ expression go blank; Erik jerks, startled, and steps back, even as Charles says, “Let him past, I’ll send him downstairs,” his face dry of tears though he feels like he should be crying.

Erik obeys, edging past Collins’ body to escape out the bathroom and back into the bedroom proper, his gaze lingering on Collins for a long time before he yanks it away and turns his back on him completely to face Charles instead.

“I’ll take care of it,” Charles says, and steps over to the edge of the bed so he can sit down, his breath rattling in his chest, a feeling like asthma; he concentrates instead on piloting Collins down the stairs safely, on sending him off to the parlor while all the while Charles is cleansing his memory, replacing it with a copy of another night when nothing of note had happened, just another boring patrol of the apartment. It’s not … it’s not even hard, that’s the worst part.

Erik sits down next to him after a while, not touching, the two of them there in silence with the weight of what happened hanging over them like a shroud. “God,” Charles mutters, and leans forward to put his head in his hands, shaking with delayed adrenaline.

“We’re okay,” Erik says softly, and after a second his hand settles on the nape of Charles’ neck, cool and light. “You took care of it. We’re all right. They’ll leave soon, they have to.”

“I can’t believe I did that,” Charles says, leaning sideways so he can rest his weight against Erik and thinking -- _I’m leeching off him, I’m supposed to be the strong one, the adult._ “I always said I would never … ”

“You did what you had to do.” Erik’s tone is firm and unyielding, his hand moving to Charles’ bicep instead, wrapping his arm around Charles’ shoulders. His fingers dig in hard at Charles’ flesh, but Charles is a telepath, he can tell all this is just a façade covering the way Erik still feels shaken up and sick inside, afraid.

Charles shakes his head, though he doesn’t pull away, can’t bring himself to turn away the comfort of having Erik so close. “No, I did what suited me best,” he says, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at his own hands shaking. “I did the selfish thing, instead of taking my just deserts for being caught. I -- I really do think that this is right, between us, I -- our arrangement is better, than before. But still, Agent Collins is a good man. And I … I don’t know if I can say that about myself right now.”

“Why? Because you used your power? Don’t parrot that Humans First propaganda, Charles. You protected yourself. _Both_ of us.”

“Let’s not talk about this any more,” Charles says, because he’s too tired now to have this argument again -- all he wants is to sleep, then wake up and find that it never happened. Of course, for Agent Collins, that is exactly what has already happened. “You should probably sleep in your room.”

Erik’s quiet for a moment, but then he nods. “Are you going to be all right?” he asks, leaning forward to get a good look at Charles’ face.

“I don’t know,” Charles says, and the problem is that he really doesn’t.

*

Charles spends the next two days on tenterhooks waiting for a confrontation that never comes, expecting at every moment for Agent Collins to turn around and accuse him again, waking up in the night expecting to find him standing there, even though Charles is alone in the bed, innocent of every possible charge. The fact that he knows he erased the memory from Collins’ mind, every fragment of it wiped clean like spatters from a kitchen work surface, doesn’t seem to make a difference. Charles feels like he’s only hit snooze on the inevitable, and he can’t help but lie awake staring at the alarm waiting for it to go off again.

It’s difficult, too, to keep so much distance between him and Erik, but they both agreed it was necessary until things blew entirely over. Erik avoids both agents even more than he did before, losing his tail almost every time he goes outside. The agents complain, but Charles just shrugs and tells them that he’ll do what he can but he can’t control Erik, that they’ll need to persuade him to comply on their own.

“Look, Dr Xavier,” Agent Reyes says finally, two weeks later, when Charles is about ready to scratch out of his skin for having to be so controlled all the time. “If Erik won’t let us guard him then there’s no point us being here at all. You’re not likely to be the main target, and we’re not adding value. I’ve asked our superiors to reassign us on that basis, and they’ve agreed. We’ll be leaving today.”

“Oh,” Charles says, and he manages not to let his feelings show on the outside even though he wants to collapse into his chair with relief, the flutter of heart palpitations in his chest echoed by his own emotions. “Well. I’ll be sorry to see you go, but it’ll be nice to have our own space back.”

“I can imagine,” she says kindly, smiling at him. “Thank you for your hospitality these past two or three months, Charles. You’ve been very patient.”

“Thank you for all your help,” Charles says, a little numb, and can barely wait for her to be out of the room to call Erik and let him know.

“Fucking finally,” is all Erik says when Charles has told him, and that seems to be the final word on the subject, for both of them. They’re both too tired from constant vigilance to do anything dramatic to celebrate, so in the end they just order pizza and watch TV as if they were still being watched, like normal people.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific chapter warning for explicit sexual abuse of a minor and references to physical abuse of a minor.


	37. Thirty-seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter

_Charles_

“You did the right thing.”

Charles looks up from where he’s sat in his pyjamas on the couch in front of the television, his hand pausing between the popcorn bowl and his mouth. Erik stands at the end of the couch, looking at him with an awkward twist to his lips, clearly concerned -- Charles can read it from him, his worry coming off in waves, Erik looking at Charles so slovenly. He’s not as bad as he was when he lived alone, but he’s certainly not as together as he usually is.

It’s been a long few days, all together -- a week of patients caught up in their issues and unable to calm down and listen to him, of dissatisfaction in every room of the apartment for no obvious reason, of restlessness and unease. Charles glances down at his pyjamas, then up at the screen, finally reaching for the TiVo remote to pause it. “I’m fine, really,” he says, giving Erik a quick smile, though even he doesn’t believe it. “I’m just having a lazy Sunday.”

Erik shakes his head. “You’re still ruminating on what happened with Collins. I can tell.”

He comes around to sit down at the opposite end of the sofa from Charles, leaning back against the armrest with his arm slung over the back cushions, catching Charles’ gaze. He’s not wrong. Charles sighs, and finally puts back his handful of popcorn.

“I don’t like to think of myself as someone who does what’s most convenient for myself, ignoring the rights of others,” he says, setting the bowl aside on the coffee table with a soft clunk. “And yet that’s just what I did. I know why, and that it didn’t hurt him. But that doesn’t make it right.”

There’s a long and pregnant pause while Erik decides how to respond.

“Does it not being right make it wrong, then?” he asks finally, tapping his fingers against the cushion. “You saved both yourself and me a great deal of pain. Not to mention the impact this would have on Raven, and Hank, and even on the trial.”

It’s a good question, and not one Charles can answer. He shrugs. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t feel good, and that’s usually a bad sign.”

“You’re moralizing your power too much. What if I had swineherd’s power and was able to persuade Collins to keep it to himself? Or what if it wasn’t even a mutation, but I was extremely intelligent and was able to use my intellect to out-argue him on the point? You used the tools you had available to you. There’s nothing right _or_ wrong about it.”

“Arguing someone around is different. You’re getting them to change their own minds, not changing it for them.” Charles doesn’t want to think about it any more. “There’s no point brooding over it. What’s done is done. I wouldn’t undo it even if I could.”

“Then stop brooding,” Erik suggests, and he gives Charles a tiny smile, his mind sad.

It’s so hard not to let it show, the way it’s burning inside of Charles’ chest, like he’s swallowed a hot coal; it’s been sitting there for days, scorching him inside, and while Charles smiles back at Erik, huddled there on the sofa in his pyjamas, he knows it’s half a lie even as he says,“I’m trying,” and gestures towards the TV, still paused on an episode of _Top Chef_. “This is what I do to not brood.”

“This is what you do when you _are_ brooding,” Erik corrects him, and the TV turns itself off, the remote lifting off the coffee table to float outside Charles’ reach.

It was a recording, so Charles can always pick it back up later, but he still says, “Hey, I was watching that,” and scowls exaggeratedly at Erik, though they both know he’s not angry. “ _You_ are a very bossy Dom.”

“Mm. You like it that way.”

“I like _Top Chef_ and popcorn,” Charles says, but after a moment he gives it up, twisting on the couch cushion to put his back to the armrest, knees pulling up onto the center cushion between them and propping one arm up on the back, his hand meeting Erik’s in the middle so he can lace his fingers with Erik’s and squeeze. “I just … I can’t just sweep it all under the rug. I really wish things could just be simple for a while. As soon as the agents left we’ve got this to deal with, and your … side-project with the underground, and … I wonder sometimes if things will ever be less complicated.”

Erik makes a quiet, amused noise and reaches down to grasp both of Charles’ legs, hitching them up and draping them over his thighs, Erik’s hands settling on Charles’ knees and squeezing lightly. “We can always pretend.”

Charles manages to smile, just a little, trying to put away the thought of Collins. “There is that,” he says, settling into his new position and keeping his legs relaxed, letting Erik arrange him as he likes. “What would less complicated even look like?”

“I don’t know. Movies on Sundays. Friday date night. Flowers sent to your office by an anonymous admirer. Arguing over whose turn it is to do the laundry.”

“I always do the laundry,” Charles says. “It’s the only thing you trust me to do right.”

Erik laughs, and rubs his hands up Charles’ thighs. “I also trust you to make the bed. Sometimes.”

“I’m honored,” Charles says, and after a moment he puts his hands on top of Erik’s, dragging them further up his legs until they’re resting on his upper thighs, just below the dangerous zone of his crotch. It’s easier by far to think of this than to think about that night, to let the empty apartment turn his mind to other things now that they don’t have to hide in their own space. “I’m better at messing up the bed, to be quite honest.”

Erik glances at him sidelong, the corner of his mouth tilted upward. “Dirtying the sheets?”

“From time to time,” Charles says, and tilts forward to press a kiss to Erik’s lips. Erik leans into the kiss, his hand coming up to curl around the back of Charles’ neck; Charles lets himself tip back into the corner of the couch, Erik’s weight pressing him down into it and keeping him there, surrounded, caught as he opens his mouth so that Erik’s tongue can slip in alongside his own.

This, at least, is simple.

Charles’ hands move to Erik’s waist, then further down, running over the tight muscle of his ass; then Erik twists his fingers in the hair at the back of Charles’ head and pulls, just enough to be painful. It sends a jolt of electric sensation through Charles like his body is a lightning rod, primed and sparking -- he groans against Erik’s mouth, and that’s when his cock twitches and start to fill between his legs.

It’s too much, not incidental enough to excuse away they way they sometimes do in bed, ending up masturbating in front of one another as if that weren’t crossing the line. It feels awful, like betraying his own body, but Charles pulls his head back, breathing heavily, and says, “Stop.”

Erik draws away, his hand still grasping the back of Charles’ neck but not pushing farther, cheeks pink. “You good?”

“I’m all right,” Charles says, moving his hands away from Erik’s ass -- which, too, is supposed to be off-limits. “It’s just going a bit too far. Sorry.”

Erik nods, his own breathing rather harsh, his trousers tented just as Charles’ are, cock leaning out towards satisfaction and caged by fabric. “It’s fine,” he says, though, as if stopping weren’t just as punishing for him as it is for Charles. “We talked about this already. We can -- do you want to go for a walk outside?” He’s thinking it’s safer there, where they aren’t all cooped up and there’s no excuse to get distracted like this.

“Sure,” Charles says, and sits up, letting out a breath before pushing himself to his feet. “I need to get changed. Give me ten minutes?”

“Of course.” Erik leans back against the sofa, tilting his head back on the cushions. “I’ll meet you in the gallery in a little while.”

Charles goes upstairs and shucks off his pajamas, reaching instead for some of his old favorites -- a soft grey shirt, some worn blue jeans and a light summer jacket to throw over the top, all of them things he knows are comfortable, that he feels presentable in. Respectable. Right now he needs that, to remember who he is outside these walls to hopefully help him remember who he’s supposed to be _in_ side them.

It’s just so … ever since he changed Collins’ memory, crossed that moral line and took the low road, Charles has been feeling as if he’s walking on shaky ground, waiting for something else to give -- what’s next to go? What other self- or societally-imposed restrictions will Charles break next? He’s already sleeping with his teenage ward and hiding it from the law, perhaps next he’ll decide it’s fine for him to use his powers to steal?

Charles knows it’s hyperbolic -- that he’s imagining things that will never happen, lines he would never cross -- but then, he thinks, sitting down to tug on his socks, that’s what he said about changing a man’s memory for no other reason than to serve Charles’ own needs. And look how that turned out.

When Charles gets back downstairs Erik is waiting for him, and he looks Charles up and down, obviously appreciative, then holds out his hand, palm up. “Come on. Be mine while you can.”

“So as far as the elevator, then,” Charles says, with a small, wry smile, but he takes Erik’s hand anyway, and lets him lead them out and downstairs.

When they finally make it outside the day is crisp and beautiful, the breeze strong enough to have blown off most of the New York mugginess that is its usual punishment come late summer, but not strong enough to have scared off the tourists, or the locals from enjoying the park. When they cross Park Ave Charles can hear the gathered people with his physical ears as well as his mental ones, a great hubbub of people out in the sunshine on the grass and under the trees.

“Busy day,” he says to Erik as they step out of the way of a cyclist, whizzing by.

“It’s almost September,” Erik says. “All the students have to go outside while they can before real obligations take over. Left?”

They turn to follow one of the paths into the park, the trees overheard casting green-lit shadows across them and everyone else outside today, like walking in a tunnel of leaves; they’re close enough that their shoulders bump companionably every now and then, Erik with his hands slipped into his pockets and smiling as he tilts his face up toward the sun. It’s good to see him so relaxed, to just spend time together out and about again, not to feel that their own shadows are watching their every move. Like this they can just enjoy the weather, and Charles feels more positive already, his troubled thoughts melting away in the sunlight.

He buys them both ice creams at a corner stand, strawberry for himself and hazelnut for Erik; then they find a place to sit down near the sculpture of _The Falconer_ , more tourists eddying around them as they eat.

“This is good,” Erik says, licking at his ice cream. “Thanks.”

It is. Charles just smiles and nudges Erik with his elbow, stretching his legs out in front of himself as far as he dares with this many people on the move and watching the current go by.

After a while he becomes aware of someone looking at them, and he turns his head to look back, finding a man with a camera standing a few feet away, adjusting some settings. “No press,” Charles calls immediately, ready to get to his feet if need be -- goddammit, can’t they have even one day of peace?

The man looks up from his camera, meeting Charles’ gaze. “Not that kind of press,” he says with a small smile, but he drops his arms back down to his sides, camera still grasped in one hand as he moves closer, coming to join them properly. “I’m Scott. Scott Schuman.” He offers his hand out toward Charles, who shakes it politely -- the man has a firm grip. “I maintain a fashion blog online and column for the _Times._ I was hoping you might let me take a few shots of the both of you.”

A _fashion_ blog? That’s one Charles hasn’t heard before, and he’s taken rather aback, none of his stock answers quite fitting the circumstances.

“I don’t know,” he says eventually, glancing sideways at Erik. “We have kind of a high profile already.”

“I know who you are,” Scott says, offering his hand to Erik this time, who takes it. “It’s fine if you’re not interested. But if it makes any difference, I don’t editorialize the pieces much at all. Just clothes. No politics. Where did you get your shirt?”

Erik glances down, plucking with his fingers at the slightly-wrinkled indigo linen shirt he’s wearing. “Lanvin,” he says after a slight moment’s hesitation.

“Nice. Very rugged chic -- and good shoes, too. Edward Green? Mhmm, that’s what I thought. So. What do you think?” He lifts a brow at Charles, clearly recognizing him as the final authority.

Charles looks at Erik, feeling him out -- Erik is flattered, definitely interested in this, and Charles thinks … what the heck. “All right,” he says finally, letting out a snort of a laugh and getting to his feet. “I’ll get out of your way.”

“Oh, no,” Scott says quickly, shaking his head. “You too. You’re a pair. And I like the vintage jacket, it’s a good look. Just stay as you are, pretend I’m not here. Be casual.”

“Okay,” Charles says, surprised; Erik’s always been the stylish one. All the same he sits back down, trying to remember how he was before -- it’s an oddly self-conscious feeling, and he covers for it by looking at Erik instead, lifting his ice cream back to his mouth for another bite. He can hear the camera clicking, see Erik look directly at it, a tentative, defiant sort of look on his face, like he’s staring it down. Charles follows his gaze, and then blinks rapidly as the sunlight catches the lens and shines in his eyes right after the shutter click.

“I love the Sartorialist,” Erik says, looking back to Charles now. “You’ve seen his stuff before, right?”

“Oh!” Charles hadn’t quite put two and two together, and he feels a bit stupid now, not to have realized before. “Of course, I’ve seen it in the paper a few times, since he took over for, what’s his name?”

Erik grins at him, showing teeth, and the camera clicks another barrage of photos. “Bill Cunningham. Yeah.”

“Want to take a look?” Scott says after a few minutes longer, once they’ve relaxed back into conversation enough that their photos must have become acceptably candid. He carried the camera over to where they’re sitting and passes it to Charles, pressing the button to pull up the gallery.

It looks -- good. Charles shouldn’t be surprised but he is somehow anyway, just looking at the two of them side-by-side, Erik’s more Dominant style today a contrast to Charles’ softer tailoring, dark colors versus light, but a clear comfort between them, no awkwardness, just familiarity. “These are great,” he says finally, handing the camera to Erik, who immediately starts flicking through them. “Could I ask you to email copies to me? Do you do that?”

“I can,” Scott says, pulling a slim steel cigarette case out of his back pocket and lighting up, blowing a thin stream of smoke toward the sky. “I’ll give you my card. Shoot me an email and I’ll get a zip file to you. Want to say something about your style? What it means to you?”

“I just like to be comfortable,” Charles says, shrugging, but Erik says, “He likes to dress like an old man.”

“Hey!” Charles protests, elbowing Erik in the side. “Uncalled for.”

“But true,” Erik says, smirking. “He watches too much _Top Model_ for all this to be anything but intentional.”

“What about you, Erik?” Charles asks pointedly. “What’s your style?”

Erik doesn’t answer immediately, but Scott’s giving him the same look Charles is, so after a moment he says, “I don’t know. I grew up submissive, of course, and even after I found out my DS score and decided to start presenting as Dominant there was a part of me that still felt an affiliation with submission. So I like to reflect that in what I wear. Contrasting pieces, like sharp Dom suits with corsets, or fitted jeans with an Hermés scarf. I want something that keeps people guessing.”

“Well, you certainly pull it off,” Scott says, taking the camera back from Erik and handing Charles his card instead. “Thank you both. It usually takes a week or two for candids to get up on the site after we run them in the paper. Something to do with copyright.” He takes another drag from his cigarette and then steps back, lifting his hand. “See you around.”

“Thanks,” Charles says, glancing at the card before tucking it into his jacket pocket for later. When the man is gone, he looks over at Erik and can’t help but laugh, tickled by the whole experience -- how surreal, to have their photo wanted because of how they’re dressed, instead of because some disaster has happened!

“I can’t believe you almost said no,” Erik says, smiling.

Charles shrugs, and takes a final bite of his ice cream -- it’s practically melted now, but it still tastes good. “I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, putting you back on the media’s mind. I didn’t even realize who he was until you told me halfway through.”

“Well, I’m glad you did. That’s pretty much the reason people live in New York anymore, you know. The tiny chance you might run into that guy while not looking like you just crawled out of a trash bag.”

Charles snorts into his ice cream cone, and Erik cracks up too, until they’re both just sitting there leaning on one another, laughing; eventually Charles manages to say, “Come on, let’s get moving again,” and he drags Erik up by the arm, tugging him for a moment towards the path before letting go, not wanting to look as if they’re walking arm-in-arm.

They’re almost to the edge of the park when Erik pauses for a moment, and Charles turns to look at him only to see the lens of Erik’s phone camera before hearing the fake whirring sound of him taking a picture of Charles’ quizzical face.

“What was that for?” he asks, amused despite himself as Erik looks at the result, frowning contemplatively.

“Facebook,” Erik says when he glances up again, tucking the phone back into his pocket. “Yours is miserable. It’s about time we repopulate it with photos of your face.”

“How will that make it less miserable?” Charles asks, and pulls an exaggerated pout, knowing he looks ridiculous; Erik snorts and reaches back again like he’s going to pull his phone back out before thinking better of it.

“It’ll look like you have friends who like you enough to take photos of you and put them on the internet,” he says.

“If it bothers you that much,” Charles says, waving his acceptance as they start walking again, and they talk all the way back, needling one another about nothing at all.

 

*

_Erik_

**_JOIN THE MUTANT SCOURGE_** Erik writes in large block letters on his poster board, filling the ink in dark and thick where he’s lying on his stomach on the kitchen floor of Frank’s new apartment.

It’s small even by New York standards, a studio filled with secondhand Ikea furniture and smelling like Frank’s cigarettes, a stub of one even now smoldering in the ash tray near Frank’s elbow, smoked halfway and then forgotten. There’s one window with the blinds drawn, which means the place is dim even with the overhead light on, Frank’s bed still unmade with the blue comforter piled up near the foot.

“You make it sound like you’re recruiting for your World of Warcraft guild,” Frank says, jabbing Erik in the side with his pen. In his ancient t-shirt, worn thin with years of wear, and threadbare socks, Frank would look like some poor and starving artist in this tiny apartment if it weren’t for the sheer muscular bulk of him. “‘Now recruiting healers and rogues, equal share of quest booty’.”

“Hush,” Erik says, reaching back to slap a hand over Frank’s mouth, eliciting a sharp noise of surprise. “No one asked you.”

He grins when he pulls his hand away, switching out his sharpie for a red marker, and Frank reaches over to flick Erik in the side of the head, gently, a brief sting of his fingernail against Erik’s temple.

“Who is the experienced protester here?” Frank asks, picking up his own pen again and resuming coloring in his bubble writing. “If I’d realized I was inviting over the copy editor for _Lonely, Unwillingly Celibate Gamers Weekly_ to help me with the protest signs I’d have called someone else instead.”

It’s another veiled jab at the fact they aren’t having sex anymore. Frank’s been making these, lately, as if he thinks reminding Erik who he ‘ought’ to be often enough will get Erik back in his bed. The sad thing is, it probably would have worked under any other circumstances, but Erik’s been making an effort lately to distinguish his identity from sex.

“No, you don’t get it,” Erik says. He pushes the old poster away to grab a blank one, starting afresh. “Humans First said in their last manifesto that mutants are a ‘scourge on humanity.’ It’s reclamation.”

Frank snorts. “Oh, I get it. It just doesn’t mean it doesn’t sound stupid.”

“I’m not the one who has to hold it,” Erik says, coloring in the letters on his newest sign.

It’s been months since Erik was worried Frank was a spy, but that doesn’t stop him thinking it from time to time, looking at him and wondering whether he’d fit right in with the old officers, trying to imagine him meeting up with Victor Creed in an isolated diner. He’s almost too conspicuous to get away with it, and without Azazel’s ability to escape. Even so, the thoughts scratch at the back of Erik’s mind like insects, not really relevant at this point but annoying all the same. It’s impossible _not_ to wonder, and yet infuriating not to be able to shift the suspicion.

Time to change the subject. “You still haven’t heard from your contact?” Erik asks.

Frank lifts up his card, revealing in its full glory, _YOU CAN’T PRAY MY SCALE-ROT AWAY -- MUTANTS NEED DOCTORS TOO_. “How’s that?”

“Too long,” Erik says. Then -- “Hellfire. You said two weeks ago you were still waiting to hear back.”

Frank shrugs, setting his sign aside. “I still am. Look, I told you up-front that these aren’t chatty people and they don’t like making new friends. Might be they never come back to me.”

It’s frustrating, but Erik has no way of knowing if it’s true or not, so he’s just going to have to take it as read. “I see,” he says. He’d asked swineherd about Frank, but not the other way around. But asking Frank about swineherd means telling Frank about the project. It’s not something Erik has permission to do, but what is his infamy good for if not for capitalizing on the underground’s sympathy? And Frank would certainly be interested ….

Erik turns the thought over in his head for the next few minutes, coloring in silence and pretending he’s just done with that line of questioning. Frank outlines new letters on a blank sheet -- this time it just says _MUTANTS NEED DOCTORS TOO_.

“As it happens, they did get back to _me_ ,” Erik says at last, putting down his pen and turning to look at Frank properly again, abandoning his poster to sit upright; the floorboards were starting to hurt his elbows and hip bones from lying on them for so long.

“Oh?” Frank glances over at Erik, his eyebrows rising; after a moment he follows suit and gets up, sitting up across from Erik and leaning back against the kitchen counter, his hands coming to rest on one bent knee. “I didn’t realize you were reaching out yourself, too -- anyone I’d have heard of?”

“You know swineherd?” Erik phrases it like it ought to be obvious, a prompt rather than an interrogative -- if Frank does know him, he has no reason to think Erik might have reservations about the man. And while knowing swineherd doesn’t make Frank a bad person, especially considering swineherd makes his living off having great connections, Erik still … Erik would still judge him for it, in the end. Old suspicions die hard.

A frown. “What’s his mutation?”

“Persuasion. Five foot ten ish, blond ish, wears glasses. Great with computers.”

“Bit of a dick?”

“That’s the one,” Erik says with a small grin, trying to keep his thoughts bound up and quiet so they won’t influence his expression. “Where do you know him from, anyway?”

“Neil’s one of those guys everyone knows,” Frank says, shrugging as if it’s no big deal. “Has his fingers in a lot of pies. He’s helped out the MLA in the past with finding out about new legislation, crimes against mutants the government are trying to hush up, that sort of thing. Why, how do you know him? I didn’t think you moved in those circles.”

So swineherd _is_ local to New York, Erik thinks privately. There’s no way he’d be involved on such a small scale otherwise, especially since Erik hadn’t ever met him while he was still officially involved with Hellfire. Erik had known everyone who was anyone on the international scale.

“Well, he’s the one who came to me a few months ago, so I just figured he was the one you got in touch with. He told me he wasn’t Hellfire though, just general,” Erik waves his hand vaguely, “information.”

“Sounds about right,” Frank says. “You know me, Erik, I don’t ask and I don’t tell. I knew Neil was a bit shady, but I figured, not my problem. He helps, you know? If I’d known he had links I’d have asked him for you. Did he give you anything good, at least?”

Frank’s expression is entirely innocent, curious and unworried -- either he’s a fantastic actor or he really didn’t know, and Erik can’t tell what to believe.

“Yeah. Nothing about the whole fiasco at the Hague, unfortunately, so maybe it’s completely unrelated. But he wanted access to the second New York safehouse. We’re using it to run mutant fugitives out of the country. But that’s not even the best part.”

Erik has no problem sharing this amount of information. If Frank’s not interested, he still doesn’t know where the safehouse is, who the fugitives are, when they come and when they go. Frank’s good at keeping secrets anyway, or at least at keeping Erik’s, and his contacts’.

Plus, it gives Erik one last bit of ammunition.

“In exchange, he gave me the names of all the Hellfire agents in New York.”

“Well now,” Frank says after a moment, his eyebrows lifting again, higher this time, and he sets his pen down on the tiled floor. “That’s good currency. I’m assuming you’re not planning on handing it to your cop friends?”

There’s no reaction that would make Erik think Frank’s Hellfire, no sudden fear or tension, no hidden facial tics. But Erik can’t shake this paranoia, grasping the back of his neck like a hand and refusing to let go.

“Don’t worry, of course I won’t,” he says, as if Frank had reason to worry. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t expect so, but I figured I’d ask,” Frank says, settling back further against the counter. “What are you planning to do with them? Invite them to Charles’ for tea and cake?”

“I was more thinking I’d protest with them.” Erik gestures toward the posters demonstratively while keeping an eye on Frank’s face, his body language -- careful. Careful.

Frank just laughs, though, the corners of his eyes crinkling and his broad shoulders shaking with it, a hearty, real sound from his gut. “Oh, come on, Erik, they’re not going to be marching,” he says between chuckles, lifting a finger to wipe away wetness from his eyes. “They’re probably so deep undercover they’re not even out as mutants. These aren’t the kinds of folks you just stroll up to and hand a noisemaker and a protest sign. I know you grew up with them, but shit, for most people these aren’t our uncles and aunties, understand?” He laughs again, shaking his head and letting out a huff of amusement. “Shit.”

If Frank’s Hellfire, he’s certainly being damn stubborn about admitting Erik’s broken his cover. “How would you know?” Erik says, lifting his arm to rest his elbow on the seat of one of Frank’s kitchen chairs. “You claim you’ve never met them.”

“I haven’t,” Frank says, “but I’m not stupid. I might agree with their principles but I’ve seen what they do on TV, same as everyone else. Hellfire might be _our_ guard dog, but that doesn’t mean it ain’t rabid. At least if I was linking you up we could arrange things through third parties, keep it civil. Knowing you, you’ll just march in there acting the prodigal son and expect hugs. You’re my friend, Erik. I don’t want you getting yourself killed.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. No-kill order on my head. Unless Shaw personally breaks out of prison I don’t think it’ll be an issue.” He leaves out the details about how fractured Hellfire has become in the past year and a half since Creed tried -- and failed -- taking over. Damn Frank and his tertiary mutation; this is just the kind of conversation where he wishes he had Charles’ power and could drag everything Frank knows out of his head and lay it out before himself like a mural. “Besides, I’m an omega-class 7D. Hollywood says I’m immortal.”

“Oh yeah,” Frank rolls his eyes. “Because saying so isn’t an automatic Hollywood death sentence. Might as well start begging for it.”

“Can’t you see the giant target I’ve painted on my forehead?” Erik says, gesturing.

“Is that what that is? I thought it was a zit.”

Erik makes a face and heats up Frank’s cell phone in his back pocket, enough for him to feel it but not enough to fry the circuitry. “I have _perfect_ skin, thank you very much!”

“Do you want me to check you all over, see if I can find another one?”

“You wish,” Erik says, grinning, the expression easier now that his suspicions about Frank are mostly-assuaged, picking up a pen to toss it over at Frank, bouncing it off his broad chest and into his lap. Christ, Frank is hot. Erik does prefer Charles’ more condensed muscularity, of course, but there is certainly something to be said for Frank’s … ‘unbridled Dominance’ is a good term, Erik decides. Descriptive of more than just the physical.

“Is my command,” Frank says, sweeping a mock-bow, one hand at his heart, the other out to one side. “Shall we write out some signs for your new protest-mates? ‘Hey look Auntie Frost I’m on TV?’”

Erik laughs. “Is that how you plan to propose marriage? Just a tip, don’t give her a _diamond_ ring.”

Frank grins back, and jostles Erik’s leg with his foot, pushing it to one side; Erik catches his ankle and tugs, upsetting Frank’s balance just enough to send him tilting toward the floor. Not enough to make him fall, though.

“About the whole underground railroad thing,” Erik says. “Are you interested? Because if you are, I can tell our mutual friend and he’ll make it happen.”

There’s a pause, Frank leaning on his elbow against the floor and looking at Erik, brown eyes unreadable for a moment. Just for a moment, though.

“I’m kind of a sore thumb,” he says finally, pushing himself back upright. He shrugs. “I make good muscle, but I’m not a blender. That a problem?”

“Not really. I’d just rather have backup that isn’t fucking swineherd. I doubt Neil could hit a target at ten paces.” It’s all well and good having hacking skills and a snarky attitude, but that won’t help you kill someone who’s trying to kill you first.

Frank gives Erik a wry look. “You know I’ve never shot a gun, right?”

“I’ll shoot. You punch.”

“I can do that,” Frank says, and smiles. “All right. I’ll join your secret clubhouse. What do I need to do?”

“Pass Neil’s background check, I guess. The program’s run by someone named Caliban. He’ll give the final yes or no, and he’ll do it via calligraphy and courier, too. You’ll like it.” Erik picks up his pen and uncaps it, reaching for his poster to fix up the last few letters on his slogan. He can feel Frank watching him but he doesn’t look around, pretending not to notice.

“Caliban? Never heard of him,” Frank says, sounding thoughtful. “What’s his mutation?”

“No idea. I only found out his name because Charles dragged it out of Neil’s mind.”

 _Now_ Frank looks troubled -- he’s frowning, his whole body still, like he’s waiting to move. “You brought Charles into this? He’s a total integrationist, and a goodie-goodie to boot. He’ll report the whole thing to the authorities as soon as he gets the chance. What, did you order him silent, or something?” Frank’s hands curl halfway into fists, though he doesn’t lift them.

Erik raises his eyebrows and sits up properly again, turning to face Frank. “One,” he says, putting up his forefinger, “goodie-goodies don’t fuck their teenage wards. He’s not a goodie-goodie. Two,” second finger, “I have no way of hiding my involvement from an omega-class telepath who lives in my _home_. Three. I didn’t mention it to you earlier, but swineherd fucked me over once before. I’m far more interested in finding out what he knows than I am in getting myself killed for no damn good reason.” He frowns, just a little. “Charles and I have an agreement. It’s fine. Just don’t mention it to Neil and let it get back to Caliban.”

“Well, fucking duh,” Frank says, folding his arms across his chest. “I’m not a narc, Erik. But I think you’re mixing fire and gasoline here. If I’m getting involved with this I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder and finding your daddy-slash-lover standing behind me with the law. Or a chainsaw.”

“Charles knows perfectly well that if he brings the law into this, I bring the law into _us_.” Which isn’t how it is at all, of course, but Erik would rather Frank think Erik’s blackmailing Charles than anything else. Rather that, even, than admit his feelings for Charles to someone who isn’t him. “Charles won’t let himself get put away for child rape and end up sharing a cell with Sebastian Shaw. Trust me on this.”

Frank doesn’t look happy, but he drags his poster back over towards himself anyway, uncapping his pen with short, jerky motions of his hands. “I hope you’re right,” he says, setting nib to paper. “If not, I won’t be a fun cellmate either, friends or not.”

“I should think you’d be pleased,” Erik says, looking at Frank a moment longer before he turns back to his poster. “I’m finally converting Saint Charles to the dark side.”

It earns him a grunt and a nudge to the ankle from one of Frank’s feet. “I thought he was with you because this was some kind of May-December thing. You always made it sound like forbidden romance before, said he loves you. So what, you’re just fucking now? Rough trade?”

Erik’s starting to lose track of his own lies, whatever version of the story it is he’s feeding Frank this time.

“I don’t know how Charles sees it. I keep him happy. But he knows I could fuck his entire life up, now, if I wanted to.” God. All of that is true, even if Erik would never have put it so bluntly under other circumstances. “If you really think he’s going to turn us in, then you shouldn’t join.”

“I barely know the guy,” Frank says, his pen scritching across the card. “Look, I’ll take your word for it because I trust you. But keep an eye on it, okay? Talk about introducing risk factors.”

Erik doesn’t expect Frank to understand, of course, but it still irritates him that Frank would see it this way when to Erik, Charles’ presence could have more than paid for itself. Would have, if only swineherd had more information to offer. Were Erik in Frank’s position, though, he’d agree with Frank.

Erik shrugs and finishes his last poster. “I will. And if it looks like he’s going to snitch, I’ll kill him myself before he can.” False. But Erik’s a good liar.

“Like hell you will. You’ll probably kidnap him away to some cozy island and tie him up so you can sit at his feet all day,” Frank says, with a snort. “Rest your head on his lap and stroke the silk ropes around his ankles.”

“Fuck that,” Erik says, “I’m not a submissive.”

And just like that they’re back to normal, slipping into their usual jokes and teasing insults, the whole matter carefully tucked away and ignored again. Frank seems relaxed, but Erik catches him giving him odd glances every now and then, like he’s considering something, or waiting for something to happen. He takes snapshots of these in his memory and files them away to consider later on when he’s lying in bed at night and trying to decide if there’s something he’s missed. If it’s him or Frank who should be expecting a betrayal. 

 

*

“Frank wasn’t too happy about your involvement,” Erik tells Charles over coffee the next day, sitting across from him in a patio cafe, “but there’s not much he can do about it, and he’s more interested in making a difference than making a point. So he’s in.”

“I can’t decide whether to be happy about that or not.” Charles sips at his tea, then sets the cup down on its saucer, reaching for the milk jug. “Either he’s a mole and going to screw you over, or he’s a good person to have on your side when things go tits up on you.”

Erik frowns, quite certain Charles’ use of ‘when’ is deliberate, though he knows better than to comment on it. “I want him near me whichever it is. Keep your friends close, and your enemies -- well, you know how it goes.”

Charles and Frank are equally suspicious of each other, really, and if mere suspicion were proof of anything Erik could just sit back and expect Charles to send the feds after him. Frank’s reactions the other day made Erik decide to feel better, just a little, about trusting him, even if he’s learned by now to keep a safety net available.

“Excuse me? Are you Erik Lehnsherr?”

Erik lowers his mug, glancing up to see a slim, freckled girl standing beside his chair a respectful couple of feet away, her cell clutched in one hand and her bag strap in the other; she smiles at him hopefully, and he sets his mug down.

“Yes,” he says, slowly, not sure what he’s getting himself into, but she just smiles wider and says, “Oh my gosh, well, I saw your picture on tumblr the other day and it was so great, and when I saw you I thought I just have to ask you to take a picture with me. I’m sorry to be so forward, it’s just my friends won’t believe me otherwise! Would you mind?” She gestures with the cellphone, tilting her head to the side a little, winsomely. “Please?”

 _What picture?_ Erik thinks, suspicion darkening the corners of his mind. He can’t tell what this is about. He knows people take pictures of him on the street sometimes, he feels their cameras, but it’s never been like this.

“All right,” he says all the same, glancing over at Charles as he gets to his feet; Charles looks just as bemused as Erik feels, but he nods, anyway, saying silently, _She doesn’t mean any harm. Mr Schuman published our pictures from the other week, she saw those. She’s a fan of yours._ And he winks, mouth twitching at the corner.

“Awesome, thank you so much,” she says, immediately leaning in against his side once Erik is close enough, her arm around his waist; he tenses and thinks about pulling away but she’s already lifting her phone to eye-level, the camera on and flipped to face her so Erik can see the two of them on the screen together.

“Smile,” she says, and he does, right on cue, watching as the image of the two of them freezes on screen, the top of Erik’s hair a little cut off in the photo -- he’s a good foot taller than she is. For all the world, they could be friends, the picture no different from those Madelyne would take of the two of them, only this time Erik’s sober for it.

“Thanks,” she says, beaming, and darts in to press a kiss to his cheek before she turns and hurries away, already dialing -- he can hear her giggling before she even leaves the patio, phone at her ear saying “Oh my gosh, Laurie you’ll never -- ”

Charles is grinning, amused, when Erik sits back down, and he nudges Erik with his foot, letting out a snort. “How does it feel to be a celebrity?” he asks.

“I’m not a celebrity,” Erik argues, kicking him back. But when they get home and Erik opens up his laptop, he finds that there are hundreds of new Google Alerts in his name -- the original post on the Sartorialist, and then a swarm of reactions to it from news outlets, from personal blogs, and everything in between.

 

 **mumblemumble**  wrote:

> omg this guy should be a model
> 
> no right he should be Mr America, like Miss America because just imagine this guy answering all those stupid political questions like ‘what do you think of mutant separatism’ ‘MUTANT FREEDOM RARGH’ *knocks over table*
> 
> _tags:_ #erik lehnsherr #lol he totally would tho #politics #mutants

 

 **enchantedoctopus** wrote:

> this is going to sound stupid but i really hope erik has a tumblr. like, he’s our age, he’s 17, he probably does, right? and it could be anybody. only then that would mean he’s seen the tag where everyone’s talking about what he might look like naked so maybe not
> 
> _tags:_ #erik lehnsherr #hot men

 

  
**reelsnews** @reelsnews . Aug 12nd

> RUMOR:Scorsese looks to cast Lehnsherr in upcoming mutant thriller- looks powers + RL backstory make him ‘great fit’

 

 **Erik Lehnsherr lookalikes?** (self.doppelbanghim)  
submitted 1 hour ago by Runnerlg

> Someone tell me there’s a porn star out there that looks like Erik Lehnsherr. I don’t care if it’s behind a paywall, I’d do anything to fuck that.

  
**grunterboy** 34 points in  _Erik Lehnsherr lookalikes?_

> https://www.pornbayhub.com/videos/536781.aspx  
>  https://xvxvideos.com/het/videos/678a2fghas4.aspx
> 
> have at yourself my brother

 

Charles, who is sat next to Erik looking at the screen, looks like he can’t decide whether to be scandalized or to laugh. “And to think they say eavesdroppers never hear good about themselves,” he says.

“But the photo only got posted six hours ago,” Erik says, feeling slightly dazed as he clicks through to the next page of alerts. “I didn’t even do anything. We were just there.”

Charles shrugs. “You’d know more about how this works than I would. But I guess people just like your face.” He points to an article link, which when Erik clicks on it opens up with a large copy of one of the pictures of the two of them talking, relaxed and smiling in the sunshine. “They’ve probably never seen you smile before.”

“I smile,” Erik protests, though when he thinks about it, he knows Charles is right; he doesn’t smile in court, he doesn’t smile on the street when he feels those cameras move. “Look,” he says, changing the subject, sort of, clicking a link to Facebook. “Someone made a fake profile for me. I’ve got 10,000 likes already.”

“Why would anyone even bother? It’s not like they’re getting the likes themselves,” Charles says.

Erik shrugs and tips the lid of his laptop shut, pushing it off his lap and onto the coffee table. “It’ll blow over. Either they’ll move onto someone else or they’ll collectively remember I’m an ex-terrorist and decide to hate me instead.”

But it doesn’t blow over. By the end of the next two weeks Erik’s seen hundreds more photos of himself surface online, taken by amateur photographers or paparazzi or simply leaked off his own private Facebook page. On his way into school on Wednesday morning he gets pulled aside by a reporter for some small-time blog wanting to know his opinions on the two main presidential candidates this election. Erik says, “I think it’s a shame neither of them can mutate into an _honest_ politician.”

By the time he gets out of his third period class, his comment has been picked up by Buzzfeed and the Huff Post, and CNN has left a message on his phone asking him to call back and elaborate.

It only snowballs from there.

 

**BUZZFEED /trending**

 

> **20 REASONS TO LOVE ERIK LEHNSHERR**
> 
> **1\. He doesn’t give any shits what you think of him**  
>  See: what he said to Maggie Fitzgerald at the Herald this morning -- not afraid to call it like he sees it
> 
> **2\. He’s super hot (and jailbait, we know … )**
> 
> **3\. His dad is also super hot**  
>  Okay, so Dr Charles Xavier, genius psychologist and omega-class telepath isn’t Erik’s real dad. But that doesn’t mean he’s not smoking. Hot.
> 
> **4\. Only Erik can pull off wearing a corset AND combat boots.**
> 
> **5\. Killed a Hellfire assassin in one shot when he was only sixteen. Bamf.**  
>  Not to mention scaring off Victor Creed, which is no mean feat
> 
> **6\. He told the world that Sebastian Shaw’s favorite movie was _13 Going on 30._**  
>  This. changes. everything.
> 
> Read more

 

 **Interview for Nylon**  
_to me_

> Dear Mr Lehnsherr,
> 
> I am writing to see if you might be interested in arranging a _Nylon Magazine_ exclusive interview. We can offer three full-page photo spreads, in addition to a 3,000 word article.
> 
> Have your manager contact us to discuss the logistics and your compensation, and your parent/legal guardian for permission. The piece would run in the October 2019 issue, so please get back to us no later than September 1.
> 
> Gemma Laurence  
>  Fashion Editor
> 
> &
> 
> Hannah Zaki  
>  Political Correspondent
> 
> _Nylon_ Magazine

 

Charles looks more and more concerned with each new message, call, email, his mouth becoming tight and pinched, his arms more often folded, hands hidden in the bends of his elbows. When Erik shows him the request from _Nylon_ Charles finally says, “You know how I feel about all of this, but it’s not just my decision any more. What do you want to do about it?”

“I don’t know,” Erik says, glancing at the screen of his laptop on the kitchen table, where the text of the email is still pulled up on his browser. “It depends. I think it’s a good opportunity to get more visibility for some of the major issues mutants are facing today, and to express my opinion regarding the resolution going through the House right now. And I’m happy to talk about Hellfire, too, I just -- “ He gives Charles a wry look. “I just don’t want it to all be about the abuse. I want to represent more than that.”

“Most of these sorts of publications will allow you to guide the article somewhat, especially around difficult or traumatic subjects,” Charles says, leaning back a little in his chair. “But, Erik -- I think the real question here is whether this is what you want to do for the next, let’s say five years, minimum. Once you make yourself a talking head for a particular issue or topic, that doesn’t just go away. You would be opening yourself up to public scrutiny in an entirely different way, and potentially signing up to this sort of media attention for life.”

“Is that really a bad thing? To have my opinion valued and sought-after instead of just being another mutant muttering to a brick wall?”

They can march in protests as much as they want, can tweet, can even lobby Congress, but at the end of the day people like Frank, for example, will never have any real influence over legislation. Not without either corporate money or being such a public figure that people are forced to listen to what you have to say.

But on the other hand, becoming even more famous might mean having to withdraw from his work in the underground. He could stay involved in smaller ways, but he couldn’t be the man on the ground. Not unless…. It _must_ be doable, somehow. Braden-Newell does it, for example. Could Erik figure out a way to wield popularity in one hand, and activism in another?

“You’re a talking head yourself, Charles,” Erik says. “How has that worked out for you?”

“I am to a certain extent,” Charles says, cautiously, unfolding his arms so he can stir his coffee, then tapping his teaspoon on the edge of the mug, “I was raised to expect high levels of attention, and so it phased me less to get it when I started. It comes with the kind of family I was born into. But it does mean that I have to be careful about what I do in public, more so than other people, because it might be noticed and reported on. I have to be more careful what I say, because it could be taken out of context. Because I’m a professional and that’s the main reason why I’m well known, it’s a little different than being someone with such a colorful personal history as you have. I’m more like … Bill Nye, perhaps. You would be, God forbid, somewhat closer to being Kim Kardashian.”

Erik grimaces, recoiling slightly. “I intend to be known for more than having a great ass, thank you.”

“And I think you would be,” Charles says. “The incessant attention, intrusive questions and prurient interest in your personal life was more what I was thinking of.”

So much of that has already begun, Erik thinks. Ever since he first testified in court. The difference is, now he might be able to replace those associations with more positive ones. He doesn’t have to go quite so far as Charles is implying, after all -- those people have PR agents, and managers, people who exist just to make them more famous. Erik doesn’t need all that. He’s perfectly content to talk on about current events, maybe say a word or two about what he’s wearing or what he eats for breakfast if people really give a fuck, but he wouldn’t expect it to get out of hand. No one becomes a celebrity by accident.

The only question remaining is, could he hide his relationship with Charles for the next year? Would this kind of thing be qualitatively different from how it’s been already, or could he anticipate the same precautions to have the same effects?

“I’ll have to think about it,” Erik says at last, tapping his fingers on the tabletop and looking back at Charles. “I’m interested, but I don’t want all this to get out of hand.”

Charles gives him a small, tight smile. “I think that’s sensible. Don’t jump in until you’re sure it’s what you want.”

Erik frowns at him, Charles’ relative displeasure not something he can ignore. “You think it’s a bad idea,” he says.

“Mmm … ” A pause. “I just think that inviting more of that kind of scrutiny may not be good for you. You already struggle sometimes with knowing how much people know about you, thanks to the court case being run so openly -- this would be like that on steroids.” Charles shrugs, the sense of his mind uneasy, troubled. “On a more selfish note, it’s also true that our relationship would be much harder to hide if everyone were looking at us that closely.”

Erik nods; Charles said what Erik expected him to say, so it isn’t surprising to hear, but he still values Charles’ opinion more than anyone else’s in the world. And it seems they share the same primary concerns, only Erik thinks the publicity for mutant rights might be worth it.

“At this point,” he says slowly, “how avoidable is that attention at all? Things seem to be going quickly even without my direct contribution.”

Charles shrugs. “Things will die down if you don’t feed them. If you do, it’ll keep going far longer.”

And eventually, they’ll move on to something else. But Erik won’t have another chance like this. He hadn’t mentioned it to Charles, not outright, but he’s been thinking more and more about pursuing a career in politics. With his background and set of skills, he might stand a chance of being actually influential in some way -- _changing_ the laws, not just breaking them. Above everything else, what Erik needs -- what Erik has always needed -- is to be a revolutionary. To fight for mutants with everything he has to give. He can’t do that if he’s just a victim, whose only purpose is to remind people of his weakness.

“I’ll think about it,” he says again, more firmly this time. And he does. But there’s something addictive about this, about the keen looks on people’s faces when he speaks into their microphones, all of them hanging onto his every word. What if, Erik thinks, he’d grown up seeing someone like himself on the news Shaw made him watch. What if there were some role model, someone who’d survived abuse like him and who made that abuse into a weapon for the cause? Would things have been different? Would he have seen that there were options outside Hellfire -- other ways to make a difference in the world?

That’s what Erik wonders later. If he asked himself as a child, six-year-old Erik, what he wanted to be when he grew up … what would that child say?

 

*

The entire floor in this dorm is dedicated to the fraternity house, and the fraternity house has temporarily dedicated their floor to the concept of ‘college party.’ First step: admissions, and they only let you in if you’re hot.

“Seven,” says the Dom rating Madelyne, grabbing her hand to draw a red star on it with marker. The sub whose job it is to rate Erik is looking him up and down thoughtfully, and finally says, “Nine. Working it tonight, babe,” and grins at Erik as he draws the star onto Erik’s hand.

“We could probably both be tens if we took our shirts off,” Erik tells Madelyne with a smirk and an arched brow, and tugs her after him deeper into the party. Everyone either of them knows is here tonight. The entirety of Trinity’s upper school, it seems, in addition to swaths of Columbia and NYU undergrads likely drawn by the reputation of the hosts as being among the most creative (and exclusive) party-throwers at either school.

Madelyne huffs and casts Erik a wry glance, then flicks another button of her silk shirt open. “How about now?” she asks. “Do I get extra credit, do you think?”

Erik doesn’t consider himself the best authority -- or any authority, really -- on tits, so he shrugs and pauses in the middle of the crowded hall to gesture over his shoulder, faking seriousness as he says, “Do you want to go back and get a revote?”

“Maybe I should,” she says, and unlike Erik she sounds like she is considering it. “I mean, a seven? Really? These are home-grown, no silicone involved.”

“I’m sure that Dom would love to test that empirically,” Erik says, and just in case she doesn’t catch the sarcasm he tugs at her hand again, edging past a few rowdy jocks crowing about something or another to dip into the ‘cafeteria’ -- where someone has laid out hundreds of tiny cups of red jello shots on a dozen tables.

“Two for you,” he says, pushing the cups over toward Madelyne, “and …” two for him.

“You are a real gentleman, Erik,” she says, taking one in either hand and upending the first, then the second, slamming the little plastic cups back down onto the table. “Come on, bottom’s up.” She grins at him, then looks out at the room, surveying the roiling crowd. There’s already a high energy in there, anticipation and excitement building -- it feels like a good party, Madelyne’s body shifting with the beat of the music.

Erik takes his shots in quick succession, the alcohol almost impossible to taste beneath the sweetness of the jello. He nudges Madelyne with his shoulder and tilts his head down the hall, to where there’s an open room visible, crammed full of people. “Dance?”

They make their way into the other room where Madelyne immediately does her usual trick of somehow managing to squirm them right into the middle -- she hates to be on the outside of a crowd, wants to be part of it, and when Erik follows she turns and smiles at him, looping her arms around his neck.

They dance for a while, with each other and with random strangers neither of them know, with Evan and Petra when the two cycle through on their way from room to room, the music a throbbing beat overhead and below and all around, pulsing heat from body to body. Madelyne doesn’t push for more even though she must remember as clearly as Erik does the way they got into bed with one another in the first place; she seems past that now, which is a relief, because Erik would hate to lose her friendship over sex.

They’re moving together to a fast song, heady and just shy of tipsy, when Erik feels a huge hand come down on his shoulder and a familiar voice says in his ear, “Howdy, stranger.”

“When did you get here?” Erik says, turning to face Frank properly -- too awkward to try to crane a look over his shoulder even though Frank’s only two inches taller than he is; somehow, Frank’s general size manages to make six foot five seem gigantic.

“About an hour ago,” Frank says, his hands going to Erik’s waist and nudging him to keep moving, picking up the dance as Madelyne slips her arms around Erik from behind, making him the jelly in their sandwich. “Having fun?”

“I always have fun.”

Erik twines one arm up around Frank’s neck to keep them close, leaning into Frank’s flat firmness as Madelyne’s softer form presses against him from the back. He briefly wonders if Charles would want him to dance less … suggestively, considering he’s now pinned between the two most recent non-Charles people he’s fucked, but considering the way he was dancing before Frank came up it would be worse to stop now and invite questions. So instead he keeps going, reaching a hand back to cover Madelyne’s on his thigh and letting his spine undulate to the beat, the three of them finding a rhythm.

“Hey Frank,” Madelyne yells, leaning enough to the side to keep from hurting Erik’s ears.

“Hey, Maddie, how’s it shaking?”

“Pretty good,” she shouts, grinning and pressing her lips to the side of Erik’s neck to plant a loud and sloppy kiss.

It’s quite possibly too easy to dance like this, rolling his hips forward against Frank’s and sliding his hand up under the hem of Frank’s shirt to press flat against taut muscle, Madelyne’s breath on his nape, strange fingers reaching out to graze his sides.

The song changes over. “Come on,” Erik raises his voice to be heard, extracting himself from between the two of them -- harder than it seems, when people are pressed in so close he’s constantly in danger of having someone’s elbow in his ribs. “More shots!”

He wants to stop second-guessing things and just enjoy the party, to dance without wondering if it’s too far or not enough. He’d like to feel like himself again for a while, even if he can’t go further than that. Which means: alcohol.

They manage to get out of the room and back across the hall eventually, weaving between dancers and couples and someone who looks like he’s going to be ill. The jello shots are all gone at this point, replaced by bottles of cheap rum and vodka and jumbo baggies of Solo cups. Erik pours enough vodka to be about three shots into a blue cup and downs half of it, the back of his throat burning when he takes in a breath.

“Here,” he says, thrusting the bottle into Frank’s hands.

“Thanks.” Frank drinks directly from the bottle and Madelyne makes a sound of delighted disgust, smacking him with the back of one hand. Frank just grins, taking another swig. “They’ve got bedrooms back there for people to go fuck,” he says, loud above the music, “and people are actually _lining up_ until someone else hot arrives to go fuck a stranger! Seriously, Erik, you should check it out, you’d be buried all night!”

Erik isn’t sure why it makes him feel slightly uncomfortable, the insinuation that if he went into that room he’d end up on some dirty mattress having a train run on him all night. Frank’s trying to be complimentary, implying Erik’s hot, but it leaves a bad taste in his mouth all the same. Probably it shouldn’t.

“I don’t do that shit anymore,” Erik says, but he doesn’t think anyone can hear him over the bass of the chorus.

“It’s a party, it’s not like anything that happens here means anything.”

Except for to Madelyne, Erik thinks, the both of them very intentionally not-looking at each other, Madelyne biting her lip, her eyes flickering down towards the floor, face flushed. Maybe nothing at parties ever meant anything to Erik, but that isn’t true for her, wasn’t true when she asked Erik to take her virginity.

“Maybe for sluts like you,” Erik tells Frank, adopting a teasing tone.

“Pretty sure the STI clinic would disagree with you too,” Madelyne says, grabbing another shot, but Frank just grins, putting down the bottle -- empty, dear God -- and says, “Your loss, then, but I know where I’m planning on ending the evening.”

“Come on,” Erik says, because really, enough’s enough -- he grabs another bottle, this one of rum, and Madelyne’s hand -- “Let’s dance.”

They end up losing the bottle sometime in the next hour, passed from Erik to Frank to Madelyne and at some point ending up as a general shared possession among everyone on the dance floor, passed overhead and spilling lukewarm rain on the backs of their necks. Erik’s drunk enough at this point not to care, his mind and the rest of the world blurry and colorful, inhibition replaced by reflex and easy action.

After a while he becomes aware of Frank dancing behind him, hands on Erik’s hips grinding him back, and then Frank’s mouth is on Erik’s neck, kissing him in the crook of it where it meets his shoulder, hot and intense, tongue swiping at the rum-splattered skin; it feels good, entirely different from Madelyne’s mouth before, and Erik leans his head back against Frank’s shoulder, heavy eyelids falling shut.

I like this song, he thinks, and one of his hands is clasped around Frank’s wrist but doing nothing, neither pulling his hand away nor keeping it there. The throb of the bass pounds through his body like a beating heart. Frank’s hand moves, slipping down from Erik’s hip down to his crotch, and Frank takes hold of him there, his fingers massaging Erik between his legs and encouraging that rocking motion to continue, his own hips rolling Erik between Frank’s firm hand and his cock riding the cleft of Erik’s ass, rubbing off against him.

Erik’s grip tightens on Frank’s wrist. He knows he needs to push Frank’s hand away -- but it feels like that would be rude, interrupting the middle of a song. He shouldn’t cause a scene.

It wouldn’t be sexy, and Erik always wants to be sexy.

He figures out a happy medium by the next chorus, twisting around in Frank’s arms to face him instead, forcing Frank’s hands onto his ass instead which feels safer, really. Like an apology Erik drapes an arm against Frank’s shoulder, leaning in close as he keeps dancing, his pulse surprisingly fast in his chest.

Frank’s fingers squeeze Erik’s buttocks, his handspan wide enough it covers each cheek entirely; he moves his head down and goes back to kissing Erik’s neck, scraping over Erik’s pulse with his teeth, a low rumble in his chest that Erik can feel rather than hear. More and more Erik is starting to think he should just go home. It’s late, poor Charles is all alone in bed asleep. Erik isn’t allowed to be like this anymore.

But just-leaving seems wrong, too, and Erik has the slow, sick suspicion that if Frank pushed him down to his knees right now he’d just suck his cock without second-guessing it, muscle memory taking over.

“Let’s go check out those other rooms,” Frank murmurs, his breath stinking of rum, his words a little blurred at the edges. “I hear they even fill them with toys and lube.”

“Mmm.” Erik feels anxious now, and a bit light-headed, not sure whether it would be worse to say yes or no. One of his hands fists in the fabric of Frank’s shirt, hard. “I -- can’t. You know that.”

“Eriiiiik,” Frank groans, letting his forehead fall heavy onto Erik’s shoulder. “You’re so boring lately. Do you always do what your daddy tells you or do you do what you wanna do?”

A strange heat burns beneath Erik’s skin at that, almost like chagrin. Is he boring, now? He can’t be boring. His life depends on not being boring, he has to --

\-- only it doesn’t, not anymore, he’s …

… he’s confusing himself, now.

“I’m sorry,” Erik says, dizzy, and touches two fingers to Frank’s cheek. “If you want to fuck me you should ask … you should ask Charles.”

That isn’t right, either, but Erik can’t care.

“Wha? No,” Frank says, frowning and looking rather befuddled. “‘M asking you. You’re a Dom. Wanna fuck?” He strokes his fingers through Erik’s hair, cupping the side of his head in one big warm palm. “I’ll make it good.”

The way the strobelights are flashing makes the entire thing seem unreal, like existence stops and starts in fits and bursts, like two worlds colliding. Erik looks over Frank’s shoulder and sees Madelyne dancing, but slowly, like she’s lost her focus -- staring back at them, at him, a slightly shocked look on her face. Erik wonders if he’s done something wrong. But he’s not her. He can only do what he knows how to do. Besides, it’s very naïve of her to act so surprised. This isn’t abnormal, not even for non-Erik people.

Erik can’t remember ever being that naïve.

“Some other time,” Erik says, looking away, and finally he reaches up for Frank’s hand and pushes it down, away, though he can’t take a step back. Not yet. “I have to go home. Too … late. Already.”

“Okay,” Frank says, and after a moment he rubs his hand across his own face, rubbing at his eyes. “Uh, want me to walk you out?”

Erik nods, letting Frank place a hand at the small of his back to help guide him between the throngs of people, more crowded now even than it was before, everyone just as wasted as Erik feels, side-stepping a puddle of yellowish vomit in the hall.

“Tell Maddie I went home,” Erik says when they’re near the door. “She’ll -- worry.”

“Okay,” Frank says, his hand still on Erik’s back. “Call me tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Later.”

Outside the city is colder than Erik was anticipating, frigid for this time of year, and he wraps his arms around himself and wishes he brought a coat as he half-walk half-stumbles out onto the sidewalk. The streetlights glare too-bright overhead and Erik thinks, got to walk across the park. Only. He doesn’t want to. And it’s two AM, and Erik would have to use his mutation to scare off muggers, and metal feels blurry in his senses, distant and liquid.

Subway would take too long, so Erik ends up standing under one of the lights waiting for a yellow cab to eventually come by, rolling to a stop at the curb when Erik lifts his hand to flag it down.

“740 Park Ave,” Erik says, collapsing into the back seat.

The cabbie says something indecipherable, and Erik just waves it off, leaning his head against the cold window as they pull out into the street. He pays in cash when they get to the building and tries to seem sober as he walks inside past the concierge. He’s not totally sure he succeeds.

The apartment is dark when Erik lets himself in, toeing off his shoes in the gallery closet and trying to be quiet as he ascends the stairs, grasping onto the handrail for dear life. When he gets upstairs Charles is rolling over in bed to squint at him in the doorway, hair mussed and lines on his face from the pillow.

“Smelled you coming,” he mumbles, pushing up a little onto one arm.

“Go back to sleep,” Erik whispers, pulling the door shut behind him and casting the room into darkness, so deep he has to fumble his way across the room to the bed and pull back the coverlet, climbing in fully-dressed.

Charles makes an indignant sort of sound and rolls over, his hands going to Erik’s shirt and tugging. “Come on, clothes off,” he says, and pulls Erik’s shirt up over his head, then goes clumsily for Erik’s belt, unfastening both that and Erik’s fly to drag his pants down, working them off over Erik’s feet. “That’s better. Now sleep.”

Erik shuffles closer to Charles under the covers, until his knees bump into something solid. When he reaches forward with his hand he ends up with his arm across Charles’ belly, hand near his hipbone. “I was good,” he murmurs, eyes already shut.

“So was I, now hush,” Charles says, petting the back of Erik’s hand. “Go to sleep. You’ll regret it in the morning.”

 

*

When Erik wakes up, he immediately regrets it.

His head pounds like someone is drilling into his skull, and even the faint glow of sunlight against his closed eyelids is too much, sending sharper pain lancing through his head and upsetting the seawater in his stomach, sending waves crashing against his sides.

 _Here,_ Charles’ voice says in his head, blissfully silent, and Erik gets the impression of a glass of water and some aspirin, right before the pain suddenly dulls down, becoming a distant throb instead of an instant and very present stabbing.

Slowly, slowly, he dares to open his eyes, squinting through the sunlight only to realize it doesn’t bother him now. Charles is sitting on the edge of the bed, that glass of water in his hand and the other holding two little white pills -- the aspirin.

“Thanks,” Erik mumbles, and he pushes himself up enough that he won’t choke when he takes the pills from Charles’ hand and downs them with a swallow of the water.

“I’d take all of it, but pain is your body’s way of saying something is wrong,” Charles says, folding his emptied hands in his lap. “Better for you to still know it’s there. Did you have fun last night?”

“A lot of people were there.”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Erik lets out a breath, not sure how even he feels about what happened last night. “We all got pretty drunk. Myself included. I don’t think he meant anything by it, but ….”

Erik pushes a summary of the previous night toward the forefront of his mind for Charles to take if he wants, and he can see it on Charles’ face when he looks, the tightening of his lips, the way his eyes flick down. “Ah,” he says, in a neutral sort of tone. “Well, nothing really happened, so it’s -- I’m not mad, if you were worried about that.”

“No, I didn’t think you would be,” Erik says. “It just reminded me how much things have changed, that’s all.”

Charles reaches out and rests his hand on Erik’s face, thumb stroking over his cheekbone, back and forth. “You’ve come a long way,” he says. “I’m proud of you. It’s not easy resisting your instincts when your inhibitions are lowered.”

“Madelyne acted like I was doing something obscene, dancing with him like that in the first place.”

“Well,” Charles says, with a small smile. “Madelyne is a very sweet girl, with some big blind spots. You have to remember, Erik, you’re probably the only person she’s ever slept with. At that age casual seems impossible, especially for young submissives. For her and people like her, sex is always supposed to mean something.”

Erik feels that heat under his skin again, the same way he felt last night, like thousands of insects are crawling up and down his spine.

“I understand,” he says. “Maybe it’s not fair to her, but I -- she knows why I’m the way I am. I didn’t grow up like that. And I don’t know what Frank’s situation is, but something tells me that’s not how he grew up either. Sex only means something to me now because I know it means something to _you._ ”

“There’s nothing wrong with either way,” Charles says, “as long as you’re happy that way. Sex is a thing we do because we’re programmed that way. It doesn’t make you wrong to not see meaning in it, Erik -- the way you got there was horrible, but that doesn’t define you.”

“I know it’s not wrong.” Erik makes a faint, meaningless noise and shakes his head. “Never mind. I should shower, anyway.”

He pushes the covers back, kicking them the rest of the way down with his legs and getting out of bed slowly, his limbs feeling stiff and sore from dancing so late last night. Charles has picked his clothes up off the floor and put them in the hamper, leaving Erik to pad across the room in his boxers to Charles’ bathroom and turn on the shower, waiting for the water to heat up.

Charles follows him, leaning against the doorframe with a troubled look on his face. “What’s really bothering you, Erik?” he asks, watching Erik as he shucks out of his boxers. “You’re clouding it from me, but there’s something there.”

Erik opens the shower door and holds his hand out to test the water before he gets in, the sudden pounding heat of the water on his head and shoulders chasing away some of the ache in his muscles.

“I don’t know,” Erik says, reaching for the bottle of shampoo and squirting a tiny amount into the palm of his hand. He doesn’t look at Charles as he starts lathering up his hair, dragging his blunt nails against his scalp. “Sometimes it feels like I missed something important. People talk about losing your virginity like it’s some life-altering experience, and I never had that.”

But he does remember what it was like for Madelyne, how important it was to her and how happy she was that it had been him. He remembers her saying she felt different, after, but she couldn’t explain to him how. Erik doesn’t know what his first time was like, he was too young, but he’s certain it was nothing like that.

“I can understand that,” Charles says, sounding strange through the beating of the water, far away. “It’s … well, it’s often far more awkward and uncomfortable and embarrassing than people would have you believe, but it’s also a kind of rite of passage.”

Erik rinses the suds from his hair, watching them foam up on the floor of the shower before they vanish down the drain, swirling out of sight. “Do you,” he starts, uncertain if he wants to continue, before he decides to hell with it and says, “Do you think you could find my first time in my memory, even though I’ve forgotten it?”

Charles is silent for a long, long time before he says, gently, “I think that would be a spectacularly bad idea.”

“It’s my memory, Charles. It can’t hurt me any worse than the others I have.”

“No,” Charles says, stepping forward until he’s standing just on the other side of the glass, looking in at Erik through the steam. “Erik, it won’t help you to feel any better about yourself and your … level of experience. It can’t do anything but hurt you, and I won’t help you do that.”

Erik’s hands are in fists and he doesn’t remember clenching them. “I want to know. It’s not about hurting myself, it’s about _knowing._ Shaw stole this from me, and I want it back.”

“What you want isn’t going to come from remembering the first time you were raped as a toddler,” Charles says, his hand splayed against the door. “Erik, that’s not going to be a -- well, it _was_ a transitional moment, but not the kind you’re looking for.” He pauses, then says, testingly, “What you want is to feel the way Madelyne felt, isn’t it? To feel different about it? Sex?”

“Not necessarily. I just want to know if it felt any different, afterward. That’s all. I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

Charles doesn’t say anything to that and Erik turns away from him, reaching for the soap to lather up a washcloth and start scrubbing his body, quick circular movements that feel too-rushed, somehow. He knows he can’t _make_ Charles see it his way, that Charles has his reasons for wanting to keep this from him. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like Charles holding Erik’s own memories hostage, a little, keeping them out of reach and claiming it’s for Erik’s own good.

Erik has the creeping sense that, if he can’t figure this out, can’t put his finger on _exactly_ what it was that was taken from him, he’ll never be able to see anything -- his own sexuality, his relationship with Charles -- in the right light, ever.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says. “I’ll go downstairs and put the kettle on. Do you feel up to some coffee now?”

“Sure,” Erik says, looking back over his shoulder at Charles and trying to smile for him. “Thanks.”

Charles goes and Erik tilts his face back into the spray, trying not to think about all the hands that have touched his body, the way it feels those hands own him more than he owns himself.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: relatively brief discussion of child sexual abuse at end of chapter


	38. Thirty-eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no cw this chapter

**NYLON magazine** , October Issue

**WILL THE REAL ERIK LEHNSHERR PLEASE STAND UP?**

> As long as you’re alive and not in a coma, you have most likely heard of Erik Lehnsherr on the nightly news. The most high-profile victim-cum-member of the notorious Hellfire Club, he was raised from early childhood to a life of crime by an abusive and manipulative family of terrorist mutants bent on killing non-mutants and pursuing a supremacist agenda. But now the seventeen-year-old is starting to make waves on his own by expressing his unique views on mutation and life in mutant America, formed both from his past experiences and from his new life as the ward of mutant psychologist billionaire Dr Charles Xavier. It’s a veritable rags-to-riches story, one that sounds like a movie -- and probably should be one.
> 
> I met up with Erik in Solaridad, an upmarket bistro on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where he was sitting by the huge plate glass window watching the people go past outside, a bowl of crab bisque with rustic poppy-seed bread in front of him and a pensive look on his face. As you might expect from the subject of one of _The Sartorialist_ ’s most-viewed impromptu photo shoots, he looked impeccable in a loose-fitting linen Dominant-styled shirt, worn-in jeans and a pair of leather suspenders that utterly undermined the 7D-leanings of the rest of his outfit, only contributing to the androgynous, mixed-message look that Erik has made so popular in the past few months.
> 
> Once I’d ordered (“Get the grilled cheese,” Erik tells me with ardent sincerity, “It’s the best”) I asked him what he thought of the sudden media attention that followed those now-famous photographs, and the way it has focused so thoroughly on him, almost to the exclusion of their other subject, his foster-father Charles Xavier.
> 
> “It’s flattering,” Erik says. “And completely misplaced. Charles has always been the pretty one.”
> 
> Surely Erik is being modest, I say -- he’s hardly the ugly duckling of his makeshift family with his green eyes and surprisingly long lashes, standing well over six feet tall with the kind of build and facial features that suggest he’s only going to get better-looking as time goes on.
> 
> “[The attention is] a different extreme than what I grew up with. But I’ve been able to meet a lot of really interesting people already because of it, and I’m grateful for that.”
> 
> Erik doesn’t like to talk too much about his childhood, understandably -- it’s a matter of public record, all of which is already well-known to most. I ask instead about Dr Xavier -- what’s it like going from Hellfire to living with a man already so famous in his own right for his work on mutant issues?
> 
> And as it turns out, the two omega-class mutants don’t often see eye-to-eye. “We fight about politics a lot,” Erik says, giving me a small grin. Whereas Erik’s guardian was influenced by the integrationist school of thought, Erik’s philosophy is inspired by the work of Herman Greer and Elinor Yancey, a more radical and rebellious approach that has been on the rise lately in social justice circles.
> 
> “Separatism,” Erik confirms when I ask. “An affirmative approach to mutant rights, one that recognizes the different needs and cultural experiences of mutants and acts to address them with specificity. I think more and more mutants are starting to recognize the need for tailored programs, and to make their voices heard.”
> 
> Like everything about Erik Lehnsherr, the articulate, intelligent way he speaks about politics is both utterly surprising and yet seems to fit this unusual teenager like a kid glove. When I later asked him about his schooling Erik revealed that half of his current high school class load is in fact made up of classes taught at Columbia University, mostly at a second- or third-year undergraduate level.
> 
> What would Erik do, I ask, if given free reign to shape mutant rights policies in this country?
> 
> “Ideally, I’d like to see federal social work programs directed solely at mutants, mutant health centers in public hospitals, mutant-only primary and secondary schools where mutants can be taught to use their powers effectively, legislation to work against mutant underrepresentation in STEM and politics. And, importantly, a non-discrimination clause in areas where mutants have historically been persecuted, such as employment, housing, college admissions, and benefits programs. Gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, and disability -- as well as other identities -- are already protected under the law. It’s time to protect mutants, too.” He pauses, and then he adds, “But I think it’s important that the mutant people act to make their voices heard. We won’t get any of these if we don’t fight for them.”
> 
> So are you thinking about going into politics in future, to help make those dreams a reality? I ask. My grilled cheese arrives before Erik can answer, and, the consummate gentleman, he waits for me to start before speaking again -- long enough to avoid my interrupting him with my noise of surprised pleasure. This might be the best grilled cheese of my life.
> 
> “Maybe,” Erik says, and the evasion is perfect for a future-politician. “I’m also interested in science and tech, though. I love building things, so something like engineering or computer science would be a good fit, too.”
> 
> Does he find being a 7D makes a difference to how people perceive him now, compared to when he believed himself to be a -1S? He’s become somewhat of a teenage pin-up ever since those photos, with his orientation one of the key factors making young subs -- and a few older ones -- swoon over him.
> 
> For a moment Erik looks taken aback by the question, dragging long fingers through his dark-auburn hair, but he answers just as graciously as always. “There’s a major difference,” he tells me. “I found out I was Dominant a week after the raid” -- he means the joint CIA-international taskforce raid on the Brooklyn safehouse containing all six of the Hellfire Club’s now-captured officers, and Erik himself -- “but I kept presenting as submissive for a long time after that. When I started acting Dominant, people treated me differently. It was like what I had to say mattered more, even if it was the same thing I’d been saying two months ago as a sub. Being Dominant comes easier than being submissive, I suppose because it’s my real orientation, and now when I do and say Dommy things people don’t act so shocked that I’m behaving un-submissively.”
> 
> He has a mischievous grin on his face, the kind of grin that makes you wonder what kind of hijinks he got up both as a sub and a Dom to warrant it, the kind of grin that makes you think: this guy is trouble, and he’s gonna steal my heart.
> 
> This history of mixed messages obviously still informs his personal style -- is it a deliberate choice or something deeper, more personal that drives him to express that visually in the way he dresses? Erik tells me it’s just the way he is -- that “Dominance and submission exist on a spectrum. An obvious and codified one burned into our genetic code. I don’t think that spectrum ceases to be a factor just because you live at one extreme of it. People are a mix of Dominant and submissive traits, just like most people have both feminine and masculine traits even if the scales are balanced toward one or the other. My past shaped me just as much as my genes, and I can’t ignore the parts of submission that still resonate with me. I think it would be a disservice to myself to try to suppress who I was for thirteen years entirely. So I dress like this because it reflects who I am and how I feel. Dominance and submission are both beautiful things, and while I’ve fully embraced Dominance now, I still want to show respect to who I used to be.”
> 
> It looks great on him, enhancing rather than diminishing his impact, and with so many people now adopting a more androgynous look, I ask how Erik feels about starting a trend.
> 
> “I think it’s great,” he says. “I mean, I like it, it makes me happy, and if other people like it and it makes them happy too, then they should go for it.”
> 
> So -- trendsetter, opinion maker, politician-engineer-computer genius -- what new heights are there for Erik Lehnsherr to aspire to?
> 
> “First step? I’d like to graduate high school.”
> 
> And then?
> 
> “College.”
> 
> It seems Erik Lehnsherr is keeping his mouth shut about his future, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing much more of him in future, whether that’s on television screens or taking political office. That or as a food critic, directing people to the best food in NYC. Either way, he’s certainly captured our attention. And our hearts.

 

 

*

_Charles_

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stay in a hotel?” Charles asks, perching on the end of Erik’s bed in his now seldom-used bedroom while Erik packs his suitcase. Tomorrow morning a cab is coming to pick Erik up and take him to the airport, early -- and then Erik will be gone for four days, the longest time they’ve been apart while not fighting since Erik moved in. Charles can’t help but hate the fact that Erik will be staying with Eli Braden-Newell, too, like some alter-ego Charles offering Erik the use of his home. “There’s still time for me to book you something.”

“No, I’m excited to stay with Elias,” Erik says, setting a stack of shirts in his suitcase and pressing them down to make room for the jacket that follows after. “It was nice of him to offer. I don’t know if he feels beholden, because you were his student, but either way I’m happy to take advantage.”

“I doubt it’s me,” Charles says. If Elias still feels any connection to Charles at all (and when did he become ‘Elias’ to _Erik_?) then it’s one where he is happy to claim Charles’ achievements as resulting from his own tutelage when it suits him, and disown Charles when it doesn’t. They’ve never had one of those lifelong academic parent/child relationships that some grad students develop with their mentors.

He reaches into Erik’s case and straightens the corner of a shirt that had become rucked up, smoothing the creases with his fingers. “Just … be careful with him, okay? He can be a wonderful mentor, right up until you do something that disagrees with what he thinks you should say or do or how you should act, and then he turns. He has very clear expectations of the world, and if you dare defy them, he doesn’t pull punches.”

Erik makes a soft sound and looks up, meeting Charles’s gaze. “And what did you do to piss him off?”

“Oh, more than a few things,” Charles says, and sighs, deciding he might as well. “You know of course that he started out neutral, rather than strongly separatist, right?”

“I was still living with Shaw when he got arrested. It made the news.”

Charles nods. “When he took me on initially, he had a mix of students -- some leaning one way, some the other. It was a breeding ground for arguments, of course, but he enjoyed that -- said it bred good debate and good ideas. He liked to watch us scrapping for his approval, too. It wasn’t entirely a teaching exercise, it fed his ego.”

He pauses for thought, tucking one leg up onto the bed. “Then, after my first year in grad school, he was arrested and went to prison for two years. I kept working in the meantime, but when he came back … it wasn’t the same. Before, he encouraged differences of opinion. Now, his opinion was the _only_ opinion, and anyone who disagreed was either a fool or a traitor.”

“And he got fed up with you,” Erik finishes for him, leaning down to pick up a pair of shoes and dump them in the suitcase with the rest.

“He turned on me,” Charles agrees, reaching for the shoes and aligning them better in the case so they won’t crumple Erik’s pants. “All of a sudden nothing I did was right, all of my conclusions were rank idiocy, I was the low dog on the totem pole and everyone knew it. He couldn’t throw me out for disagreeing with him but he could make the rest of my degree a living hell. And he did.” Only a childhood of constant abuse from Cain had prepared Charles for the kind of campaign Braden-Newell had gone on. “There is a reason that I can’t stand him, Erik.”

Erik closes the top of his suitcase and zips it shut, levering it off the bed and onto the floor before sitting down next to Charles, his thigh pressed against Charles’ knee. “I don’t doubt it was a bad experience. But he’d just gotten out of federal prison. I’m not excusing his behavior, but don’t you think it’s -- well, understandable? Given everything he must have been through. He was probably dealing with a lot of trauma.”

“Don’t I know it, too,” Charles says. “I heard it all in vivid technicolor from his mind, and he hated me for knowing it, too. I understand why he was like that, but it didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Sometimes there’s a limit to tolerance, no matter how hard we try to pretend there shouldn’t be.”

“I know. My point is just, he might be different now. It’s been years, he’s probably had time to come to terms with it.” Erik sets his hand on Charles’ leg, smoothing it up his thigh then back again. Then he smiles, the expression like flipping a switch. “Besides. I agree with him on politics, so I doubt I’ll have the same issue.”

“Oh yes, that makes it all better,” Charles says, and he knows it’s catty even as he says it, but he can’t help but feel a bit hurt that Erik still wants to be best friends with someone who was as awful to Charles as Elias was back then. “In any case, just be wary. I know you can watch your own back, but … don’t let him fool you into believing he’s the benevolent mentor you’ve been waiting for.”

But Erik just says, “I’ve already got one of those,” that smile still teasing at the corners of his mouth. “He might be an integrationist for now, but I’m working on him.”

Given the context, it’s not funny, but Charles manages a tight, tiny smile for him anyway, not wanting to fight tonight. “So. What do you want to do with the rest of the evening?”

“Well,” Erik says, and he gets up from the bed, offering a hand to help Charles to his feet after, the two of them going out of the old bedroom and down the hall toward the stairs, Erik’s hand still clasped in Charles’, “I have something I want you to take a look at. We can go down and I’ll get dinner started while you do.”

Charles is intrigued enough not to peek; he doesn’t want to ruin Erik’s surprise, if it is a surprise, and so he lets Erik lead him down, through into the kitchen where he takes a seat at the kitchen table, Erik going to stand at the counter as he starts taking out ingredients for whatever it is they’re eating tonight. “So what is it you want me to take a look at?” he asks, feeling more settled now that they’ve so definitively changed topics. Talking about Elias always makes Charles feel weighed down, like he has dark clouds swirling around him.

Erik doesn’t answer for a moment, taking down a mixing bowl and measuring cups instead. It’s only then that he turns around and reaches into his back pocket to withdraw a folded-up piece of paper which he hands to Charles, his arms going immediately to fold over his chest as soon as Charles has taken it.

“Here,” Erik says. “If I’m not going to be around for the next four days, this is what I’d like you to do in my absence.”

He stands there, obviously apprehensive about Charles’ response, as Charles unfolds the page, which was clearly ripped from Erik’s notebook. It’s a numbered list, all written out in Erik’s neat, blocky handwriting, and as Charles reads he feels his heart start to beat a little faster, his eyebrows rising.

It’s a list of orders, rules for him to follow while Erik is away. To text Erik when he wakes up, when he gets home, and to call him at eight California time every evening. To email Erik a menu of what he intends to eat the following day each night for Erik to approve. To let Erik know if Charles is going to masturbate and wait for permission … “This is ramping things up a bit,” Charles says, keeping his voice steady only by swallowing hard, first, and taking his time before speaking.

“Is it too far?”

“No,” Charles says. He lets out a shuddering breath before looking up at Erik, smiling at him and feeling almost shy with it, his pulse fluttering in his throat. “I like it. We did say we were going to … that you were going to be my Dom, now. You hadn’t really stepped much towards that until now, I wasn’t sure if you were going to want things to be like that.”

Some Doms never worried too much about exerting control over their submissives outside of the bedroom, and Charles would have been happy enough like that, but there’s still a distinct thrill for him of having orders to follow and feeling them in his gut, of having more ways to obey and submit to Erik’s will. It makes him want to kneel on the floor and lean against Erik’s thigh right now, though he knows he would only get in the way while Erik cooks.

“I didn’t know where you’d draw the line,” Erik says, but he seems more like himself again now, surer and confident, the tension easing from his shoulders. His gaze lingers on Charles a few seconds longer, like he has to force himself to look away in order to go back to the kitchen counter and start chopping up the vegetables.

“I trust you not to be doing it to be controlling in an unhealthy way,” Charles says, still trying to take it in -- a tingle runs up and down his spine, an eagerness to begin being good, to show Erik how well-behaved he can be. How well he can follow orders.

“Mm,” Erik says. “I just like seeing you be good,” and he gives Charles a grin over his left shoulder, hands thrust deep into the bag of flour as he digs out a cup’s worth.

The new rules make it both easier and harder to face the prospect of Erik leaving, and when Charles sees him off the next morning -- not fully awake as he kisses him goodbye at the front door of the apartment, follows his mind down in the elevator until Erik reaches the cab and gets in, driving off into the New York early morning -- he feels hollowed out, knows it’s silly to worry when it’s only four days, but he can’t help but feel the echo of those months apart when he goes back to bed by himself, faced with four hours more before he has to get up for work.

 

 

*

_Erik_

Braden-Newell said he’d send a car, but Erik didn’t expect to hailed almost as soon as he was past security by a tall, gangly man around Charles’ age holding a sign with Erik’s name on it. Or rather, a discreet version of Erik’s name: it just says “Erik M.L.” Doubtless anything else would have drawn attention.

“Hey,” the guy calls, waving at Erik as if he might miss his own name. “Erik! Prof B sent me to come get you.”

Erik maneuvers the rest of the way across the open floor, trying not to get run over by any of the other travelers with their luggage and baby strollers, dragging his own suitcase behind him. “Hey,” he says once he’s close enough to say it without yelling. “You’re …”

“Peter, Peter Parker,” and he’s offered a hand to shake, even while the other reaches for Erik’s bag, taking hold of the handle. “Here, let me grab that. This is a full service service, what we’re offering here! Door-to-door-to-school-to-door. This way, my car’s out in short-term.”

Erik trails after him, feeling a bit off-kilter from Peter’s good-natured energy and wondering if it’s Peter who’s weird or Erik who’s just mundane.

“Are you one of Eli -- of Dr Braden Newell’s students?” Erik asks as they step outside onto the sidewalk. When he left New York everything was cold and starting to get colder, tilting through fall, but here in California the sun is shining bright overhead, beating down warm at the back of his neck as if it were still the height of summer. It’s not nearly as cold as Erik had thought it would be; if this is Northern California, Erik can’t imagine what LA is like.

“That I am,” Peter says, the suitcase rolling merrily along behind him. “His most reliable dogsbody. You’re thinking of coming out here to study?”

“If I get in,” Erik says. “I hear it’s pretty hard for out-of-staters.” Peter must be a mutant, Erik thinks, even if he isn’t a visible one, if only because Erik can’t imagine Braden-Newell taking on any students who aren’t. He wonders what it is Peter can do, if it would be weird to ask for a demonstration. “Your accent -- are you from New York?”

Peter grins. “Brooklyn, born and raised.” He shrugs, pausing at the edge of the road for cars to pass before leading Erik across it. “I wanted to get out of there, study something meaningful like my Dad did. Took a lot of hard work to get out here but it’s great, really. San Francisco is a totally different beast to New York. I’d love to move back there some day but the weather, man. I’m totally ruined for New York weather now. Winter vacation is killer when I go back to visit my aunt.”

Peter’s parked in the hourly deck, remarkably close to the terminal considering what a major airport this is. His car’s nothing to look at, probably wouldn’t be on a grad student’s stipend, but it’s comfortable and a hybrid, the passenger seat rolling back enough to fit even Erik’s long legs.

“What are you studying?” Erik asks.

“Oh, I’m in his social psych side, I’m a mutant psychophysiologist. So sort of both psychology and mutant studies, I guess. But more the psych than the mutant studies, because I’m a scientist not a future burger flipper. My thesis is on mutant physiological responses to threat and aggression, so like, why do we lose control of our powers when we think we’re in danger.”

It sounds right up Braden-Newell’s alley, tying into his book on the criminal justice system even if only tangentially. Perhaps Braden-Newell hopes Peter’s results might be worth using in future defense arguments when mutants end up in court for responding to violence with violence. Erik would be keen to read what Peter’s found so far if he weren’t pretty sure it’d be way over his head.

“Sounds impactful,” Erik says. “Are you going to stay in academia, then?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” Peter says, turning the key in the ignition -- the engine grumbles to life, a throaty, grinding sound of parts more than a little past their best. “I’m considering options, either staying in academia or finding somewhere to apply it, you know. They’re both useful in different ways, but I’m a practical guy. Not sure I could stay shut in my little box sending paper airplanes out hoping someone reads them, y’know?” He pulls slowly out of the space and turns them towards the exit, the rattling suspension juddering as they go over the speed humps.

It’s a relatively short drive from the airport into Berkeley, considering -- or maybe Erik’s just used to New York traffic. Peter chatters on about New York, the things he misses, how he hasn’t been back since his Aunt May died. He’s very interested in hearing about Erik’s activities with the MLA at Columbia and how he manages to balance his time between all his extracurriculars and his schoolwork. (“I couldn’t handle it,” Peter tells him with a self-deprecating tone. “I had to go to Empire State for undergrad, but at least I got my shit together while I was there.”)

Elias Braden-Newell lives close to campus, in a reasonably large white house with tall windows and a gravel drive running past the rich green trees in the front yard, the green vibrant even this far into fall. Peter parks the car around back next to what must be Braden-Newell’s new silver BMW, punching the lock button to let Erik out as he pulls the keys from the ignition.

“I know, it’s a dive,” he says, flashing Erik a wry grin. “Prof B keeps it real to the streets, huh.”

Erik laughs and steps out onto the drive as Peter does, grabbing his suitcase from the back seat and using his power this time to float it out onto the gravel, now that there are no curious onlookers to recognize him. “Will he still be on campus, this time of day?” Erik asks. It’s still early afternoon, nowhere near five or six or ten or whenever professors finally leave their labs.

Peter snorts and shakes his head, as if this were the stupidest thing he’s heard all day. “No, man,” he says, “you’re like the second coming of the first mutant, he’s waiting for you inside so he can schmooze you into becoming his newest lab monkey. Come on, he’ll be happy to see you.” He gestures for Erik to follow and crunches away across the gravel towards the front door, fishing a key out of his pocket and opening the door.

Inside, Braden-Newell’s house is beautiful. The floors and walls are a lovely rose wood, a grandmother clock ticking just the left inside the door and a Persian rug soft beneath their feet. Erik has the overwhelming urge to take off his shoes, but that continues not to be a thing in America, apparently -- there are no shoes by the door, and Peter doesn’t seem to bother about it.

The air is dry and cooler than the outside, but not the blasting kind of AC that Erik would have expected in California. Which makes sense, given Braden-Newell’s mutation.

“Erik.” The man himself emerges from a door over to the right, a tiny curve to his lips suggesting a smile, though his face is as hard as ever to read. He’s dressed in more casual clothes, too, which is strange to see -- a light linen shirt and a pair of linen trousers, the top button of his shirt unfastened at the neck and showing the hollow at the base of his throat. His voice is as raspy as ever, though, dry and somehow scaly. “It’s very good to see you. How was your trip?”

“Not bad,” Erik says, letting go of his suitcase handle and slipping his hands into his pockets, giving Braden-Newell a smile in return. “Layover in Chicago. But no military chaperones, which is a first for me and airplanes.”

Braden-Newell nods, measured and precise. “A vast improvement in your freedoms, then, long overdue.” He looks at Peter where he’s standing beside Erik. “Peter, thank you for your help today. I do appreciate it.”

“Not at all, Professor,” Peter says, just as sunnily as before. “Do you need anything else from me…?”

“No, no, off you go. I’ll see you tomorrow, with your presentation on my desk first thing.”

Once Peter has left it’s just Erik and Braden-Newell in this enormous house, like a strange mirror of Erik’s life with Charles -- except Charles isn’t green and pebble-scaled, utterly mutant in a way that’s unignorable, reptilian and striking. “Let’s go out onto the sun porch,” Braden-Newell says, and gestures for Erik to follow.

From what Erik sees on their way through the house, the rest of the place is as elegant and beautiful as the foyer, full of small nooks for reading in armchairs beneath wide sunny windows, a dining room with a fireplace and a grand piano, another room full wall-to-wall with books. Whatever Braden-Newell has been up to in academia is clearly paying dividends, but the whole effect is still home-y somehow, warm and comfortable in a way that can’t be bought.

They step out onto the porch at the back of the house and into brilliant sunshine, pouring down on them like liquid gold; the yard is small for the size of the house, but the lawn is still shockingly green despite the time of year, not shrivelled or withered at all. Braden-Newell takes a seat at a wicker table, leaning back into its support and letting his eyes half-slit closed, clearly enjoying the warmth.

“This climate suits me,” he says as Erik sits, casting him a sidelong glance. “If I feel sluggish I simply come out here and soak it in. Better than caffeine.”

“I always heard the Bay Area was foggy and cold,” Erik says, sitting down in one of the other chairs and stretching his legs out along the wooden floor, watching the sun cast patterns of shadow and light on his trousers. “I didn’t expect this.”

“It’s unseasonably warm right now,” Braden-Newell says, folding his hands over his stomach. “Far more pleasant. When it’s cold it is far more difficult to do good work. Have you given any thought to what you would like to see while here? There is plenty of time to do a comprehensive tour of the school and of my laboratory, with a little left over for other pursuits if you would like to see mutant San Francisco. There is a thriving community here that is very welcoming to newcomers of the right sort.”

“Yes,” Erik says, trying not to sound too eager. “Absolutely.” What Braden-Newell means by ‘the right sort’ he doesn’t say, though Erik can guess: separatists, probably, activists and others concerned with social justice. Progressives. “As you’re representing your school, I’ll trust that whatever you want to show me is something I ought to see.”

A snort. “Everything is worth seeing, Erik, to the inquisitive mind. What weight you give it is down to you and your intelligence. Now, tell me -- what are you looking for in an educational institution, and what do you look to get from your college?”

They talk for a while about school, Erik’s career goals and interests, how he wants to get involved. As always, it’s hard to tell, but Erik thinks Braden-Newell seems impressed. He decides to believe that, anyway, simply because of Peter’s implications and knowing from Charles that if Braden-Newell didn’t like something Erik said -- Erik would probably know about it.

It’s hard to imagine this man, who is so open with himself, letting Erik into his home and showing such great care for his future, is the same as the mentor Charles claims made his last years of graduate school a living hell. Erik has to think he’s changed since then, got help and therapy probably. He loves Charles very much, but Charles has never liked someone he couldn’t out-manipulate.

Later on Braden-Newell shows Erik around the rest of the house, to Braden-Newell’s own office upstairs and the bedroom where Erik will be staying, before he walks them both onto campus just before dinner time and gives him a thorough tour of the lab, introducing him to his grad students Phyllis, Andrew, and Lily. Peter’s not there, having gone home an hour ago according to Phyllis -- a beautiful girl with muted lights shifting beneath her pale skin. Braden-Newell’s facilities are impressively expansive, covering everything from psychophysiology to behavior to a tiny room filled with centrifuges and test tubes that Braden-Newell says is where they do the endocrine and immunological assays. Erik imagines Charles curled up on the couch in the graduate lounge with a stack of printed-out articles on his knee, tongue stuck in his cheek as he highlights the best paragraphs. It isn’t hard to do.

“The best part about having a joint chair is that almost anything can come under my remit,” Braden-Newell says, standing looking over his little kingdom with his hands folded behind his back, surveying his students. “If there is a specific aspect of mutation that interests you, or a particular part of the mental landscape surrounding mutation, I can accommodate that here. For the right students, of course. I have to be very selective.”

Braden-Newell probably has to turn away hundreds of graduate applicants a year, Erik thinks. God knows how many undergraduate research assistants and post-docs.

“And what makes the right student?” he asks, glancing sidelong at Braden-Newell.

“If you ask the university?” Braden-Newell’s smile is razor-edged. “A dedicated student with a clear history of excellence in the field and a clear direction going ahead. If you ask me, in private … well. All of my students are mutants of one sort or another, coincidentally. And all of them have a certain mindset, in regards to mutation. That’s not to say one or two of them aren’t apolitical, like Peter, for example. But I prefer to work with like minds.”

It’s frank, and Erik appreciates that. He isn’t surprised, either. Professors get to choose their graduate students and research assistants, after all, and if Braden-Newell thinks ideology is fundamental to his research interests, then someone with differing ideology simply wouldn’t be a good research fit. It would be like expecting an English professor who analyzes Beowulf under feminist theory to accept a student who thinks that’s an unscientific approach to literature. Neither one is necessarily wrong, they just wouldn’t see eye to eye.

“Mutants should study mutation,” Erik agrees. “Non-mutants cannot be trusted to interpret the findings outside the lens of their own privilege.”

“I concur,” Braden-Newell says. “Oh, they’ve attempted to foist human students on me before, in the name of equal opportunities. I’ve always refused. Surely those students would feel excluded, unwelcome -- would fall behind due to their inherent lack of understanding of the issues at hand. They would be starting from a position of weakness and disability, and so I maintain my small utopia.” He turns to smile at Erik, his third eyelids flickering across his eyes, a rapid beat. “Surely there are enough other places for humans to go that they do not need to intrude where they are not wanted.”

“More than. And very few where mutants can go and be accepted.” Erik shifts more fully to face Braden-Newell, feeling for the first time like he’s found someone who _understands_ , who is mutant, has been persecuted for being mutant and yet who has managed to attain the power to actually implement real change. Who isn’t Shaw, hiding in safehouses in between missions and refusing to be held accountable for his little revolutions. Civil disobedience is warranted. Brute force is not. Or at least not yet.

“One day we will be the majority,” Braden-Newell says, his gaze firm and steady, confident in what he’s saying down to his bones. “The numbers don’t lie -- mutants are becoming the norm as rapidly as infants are born to carrier mothers. Soon we will be the human race, Erik, and they will have become us. I intend to ensure that we smooth that transition. We both know that the humans will not react well to it when they finally accept reality.”

Erik nods, and before he can speak again Braden-Newell’s pocket begins to ring; he holds up a hand to Erik and says, “Excuse me,” before withdrawing his cell phone and stepping away, lifting it to his ear as he moves into an adjoining room and closes the glass door behind himself. Erik can see him stood there, not pacing, not tense, and can hear the tone of the conversation if not the words -- quiet, contained, so banal as to be more notable because of it.

When Braden-Newell emerges he says nothing about the call, just says, “Shall we go to dinner? My treat.”

 

 

*

_Charles_

The first day feels … it’s not even much like when Erik was living at Raven’s, because at least then he was within range, within New York City and within Charles’ awareness like a familiar piece of furniture in his mind, always there when Charles turned in that direction. Now, with Erik thousands of miles away in California, it’s like someone has removed an armchair, or a table, from the place it ought to be, and now the room feels strange and empty and echoing without it, troubling in its abnormality. Charles feels hollowed out, like he’s been cored, and knowing that he could just call Erik, text Erik, like any normal non-telepathic person makes it feel worse, not better, because it’s not the same at all.

He rattles around in the apartment after work, unable to settle to anything when his mind is constantly searching for that signal, distracting him from the television, from books or cooking or even calisthenics when he tries exercise instead, to burn the restlessness out of himself. Now more than ever he wonders how he ever used to live alone and untroubled by it, not to feel … like _this_.

It seems to take forever to reach eleven o’clock, his mandated time to skype with Erik -- and Charles knows it’s pathetic how much he wants, needs, to see Erik’s face, can’t help but worry that they’re too codependent. And yet he’s still sat in bed at eleven waiting for Erik to sign in, in his pajamas already since he intends to go to sleep afterwards, give his mind a break from worrying at Erik’s absence.

And then -- there it is, the little bubble next to Erik’s username switching from white to green. A few seconds later Charles’ computer makes a burbling noise and a window pops up, saying Erik’s calling him.

Charles waits a moment, just to prove to himself that he can, before he clicks the button to accept the call. “Hi,” he says, as Erik’s collarbone and the neck of his shirt fill the screen for the moment before Erik adjusts the angle and appears, smiling into the camera.

“Hey. How are you?” Erik says, leaning back. He looks happy, like he’s having a good time.

“I’m fine,” Charles says, because he is, really -- there’s nothing wrong, save for that absent feeling in the back of his head. “How was your first day?”

“Great,” Erik says. The camera wobbles for a second as he shifts, crossing his legs and putting his laptop on his knees. “Elias has been very hospitable. He took me by campus this afternoon, then dinner downtown. We came back early so I could shower and so on, because of the flight.”

“That’s good.” Of course Elias was hospitable -- he’d probably offer to buy Erik a personal hooker if he thought it would persuade Erik to stay.

Charles makes himself smile, leaning back into the pillows. “You must be exhausted, you’ve been up for almost twenty hours. You should probably get some sleep.”

“I don’t feel it,” Erik says. “But I will. Don’t worry. How did today go? Did you do everything I told you to do?”

“I did,” Charles says, and at this he really does smile, a feeling of blissful self-satisfaction settling over him at the thought. “I sent you some pictures of what I ate, and I cleaned the kitchen counters and floor, though they hardly needed it.” Obedience is such a pleasant sensation, it almost drowns out the rest. Erik can feel it too, Charles knows, his own version of satisfaction from seeing Charles comply.

“Good boy. Don’t forget to send your menu for tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Charles says, shuffling down a little in the bed. It’s easier to imagine Erik is here, now, with his voice and his face and the scent of his shampoo on the pillows, and it makes Charles drowsy. “What do you have planned for tomorrow, then?”

Erik makes a soft noise, like he’s trying to remember. “Meeting some of Elias’ friends from Cal. From his department and others, someone from philosophy, someone from engineering, someone from physics. All my interests. Then we’re going to go into San Francisco and see all the things there are to see. No Golden Gate Bridge anymore, of course, thanks to me. I don’t know if we’ll go to the memorial or not. It seems like it might be inappropriate.”

“I should think so. You wouldn’t want to risk getting photographed there, that’s for sure.”

Erik nods, his gaze dropping for a moment before he meets Charles’ eyes again. “I saw your old lab space. Very nice.”

“Elias always did insist on the best,” Charles says, as neutral as he can be on the subject. He’s not sure what else to say -- he hasn’t done much with his day, no news to report or topics to turn to for a change of subject. So instead he finally just says, “I miss you,” with a tiny, self-deprecating smile. “It’s too quiet.”

“I miss you too.” Erik reaches forward, his fingers touching some part of his computer off-screen, lingering there for a moment before his hand drops back down to his lap. “It feels strange not to have you nearby.”

It probably does, come to that -- Erik has had some tendril of Charles’ awareness in his mind ever since he first came to live with him, even when he was across town staying with Raven. “Most likely it’s the absence of telepathic contact you’re feeling,” Charles says. “I keep habitually reaching out to find you and you’re not there. Maybe it’s a good thing to break it off for a few days, the constant connection might explain why we’re so clingy with one another.”

Erik makes a face. “Good or not, I don’t have to like it.”

“Still sure you want to move to California for college, then?”

“I haven’t decided that, and you know it. I’ve applied to a lot of different places.”

“Mmm.” Charles also knows that Erik greatly respects Elias, and that’s a powerful pull, one Charles daren’t act against directly -- Erik would just dig his heels in and insist all the harder. “Still, it’s something to think about. I can’t just up and leave my practice, I have to stay in New York.”

“I know. But I have to go to college, and I don’t want to stay in the city -- I’ve been stuck there for four years.” Erik runs his fingers through his hair, mussing it slightly, though he doesn’t seem to notice. “I won’t make a decision without your input.”

That will have to do, for now. The prospect of Erik being gone, of him leaving, even if it is for school … Charles doesn’t want to think about that now. “I know,” he says. “And I appreciate it. Now, you should get some sleep. You’ve been awake far too long already, and it’s late here. Get some rest before your big city tour tomorrow.”

Erik nods, and after a second he touches two fingers to his lips, then presses them to the camera lens, his skin briefly blotting out his face. “Good night. Send your menus.”

“Night,” Charles says, and touches his own fingers to the screen before Erik hangs up, the video disappearing to be replaced by the text chat window.

He emails Erik over his menu for the next day. Then he stays sat up in bed for a while after, trying to close down the part of himself that’s forever reaching, grasping for something that’s absent.

 

 

*

_Erik_

The second day Erik spends in California, Elias takes him around San Francisco, everywhere from the Marina to his favorite coffee shops to Chinatown, where Erik gets to dust off his Mandarin and eat snacks he hadn’t realized he’d been missing since he was last at the Shanghai safehouse. That afternoon there’s a community action meeting arguing for more provisions for mutant issues, and Elias introduces Erik to the various mutant organizers and leaders in the Bay Area’s activist community.

Already Erik could see himself here, working alongside these men and women and lying sprawled out in the grass somewhere on campus with books from his classes, studying. The only thing missing would be Charles, three time zones away on the other side of the continent.

He calls Charles on Skype again that night, as scheduled. They talk for over an hour this time, the second day apart taking its toll on each of them. The sun has set by the time Erik comes back downstairs, laptop shut under his arm, to find a place to set up and work on his classwork.

He finds Elias sitting at the dining room table with work spread out around him, a heat lamp pointed in his direction as he scrawls across a thick legal pad. He glances up at Erik as he comes in, third eyelids flickering. “Was that Charles?” he asks, making another note.

Erik nods. “He sends his best.”

That’s a lie, of course, but if Charles won’t do his part to smooth the tensions between him and Elias, then it’s down to Erik.

“Mmhmm. He always was a polite boy.” The pen keeps scribbling, held carefully between Elias’ slender, scaled fingers. “I should have expected he would be this sort of parent -- like a hen with only one chick. It’s sweet, really, how much he worries.”

Erik lifts a brow -- not that Elias notices, still absorbed in his work. “We haven’t been apart since I came to live with him. If I came here for college it would be a big adjustment.” For both of them, not just Charles.

Elias underscores something before he puts his pen down and looks up. “Charles is an adult,” he says, folding his hands atop the table. “If anyone should be clingy and nervous it is the child, which you are clearly not. I wonder that he is qualified to act as a psychologist to anyone when he has so many neuroses of his own, but then that was my recommendation when he graduated and it was ignored then as well. No matter. At least he cares, even if it is in a rather unhealthy and codependent way. It’s still more than can be said for some biological parents.”

Fucking -- Christ. Erik wasn’t expecting that, and he blinks, caught off guard, not sure what to say and half-wanting to throw everything else away and use Command to make Elias take it back. No one has ever insulted Charles to Erik’s face, not outright, excluding Frank -- and Frank only because he’s blunt enough it’s a character flaw.

Were Elias anyone else -- were he Frank, or Madelyne, or one of Charles’ mutant center kids -- Erik would punch him in the face.

As it is, Erik keeps his tone carefully neutral as he says, “I think he’d surprise you. I didn’t know him when he was in graduate school, but he’s more than capable now.” It’s all he can bring himself to say without getting personally involved and giving the game away, and Erik hates himself, because it isn’t enough.

Elias’s expression doesn’t change, his eyes fixed on Erik’s face, taking him in. “Perhaps,” he says finally, then gestures towards the table. “Come, sit down with me, we can work together. No doubt your homework is outside of my area of expertise but a scholarly atmosphere never fails to focus the mind.”

Erik obeys, setting his laptop down on the table and taking the seat at its head, putting himself at a right angle to Elias. He logs into his laptop with TouchID and pulls up the latest draft of his essay for his English class, writing about the depiction of Lucifer in _Paradise Lost._ The conversation about Charles is over but Erik keeps catching himself gritting his teeth all the same, an instinctive response that’s hard to resist, that seems to emerge from under his control as soon as he gets distracted away from it.

“I apologize,” Elias says a little while later, without looking up from his work. “I know Charles is dear to you, no matter our differences. It was rude of me to air my view of him when I know we are so vastly different in our opinions.”

“Well,” Erik says, “he doesn’t think very highly of you either, to be perfectly honest, so I’ve been well-informed of both your weaknesses at this point.”

By which he means that he can make his own damn opinion without either of their help. And in Erik’s seventeen-year-old opinion, both of them are old enough to keep their nastier thoughts to themselves. Clearly gossip doesn’t die in high school after all.

“Oh? Well, I suppose sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander,” Elias says. He smiles at Erik, a gleam of white teeth in his dark face. “Charles and I will never see eye to eye. It’s a shame, really -- he was a fine academic, but sorely misguided. Had he reached me earlier perhaps I could have turned him around, but he spent too long in the bosom of his human family for that.”

Considering what Erik knows about Charles’ human family, he very much doubts they contributed to Charles’ excessive philanthropy. “Charles will always be an idealist, which we both know is very good in theory, but less so in practice. But isn’t there something to be appreciated about the non-cynical mind? Charles sees the good in everyone. It might be foolish, but it’s -- “ Erik struggles to find the word, comes up with: “-- endearing.”

“You are a kind boy, Erik.” Elias’ smile widens a little, and he shakes his head as if amused. “I for one find stu -- _foolishness_ irritating in the highest order. It is unforgivable in one of decent intellect. Perhaps I’m too utilitarian, but then, I achieve my goals. It is enough for me.”

There’s no arguing with Elias about this, not really. As much as Erik wants to defend Charles, the fact remains that Charles _is_ wrong, and if Braden-Newell wants to consider integrationism a form of stupidity, well, he wouldn’t be wrong there either. He doesn’t know Charles like Erik does, can’t see all the little pieces of Charles’ world that have shaped the way Charles chooses to believe, how Charles’ own mutation makes this the only bearable faith. That despite everything he knows, hears, feels, humanity must be good at heart.

So Erik just shrugs and looks back at his essay, fixing a syntactical error and hoping Elias will decide to put the topic aside. Preferably permanently.

“I’m glad that’s cleared up,” Elias says, turning back to his own work. They keep on in relative silence for the next several hours, Erik finishing his essay and uploading it to Dropbox before starting in on a problem set for his Columbia classes, Elias doing … whatever it is Elias does, in his illegible handwriting.

After a while Elias packs up his things and says he’s going to be heading to bed shortly. He disappears upstairs and Erik follows, eventually, once he’s finished the last of his work and put it away in his satchel, carrying the laptop back up the stairs. As he passes Elias’ office he notices the door is ajar, and doesn’t think much of it until he overhears the soft sound of Elias’ voice speaking within, just loud enough that Erik can make out words.

“Who is in charge of this undertaking? Is it you, or is it me?” A long pause, followed by, “Yes, you are quite right, and it would please me greatly if you would remember that instead of always questioning my wisdom. There is a reason why I am taking the lead, and it is not because nobody else wished for the position. It is because I do what I have to in order to achieve results. Is that understood?”

Erik pauses, far enough down the hallway that he doesn’t think Elias will have noticed his footfalls in the first place to notice that they’ve stopped. He shouldn’t be eavesdropping, he knows that, but there’s something -- he hadn’t expected to hear this kind of tone from Elias. Maybe that’s bigoted of him, to make assumptions because Elias is a submissive when he knows Charles is also a sub, and Charles can be equally as forceful when he wants to be. But that doesn’t stop him from wanting to hear more.

“Now. Tell me what the team have achieved, and what objectives they have completed and which not. And if not, why not, as I will need to have words with whomever it was that prevented them from being met.” Another long pause, someone else speaking presumably. “That’s good, I’m pleased to hear it. They have learned, it seems, from the last attempt. Very well, let them know they’re free to go home and get some rest. They’ve earned it.”

The conversation is obviously drawing to a close. Erik makes himself start walking again, keeping his pace natural, not too soft and not intentionally loud, glancing briefly at the office as he passes by; he can just glimpse a sliver of the room, not Elias himself, before he’s past and opening up the door to his own bedroom.

He feels guilty, now, for listening in on what turned out to quite obviously be Elias telling off some post-doc or grad student who fucked things up in the lab. It’s none of his business, and Charles told him outright that Elias runs a tight ship. It’s done now, at least, and Elias didn’t catch him at it, which would have been almost impossible to explain.

Erik drops his laptop onto the mattress and climbs up onto the bed after it, reaching for the book on his bedside table -- _The Martian_ , and settling in to read. He can’t concentrate, though, even though normally this book draws him in as if by an anchor. He can’t stop thinking about what Elias said earlier, about Charles, about how much Charles needs Erik.

They both need each other, of course, but Elias is right that Charles … Charles is so much older, and what in Erik might be youthful passion is something quite different in someone thirty years old. As far as Charles’ … _neuroses_ , as Elias called them, well, it’s not as if Erik hadn’t been aware that Charles’ moods were unpredictable at times. It’s just that --

It’s that Erik’s supposed to be the fucked up one, and the way Elias talked he made it sound like it was the other way around.

Erik gives up on the book, dog-earing his page and dropping it on the floor as he slides lower on the bed, deeper under the covers. So strange to realize that this is the first time he’s been able to think about Charles -- about any of this -- without Charles overhearing him. This is the first time since he met Charles that he’s been out of Charles’ telepathic reach.

So what does it mean, that it’s now that Erik’s starting to question things?

And he is questioning things, because once he’s started it’s so hard to stop. He keeps remembering all these little things, the way Charles clings to him at night, how Charles fell apart when Erik left to live with Raven, Charles’ desperation for Erik to use Command on him, the way the bare minimum of affection sometimes seems to undo Charles, as if almost nothing is more than he expects to get.

Any of these would be normal on its own. And Charles is so -- Erik always thought of him as so grown-up, it never occurred to him to think of Charles as anything else but perfectly stable and perfectly in-control until Elias suggested it. But now Erik’s entire worldview is shifting as if to accommodate that approach.

 _You’re being ridiculous, Lehnsherr,_ he tells himself. _Why would you trust Elias’ opinion over your own?_

Only it’s not just Elias’ opinion. Erik knows damn well what people say about the kinds of men who want teenage boys.

Erik pushes that thought violently away the second he has it, and a second later he realizes he’s shivering, even under all these layers of blankets. Even thinking it feels like the worst kind of betrayal, just entertaining the possibility when Erik knows Charles is nothing like those people. Erik knows _those people_ better than anyone. And he knows Charles better than anyone. Erik _knows._

Sick to his stomach with himself Erik turns off the light and burrows down in the bed, lying on his side with his eyes clenched shut and his knees drawn up toward his chest like a child, willing himself to think of nothing at all.

 

*


	39. Thirty-nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter

_Charles_

It’s a very long four days without Erik, and Charles feels as if he’s drifting.

It’s stupid, really -- he’s lived alone before, can do so again, and there are plenty of other minds out there reminding him that his powers still work and he’s not alone in the world. Yet not being able to feel Erik’s presence, to see him in the apartment and feel his touch, hear his voice -- it’s maddening, it’s frustrating, and it drives Charles to distraction.

Obeying Erik’s rules helps; reporting back on his obedience in the evening and getting Erik’s long-distance approval helps even more, except for the way they make him _feel_ , tender-skinned and waiting, almost breathless with the unsated anticipation of reward. In short, they make him horny, and the longer Erik is away the worse it gets, until between the quiet and the rules and the distance between them .… 

When Charles finally feels Erik’s mind come back into range he sags into the sofa with relief, eyes closing for a few long breaths in and out, before he thinks -- I have to do this right. Have to greet him the right way. Charles feels like he’s balancing on a wire, between anticipation and nerves, but he gets ready anyway, the compulsion strong enough to help him drown out everything else.

When Erik opens the door to the apartment two hours later Charles is kneeling in the gallery waiting for him. He’s carefully and precisely posed, his head bowed and hands lax with palms upright on his spread knees, breathing slowly in and out. Perfectly presented submission. He can hear the door slowly fall shut behind Erik, the click of the lock as it turns under Erik’s power. 

Erik’s suitcase rolls along the floor for a few inches before it comes to a stop as well, and then there’s a rustle of fabric as Erik pulls off his coat and drapes it over the handle before taking two steps forward, stopping with his shoes just in Charles’ line of sight.

“Well,” he says. “This is unexpected.”

A slow breath in, then a shaking breath out, his lungs fluttering in his chest. “I missed you,” Charles says, voice low and soft -- he doesn’t look up, not yet, nor does he move. He won’t, not until Erik releases him from the pose. “Welcome home.”

“Have you been good while I was gone?” It’s intoxicating how focused Erik’s attention is on Charles, to the exclusion of all else, as if the rest of the world ceased to exist the moment Erik stepped in through that door. Charles can feel Erik’s heartbeat drumming across the space between them, loud and strong, Erik’s desire for him pulsing up hot in his mind.

“Yes,” Charles says, his blood tingling through his veins. “I’ve been very good.”

And Erik moves closer, again, until when he reaches out his fingers touch Charles’ temple, sliding back to slip into his hair. “Look at me.”

Charles shivers and tips his head back obediently, finally looking up at Erik with bright eyes and parted lips, looking at Erik’s tanned face and his smile, so well-loved -- Charles’ heart skips a beat, and he says, “I missed you terribly,” letting his need and love and desire pour out of himself and over to Erik at last, now that Erik is finally here to receive it.

Erik’s fingers twitch against Charles’ skull. Charles doesn’t need to be a telepath to feel his reaction -- it’s practically palpable in the air between them. “Stand up,” he says, and Charles obeys this as well, rising smoothly to his feet without using his hands to brace himself on the floor. Once he’s up he waits only for a moment before leaning forward, Erik’s hand still on his head, and kissing the travel-crumpled linen over Erik’s heart.

Erik’s pulse picks up beneath his lips, and when he draws back Erik kisses him properly, on the lips, his mouth soft and warm where it presses against Charles’. Kissing back feels -- it feels --

Charles moans, his hands coming up at last to wrap around Erik’s waist and pull him in closer, body-to-body, kissing him back with ardent fervour, desperate for his touch; Erik is nearly as far gone, hand tangled up in Charles’ hair and his skin feverishly hot-feeling even through his clothes. Erik grabs a handful of Charles’ shirt and uses it to pull him along as he pushes Charles back, then back again, toward the den.

There was a reason, Charles knows, why they weren’t doing this -- morals, his own peace of mind and the rule of law -- and yet he doesn’t care any more, not with the way Erik is touching him, wanting him, pushing Charles backwards without a trace of hesitation in him. Charles almost stumbles, his feet confused for a moment, and then Erik pushes him back harder and Charles lets himself fall, landing on the sofa with his back on the cushions and his legs hanging over the arm, prone and reaching for Erik as he leans down and bears Charles heavily down into the soft leather.

“Here,” Erik says and grasps Charles’ hips, leaning back enough to shift Charles further up the couch so they both have room; when he kisses him again it’s deeper, one of Erik’s hands still at Charles’ ass, holding him there. Charles’ hands run up Erik’s chest, one of them slipping up and around his neck, and the other goes to Erik’s hip, dragging him down so they’re flush together. Erik’s tongue slips into his mouth, stroking at Charles’ own and Charles sighs, hot all over with his cock swelling between his legs, the pressure of Erik’s thigh against it.

Erik’s hand at his waist pushes upward, dragging Charles’ shirt out of the way to spread against bare skin. He pulls back from the kiss with a wet sound and says, “Tell me what you want.”

“Just touch me?” Charles splays his legs as much as he’s able beneath Erik’s weight, tipping his head back to bare his throat, his fingers curling in Erik’s shirt and crumpling it further in his tight grip. “It was like you were gone, I couldn’t feel you anywhere.”

Erik obeys almost immediately, letting go of Charles’ waist to push his hand down between their bodies instead, palm rubbing against Charles’ cock through his trousers. It’s electrifyingly good, magnified by so long without the touch of anything but his own hand, and Charles groans aloud, mouth falling open as his cock jerks under Erik’s touch; pleasure shoots up his spine, and he can’t help but beg, “God, please, Erik -- ”

The button of his fly unsnaps, fabric loosening at his hips, and a second later the zipper is down as well, Erik pushing cotton and elastic aside and reaching into Charles’ boxers to pull out his cock, dragging a stroke up its length and kissing Charles’ throat. It’s the first time in months -- in, oh --

“Fuck,” Charles gasps, and his hands slide down Erik’s back to grope at his ass, urging him on while Charles’ heart races in his chest. He can feel Erik’s erection pressed against his own leg, trapped in his jeans, and Charles deliberately shifts up against it, doesn’t try to fight it any more.

Erik makes a soft noise and pulls back, tipping his head down to spit onto his own hand and Charles’ cock, making the slide of his palm easier against Charles’ shaft. 

“Tell me you’ve wanted me,” Erik instructs, jerking him faster now.

“I always want you,” Charles says, his hips twitching upward into Erik’s hand. “I want you all the time -- ”

“Did you touch yourself, while I was gone?”

Erik’s thumb skims over Charles’ sensitive frenulum; it feels like Erik’s plucking at the very string of Charles’ pleasure, and he groans, says, “Yes, in the shower -- ”

Erik kisses his cheek, his jaw. “Tell me what you thought about.”

“I thought about sucking you off,” Charles says, gasps, turning his face in towards Erik’s until he’s saying it into Erik’s mouth, an almost-kiss, lips brushing against Erik’s. “I imagined you in the shower with me, and I would kneel and suck your beautiful cock until you came down my throat, my hands on your ass and my finger in your hole while you told me I was good …” His cock is so hard, leaking, desperate to come. “You stroked my hair … ”

Erik shudders lightly against him, the motion faint but undeniable. His hand hasn’t stopped moving, slick now with Charles’ pre-cum as much as his spit; Erik’s wrist has to hurt from wanking him, especially at this angle, but he doesn’t let up. Charles can feel his pleasure cresting, coming closer to the edge, nearly there -- “Please can I come,” he begs, desperately wanting to hear Erik say it, to hear him say --

“Yes -- come for me, Charles --”

Charles comes with a loud moan, a hot white-out feeling rushing through him as his hips thrust and jerk into Erik’s grip with erratic force, his hands curling and fingertips digging into Erik’s ass; it’s so intense after such a long time since anyone else has done this to him, and he kisses Erik, hard, trying to convey that feeling with his body, his mouth, to let Erik feel as good as Charles feels. Erik kisses him back, working him through his climax and tugging at Charles’ lower lip with his teeth. 

Erik leans back a little, when at last Charles is sated and spent, pulling his hand free from between them and glancing down at it, Charles’ come white and gooey and stringing between his fingers. 

“Do you want to fuck me?” Charles asks, still breathless and boneless, too, blinking slowly, his whole body pleased with itself. The thought of Erik inside him right now is delicious, of letting Erik use him while he’s this relaxed and sated, Erik moving over and under and into Charles.

That snaps Erik’s attention away from his hand, his gaze meeting with Charles’ again. “I don’t have a condom.”

Charles pauses for a moment, but he’s giddy with orgasm and, well, he’s gone this far -- he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb. “I was tested after we ended things last time,” he says, pushing away the part of him that thinks they should stop. “I’m clean. You?”

Erik nods. He hesitates for a moment, like he’s still not sure this is okay, but if he has any reservations they’re overridden because a second later he leans down to kiss Charles again, on the mouth, though it doesn’t last long. Charles bends his knees and lifts his hips to help out as Erik yanks his trousers and boxers the rest of the way off, dropping them in a tangled pile on the floor. He reaches for his own shirt hem and pulls that off over his head to leave himself bare, the sofa leather soft against his skin.

“I love you,” Charles says, and sits up enough to drag Erik’s shirt off, then stops to stroke his hands over the lightly tanned expanse of Erik’s chest -- clearly he took the time to enjoy the California weather while he was out there. “This is nice.”

“I wasn’t sure it was going to be warm enough,” Erik says. Then, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

He pulls away, levering off the sofa, and Charles watches him walk across the room and through the door to the kitchen, eyes tracing the muscle shifting on Erik’s back as he washes Charles’ come off his hand at the sink then reaches into one of the high kitchen cabinets to pull out a bottle of olive oil.

Probably Charles should be hesitating now -- should be moralizing, worrying, telling himself he’s done the wrong thing, that he should stop things before they go any further. But the thing is … the thing is he loves Erik, and no matter how much or how little they do together, if anyone finds out they will be hung out to dry just the same. So for now, he puts all of his worrying aside and focuses on what he _wants_ , which is Erik coming back towards him, bare-chested and hot-eyed, to strip off his trousers and underwear and leave them in a pile with Charles’ on the floor as he climbs back onto the sofa. 

“Turn over,” Erik says, and Charles obeys, rolling over onto his front and then, after a moment’s thought, shifting forward until he can rest his forearms on the arm of the couch, raising his ass and looking back over his shoulder at Erik. “Like this?”

Erik’s hand smooths over Charles’ ass, spreading his cheeks. “Yes. Perfect.” Charles watches him pour slick oil onto his fingers and then, a moment later, feels that slickness against his own skin as Erik pushes two fingers into his hole. It’s a stretch after so long without, and Charles swallows a sound as his ass clenches around them, squeezing around the intrusion; it feels good to have them in there, and even better when those fingers curl, stroking him inside.

“Mmm,” he says, and folds his arms, resting his head down on them and focusing on that feeling.

“Relax,” Erik tells him, kissing the base of his spine.

Charles makes a conscious effort to loosen, letting his muscles go soft; he’s rewarded by Erik pumping his fingers slowly in and out of him, working his hole, and Charles stays put, languid still from his own orgasm. “Feels nice.”

When Erik pulls his fingers free and pushes in, the thick, blunt pressure of his cock opening Charles up is gorgeous, tingling through Charles’ body even though he’s already come; he sighs, keeping himself relaxed and soft, letting Erik slide all the way in without resistance. He wonders if Erik would rather Charles were passive, letting himself be used, a warm, wet hole to be fucked and utterly submissive, or if he’d prefer Charles to squeeze and clench and ripple around him, work the come out of Erik’s cock like he’s hungry for it, like his body craves it. 

He puts the question to Erik wordlessly, rubbing up against Erik’s mind, and Erik says, “I want you to do what _you_ want to do,” that desire every bit as concrete as any other.

It’s no wonder Erik is being so cautious -- he’s always so specific about consent, never having had the option as a child, making sure he’s nothing like Shaw and the others. But Charles is feeling relaxed, a little drowsy from round one, and maybe he can be lazy just this once.

“Mmm,” Charles says, “I think you should use me. I’m your submissive, you should take your pleasure.” _I already came,_ he conveys silently, more concept than words, along with the thought that it could be hot if Erik fucks him like Charles is just a hole for him to use, his submissive to get off inside, like Charles is just another toy.

“Fine, then,” Erik says, and he grasps the back of Charles’ neck, holding him firmly as he starts to fuck him, steady thrusts at first, then faster, pushing Charles’ head down against his crossed arms. It’s good, like being stroked over and over inside; Charles feels warm, diffuse arousal from the friction spreading through him, entirely different from when he’s erect, and he spreads his legs a little wider, making room for Erik’s pistoning hips to slap against Charles’ ass as he fucks in and out of him.

“Is it good?” he asks, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it anyway.

“Did I tell you you could speak?” 

A shiver of shocked pleasure runs through Charles at the fierce Dominance in Erik’s tone, and Erik releases Charles’ neck to grab onto his hips instead, moving him bodily up and down Erik’s cock, burying himself in him over and over again. Charles moans and keeps himself malleable, yielding to Erik’s manhandling and letting himself be positioned, fucked like he’s just a convenience; it’s intensely arousing, and he wishes he could see it from the outside, watch Erik using him this way.

Erik leans over him, one of his hands now wandering down Charles’ thigh, then back and up his stomach, touching him like he knows he has the right to, tweaking one of Charles’ nipples between his thumb and forefinger before reaching to twist his hand in Charles’ hair and push his head down again, more forcefully this time.

Charles is shivering all over now, his body full of this strange, unfocused energy, his ass rippling around Erik’s pumping cock, his body still passive, no fight to it at all. He doesn’t want to get away -- he wants this to go on and on, feeling Erik’s pleasure in his head, Erik thinking how much he’s missed this, wanted it, wanted _him._

Erik comes with a groan, hips jerking as he spurts into Charles, and they both collapse back down onto the couch, Erik’s weight heavy and hot against Charles’ back, his hand stroking Charles’ shoulder as he brushes his lips against Charles’ scapula. Charles’ eyelids have fallen to half-mast, drenched in shared orgasm and affection. He feels good, like he’s had his ashes hauled out, deeply satisfied in all of his muscles and bones.

“That was good,” he says, turning his head to the side, though it’s not far enough to see Erik behind him.

“You don’t regret it already, then,” Erik says, and he pushes up with his hand braced against the sofa to let Charles roll over properly, settling back down on his side tucked between Charles’ body and the back of the couch, his hand resting on Charles’ stomach.

“No,” Charles says, meaning it -- he’s not going to let himself regret it, he decides, and leans in to kiss Erik on the mouth, curling his fingers into Erik’s hair to keep him there while Charles shows him how good he feels. It’s wet, and warm, and Erik makes this sound that Charles wants to hear over and over again, curls in as close to Erik’s body as possible, wanting more skin-to-skin contact. Erik kisses him back long and slow, like they have all the time in the world.

*

Later, in the kitchen after they’ve showered, Charles says, “I know I broke my own rules tonight, but … the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wasn’t saving anyone from anything. I’d much rather have everything of you that you’ll let me than pretend not to want it. So.”

They’re sitting at the kitchen table, both with steaming cups of tea and Erik picking at a plate of crackers and cheese slices, still adjusting to the time zone. Charles’ hair is still wet, dampening the back of his shirt and making him feel chilly, but it’s offset almost completely when he takes a sip of his tea.

“I’m not going to argue with you,” Erik says, draping a thin slice of Wensleydale with cranberries onto his cracker. “We’ll just have to be very careful. More careful than we were before -- Raven noticed last Christmas, and Collins caught us more recently than that.”

Charles nods, curling his fingers more tightly around his mug; it’s sensible, even if he wishes it weren’t necessary. No use, however, crying over spilt milk. “Nothing when we’re with other people,” he says. “And precautions if we know they’re coming over. We should leave your bed permanently rumpled, for instance. Your toothbrush needs to stay in your bathroom.”

Erik snorts. “Everyone knows I make my bed perfectly in the morning, Charles,” he says, teasing.

“Then don’t make mine,” Charles counters, smiling back. “We just -- I don’t want to regret this, Erik. Not for some stupid, petty reason that gets us caught out. I still don’t know how we can ever be together publicly, even in the future. But I don’t want to give this up.”

“I know.” Erik is quiet for a moment, chewing his food, and then when he swallows he says, “We’ll figure it out. Maybe wait a year, or until I’m out of college. Could pretend I went off to Harvard or wherever and then, whoops, I came home hot.”

He grins, mostly-joking, but given that’s probably what they’ll have to do, Charles can only smile at him a little awkwardly and reach out to squeeze his hand once before turning to his own food. One way or another it’ll come out eventually, the only question is whether or not it’ll be voluntary. Still, for now, this is good. Better than good.

*

_Erik_

After Erik’s return from California there are several shipments in a row he has to carry through the safehouse and see out to port. Swineherd forwards Caliban’s permission to bring Frank on board and so Erik keeps Frank as his backup, having him drive the car and subdue anyone who looks like they might be trouble. Frank’s too big to go unnoticed with any other task.

The first two times Frank’s on the job are uneventful. The third is significantly less so.

They pick up Jeremiah Zane at Battery Park as scheduled, Frank slowing down the car on FDR as they approach the figure standing behind the bench on the sidewalk, shuffling its feet a little and failing to be inconspicuous.

Erik rolls down the window as they come to a pause next to the man, ignoring the beep of the cars behind them, and says, “Get in.” He unlocks the car doors.

Zane is a short, squat burly sort of man, built like a bulldog -- as if he were meant to be taller but was compressed instead into a smaller, more compact package. He clambers into the back seat and drops his bag on the other side, looking between Erik and Frank with beady, curious eyes. “Afternoon,” he says, settling in. “Do I need a password?”

“No.” Erik locks the doors and Frank pulls away from the curb, reclaiming the usual road speed with the rest of traffic. Erik can still see Zane watching them in the rearview mirror, either fascinated with Frank or trying to place where he’s seen Erik before or both.

“I’m Max,” Erik says, deciding to put those thoughts to bed once and for all. “This is Nathan. We’re going to take you to the safehouse and make sure you’re all tucked in, and we’ll check on you once every twenty-four hours until your shipment out is arranged.”

“That so,” Zane says, barely even blinking. He doesn’t seem concerned at all -- all the other passengers have been nervous, skittish about every chance of getting caught, but not this one. “I know you from somewhere. You famous or something?”

Erik glances sidelong at Frank and says, “Nathan here just has one of those faces.”

Frank shrugs, keeping his eyes on the road, but he grins just a little before saying, “I was Miss America 2015.”

“No, not him,” Zane says, his attention entirely focused on Erik. “You. I know you from somewhere.”

“Maybe so,” Erik says, “but if you do, it won’t come up. That’s because we don’t care what happened in your past. Neither of us want to hear about it, so: don’t ask, don’t tell. Understand?”

A long pause, then, “All right, keep your panties on.” Zane’s eyes turn, finally, to look out the window, though Erik could swear he can feel the man’s attention on him still, like something of Charles’ powers has rubbed off on him.

Erik gazes out at the road in front of them, watching Frank make the turns they’d planned out in advance, a map that leads only very indirectly back to Chelsea and the second New York safehouse. Zane is quiet in the backseat, thankfully, and if he’s put two and two together at least he’s playing by the rules. Erik glances back more often than usual to check on him, and that’s when he notices the car about fifty meters back. He waits a couple more turns to be sure -- then,

“Turn left here,” Erik tells Frank.

Frank glances sidelong at Erik, but he does as Erik says, turning smoothly at the next junction. “Heading to the deli?” he asks.

“It might be nothing,” Erik says, and when they’ve gone a couple blocks and he spots the car still behind them he says, “Another left.” 

Frank turns and Erik adjusts one of the window mirrors to get a better view back behind them, waiting, waiting … there. It’s still there. It might be a coincidence after three left turns, and Erik could add a fourth to be certain but any tail worth its salt would just do a hard left from three blocks back and try to cut them off in that case so he says, “Black Camaro back there. See if you can lose it in the East Village.”

“Is it a nice car? We could stop and see if he’s willing to trade,” Frank says, but he puts his foot gently on the accelerator and starts to speed up a little at a time -- not enough to give away that they’ve noticed, but enough to start building momentum.

“We’re being followed?” Zane asks, but he’s not stupid enough to look -- instead he immediately drops down to lay across the back seat out of sight, pushing his bag down into the footwell. “Who by?”

“Someone with a cheap car,” Erik says, a bit dryly, too aware that a panicking fugitive can get everybody killed even if it turns out they were never in danger in the first place.

“Shit,” Zane mutters, “shit,” and when Erik looks back at him he can see the skin on Zane’s arms rippling like there’s something under the surface trying to get out.

“We’re fine,” Erik says evenly, soothingly, and grimly wishes he had swineherd on standby to ‘persuade’ Zane to calm the fuck down. The car hasn’t followed their past two turns, since Frank sped up. “They’re gone now.”

A loud snort. “Says you. Don’t you know tails always come in twos? If you only noticed one that means number two is out there invisible. You ain’t lost shit.”

“They weren’t really following to begin with,” Erik says. “Nathan, head toward the safehouse. We’ll be secure there regardless.” 

No one else _is_ following. Erik’s been very conscious of the patterns of metal behind them, and no one else has made more than one turn at their tail. Zane doesn’t look reassured, though, and though nothing … erupts, his arms are still doing their disturbing _thing_ , almost mesmerizing in the way Erik both wants and doesn’t want to know what would come out if Zane really loses his cool.

“What’s going on with your arms,” Frank asks, seemingly not having the same issue as Erik. “You packing worms or something?”

“No, I grow poison spines,” Zane says, folding his arms over his chest and hiding them from view. “So fucking sue me, I’m nervous.”

Frank pulls up to the safehouse and Erik ‘pays’ the parking meter with his power, stepping out of the car and pulling the back door open to let Zane out onto the sidewalk. It’s getting late, the sun drifting toward the invisible horizon and glinting off all the metal it touches. Erik leads the way into the cool indoors, up all those stairs and into the small hallway past the false outer door to the apartment.

“Holy shit,” Zane mutters, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets, hunched in on himself and looking at the castle-like door as they walk through, once Erik has taken care of the passcodes. “Fucking bank vault this is.”

Erik pulls the door shut behind them and sends the alarms and tripwires back to default. “You can take any of those bedrooms back there,” he tells Zane, gesturing down the hallway even as he moves further into the house.

Zane wanders off to look and Erik steps closer to Frank, says quietly, “Under the circumstances, I think we’d better stay here tonight. I don’t think we were followed, but I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

“Probably a good idea,” Frank says, folding his arms across his chest and looking towards the corridor. “I don’t trust him here alone, either -- he’s a slimy bastard, you can tell just by looking at him. Better for both of us to be here. Sleep in shifts?”

Erik nods, but he’s put off saying more by Zane returning to the main rooms, taking a nice close look at all the artifacts Shaw had put on display, Ming vases along with some other pottery Erik always thought was ugly and a couple abstract sculptures.

“So,” Zane says to Frank, giving him a sharp look with those piggy eyes of his. “This is a pretty swanky hideout.”

Erik rolls his eyes where Zane can’t see and slips out of the room, heading down the hallway toward the bedrooms and letting himself into the one at the very end of the hall, closing the door behind him and flicking on the light. It’s smaller, as rooms go in any building Shaw saw fit to house his own eminence. Less ostentatious, which suits Erik better than the alternatives. It’s the only bedroom without mirrors.

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Erik taps Charles’ name in his favorites and holds the phone up to his ear, listening to it ring.

After two tones, Charles picks up.

“Are you all right?” he asks, his voice quiet, and of course he already knows something is up. “Do you need me to come there?”

“No,” Erik says. “This one … I don’t trust him, but there’s not been an issue. I’m calling because it’s looking like I’ll have to spend the night here. I wanted to let you know.”

Charles makes a nondescript sort of noise, the sort that means he’s keeping himself from making an unhappy one. “Okay,” he says finally, and Erik can hear the sound of him shifting, fabric brushing fabric. “Do you think you’re safe?”

“Of course. I have Frank here with me, too. And no one’s getting through that door, as I’m sure you recall.”

“Unless they can teleport, or walk through walls, or are already registered in the database because they’re Hellfire and they’ve followed you back to their safehouse.”

Erik snorts. “As far as the third one goes, only officers are in the database. And I’m the only officer still out on the streets. Solomon himself couldn’t get in here if I didn’t let him. There’s nothing I can do about teleporters, but there’s nothing you can do about them either, so that’s a risk we’re going to have to take.”

“All right,” Charles says, still sounding unhappy. “Call me if you need anything? Either on the phone or in your head. I’ll hear.”

Erik has no intention of calling for Charles’ help even if something _should_ happen, of course, too certain that Charles would try to forbid him going again. And if it got back to Caliban or swineherd that Charles had been involved … hell, even if _Frank_ thought Erik had got Charles involved, Erik would be out of a job.

“Sure,” Erik lies. “Good night, Charles.”

“Liar,” Charles says. “Night, Erik. I love you.”

“You too.”

Erik hangs up and goes back out into the hall, walking toward the living area. He can hear Zane speaking, his voice grating already even though Erik’s only known him less than an hour, the noise carrying down the corridor. “I’m right, though, aren’t I? He’s that kid.”

Frank’s voice is a displeased rumble. “I think you need to mind your own damn business, if you don’t want me minding yours for you.”

Erik steps out into the living room and both of them look at him, clearly wondering how much he’s overheard. Erik stops and slips his hands into his pockets, fixing his gaze on Zane.

“No pasts,” Erik says, repeating what he said earlier in the car, though it comes out more flatly this time. “If you break our rules, Zane, we won’t consider ourselves obligated to protect you any longer. And this is one of our rules. Understood?”

“Yeah yeah yeah,” Zane says, giving Erik a look both dirty and speculative, and then says nothing else until after dinner, when he says, “I’m going to bed,” and leaves Erik and Frank behind to wash up.

“You dry,” Erik says, tossing a dish towel to Frank and flipping on the faucet, running hot water into the sink, full now with plates and cutlery and the pans Erik had used to make as decent a meal as might be possible when using frozen chicken and vegetables, now slimy with a film of cooking oil. Now that Zane’s not around to see it he pulls the Beretta out from where he’d had it tucked into the back of his jeans, setting it on the counter out of range of the water and rolling up his sleeves.

“Fine with me,” Frank says, taking the towel and standing in position until Erik starts handing him dishes. “All this domestic shit’s bound to make you horny, you fucking love playing house with Daddy.”

Erik laughs and grabs the steel cushion to start scrubbing a bit of burnt fat out of the bottom of a pan. “Yeah, starring me in the role of the submissive. Charles can’t cook worth shit.”

“Maybe he just likes seeing you in your apron. Lord knows I’d bend you over the counter.”

“I think we’ve established that,” Erik says, and sends the skillet flying a bit too forcefully at Frank’s chest, trusting Frank to catch it. “You don’t just like me, you practically have a fetish.”

Frank snorts, rubbing the dishcloth over the skillet and setting it on the side. “You’re hot, you’re a proper separatist, and you have a great ass. What’s not to like? I mean, I fuck other people, I’m not pining, but I’d have another go if you offered.”

“Admit it, the 7D turns you on, too.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” Frank says, and slaps Erik on the ass with the wet towel.

Frank stays up with Erik until half past eleven, at which point they’re both tired enough to decide to call it a night, sending Frank off to sleep the first shift and Erik to the kitchen to brew himself a cup of coffee to ward off his encroaching exhaustion. 

The coffee works, at least, and Erik ends up sitting in an armchair near the window, the curtains drawn open just enough to give him a view down to the street if he tilts his head just-right, watching passers by below, invisible-visible-invisible as they walk through the pools of light cast by the street lamps. 

It makes Erik unhappy, being here overnight. He can feel Shaw’s presence like a whisper around every corner, like a pressure on his skin that makes him think someone’s touching him until he looks and no one’s there. He took two Ativan before he went out on this mission, which is half the reason he’s tired, but it’s fully the reason he’s sane right now so he finds it a fair trade.

The fact Erik has to take prescription medicine to keep Hellfire from seeping into his mind is just another crime Shaw will answer for, eventually.

He turns the page of his book and then pauses, certain he heard the creak of a floorboard -- but the hallway is still dark and he can’t feel metal moving inside the apartment. Just the click click of the cameras in the walls, still watching, and the shift of his gun against the small of his back when Erik uncrosses and recrosses his legs, trying to settle himself back down.

Erik doesn’t manage to get back into the chapter before he feels the shift of bedsprings at the far end of the apartment, and then hears the sound of footsteps coming his way.

Zane appears like a shadow in the dark, his short, squat shape emerging from the corridor to pause on the threshold of the light from Erik’s lamp, neither in the light or the shade. “Hey,” he says, simply. “Up late.”

Erik keeps his hand on the spine of the book, holding it open. “Can I help you with something?”

Zane shakes his head, and finally steps further in, painstakingly casual. “Insomniac,” he says, wandering over to stand at the window and peer out between the curtains. “Man, Hellfire sure tricked out their hideyholes, huh.”

“Mmm.” 

Erik wishes Zane would come out with it or go back to bed; he didn’t volunteer to babysit, just to transport. He isn’t going to make the mistake of letting Zane think he’s friendly. That’s like smiling at a tourist on the subway: try it and you’ll end up with a babbling Midwestern grandmother plastered to your side the rest of the trip.

“Must get lonely, being the lone survivor and all. When you’re used to a certain level of … company.” Zane turns then and gives Erik an appraising look, his mouth curled in an unpleasant smirk. He looks like a toad. “I bet you’d do anything to have a nice cock to suck on sometimes, feel like the old days.”

It really ought to be shocking, but at this point it isn’t. Erik’s been out in the world, he knows Hellfire aren’t the only ones who like being nasty in hopes of getting a reaction out of a scared little kid. Instead Erik just feels … irritated. 

“And I’m sure you’d do anything to have an IQ you couldn’t trip over, but we can’t always get what we want. Go back to your room, Zane.”

But Zane just grins and steps closer, his arms rippling again, skin suddenly prickling up, spiny -- there are spines coming out of his pores, like the needles of a cactus, and he says, “Is this what Shaw likes? You talking smack so he can put you in your place?”

And he lunges at Erik, his hand closing around Erik’s throat, his grip surprisingly strong as he tries to knock Erik back, to bear him back into the chair and pin him there. This -- _this_ , Erik hadn’t expected. Fear surges up in his chest and he realizes … Zane would kill him if he thought he could get away with it, one of Zane’s poison needles is stretching out of his wrist, toward Erik’s neck and Erik tilts his head back, trying to put distance between that needle and his skin.

 _Stop it._ Erik opens his mouth to order Zane down but he can’t get any air in. All that comes out is a hoarse-sounding croak, and Zane says, “That’s right, baby, open wide.”

His mind clouds red, the violence of it tripping old reflexes, and thankfully not the reflexes that would have seen him submit. His hand curls around the grip of his gun and his power pulls the safety back, and then the trigger. Twice.

The recoil gets buried between their bodies, Zane’s faltering forward in an awkward lurch, his eyes gone wide just a few inches from Erik’s. Erik’s hand is steady on the gun, the barrel still pressed against the bulk of Zane’s stomach as Zane’s grip loosens, then falls away.

“You -- you little bitch,” Zane wheezes, stumbling a couple of steps back before falling to the carpet, his hands clutching at his belly as red blooms on his shirt, blood seeping out over his fingers. “Little bitch … ” All his spines are out, his eyes wide, his face suddenly pale as snow.

“What the hell is going on?” Frank shouts from the other end of the hallway, and then he’s there, too, staring at their tableau, Erik with the smoking gun, Zane bleeding and bloody-mouthed, something inside him clearly ruptured and coming up the wrong way. “Fuck!”

Erik pushes himself up out of the armchair, the bullet shell dropping down onto the floor next to his fallen book. Zane’s trying to crawl out of his way using his elbows but it’s not doing him much good, his body already shocky with trauma and dying sooner rather than later. 

“He attacked me,” Erik says, and as always it’s astonishing how even his voice is, how remarkably cold when inside everything is quivering like raw meat.

“Fuck,” Frank says again, coming forward to look between Erik and Zane on the floor, the crimson trail he’s left behind. “We can’t leave him like this, Erik, he’ll talk. Should I call Neil?”

“No,” Erik says, “I got it.”

Zane’s spines are wilting now, like the venom’s drained out of them, body using all its resources to try and keep itself alive. It’s sickening, or it should be, but Erik’s felt sick over enough things in life without adding one more. He crosses the small distance Zane has managed to put between them and stops him there, pinning him down with Erik’s shoe braced between his throat and chin, pushing his head back against the floor.

Zane gurgles and grasps at Erik’s ankle with weak hands, eyes wide and white now. Erik doesn’t think about anything. He gives in to practiced action. 

He aims the gun down at Zane’s head and pulls the trigger one last time. The bullet crashes through Zane’s skull and tears out the other side, ripping through hot flesh and spraying blood and brain matter like vomit onto Shaw’s lush white carpet.

“Fuck.” Frank looks like he wants to throw up, looking at the mess only for a moment before turning away, nostrils flaring. “Shit, Erik, there are cleaner ways to do it. And by cleaner I mean less fucking time-consuming to hide the evidence of.”

Erik flicks the safety on again with his thumb, tucking the gun back into his jeans and trying to decide how normal it is, Frank’s apparent disregard for the ethics of Erik’s shooting a man execution-style right in front of him. That is, Erik’s pretty fucking sure Charles is going to kill him for this, as would just about anyone else Erik knows.

“We’ll put a rug down,” Erik says. “But first we need a chainsaw.”

“To do what, cut him in pieces?” Frank asks, and he looks back at Erik, a grim expression on his face. “We don’t need a chainsaw for that. I can rip him apart, if that’s what you’re going for, so long as you don’t mind me puking on the results.”

Erik glances back at Zane -- or what’s left of him, anyway, his facial features practically destroyed by the shot at such close range. Christ, Erik probably shouldn’t keep looking at this, if only so he doesn’t have to watch Charles’ reaction when Charles pulls it out of his brain tomorrow morning. Not that he has a whole lot of other options.

“That’s what I’m going for, yeah,” Erik says, dragging his gaze away and back to Frank, trying to bury his incredulity about this whole surreal experience but not entirely managing it. “Unless you’ve got a better idea.”

Frank shrugs. “Have you ever seen Breaking Bad?”

Which is how he and Frank end up in a Secaucus, New Jersey Walmart at three AM, wandering the fluorescent aisles with a cart full of plastic containers and a giant bag of lye -- because, as Erik told Frank, hydrofluoric acid would take days and would stink like hell. It takes half the night to get the right equipment and then drive all the way back to Manhattan and the safehouse, Erik following Frank up the narrow stairs, Frank handling the heavy bag of lye as if it were full of air.

Zane’s body is right where they left it, the blood starting to dry on the carpet now and turning a muddy burgundy color, crusty and chunky where brain bits have gotten stuck on the synthetic fibers. They cover as much of the furniture and walls and carpet as they can with plastic wrap, Erik taping it down with duct tape, until at last it’s just the two of them and the corpse shut off from the rest of the world and Erik turns to Frank, says, “You sure you can do this?"

“I’ve got gloves,” Frank says, holding up his hands, which are encased in thick rubber. “And the more surface area the faster he’ll melt. I’m just going to think of this as a really nasty video game.” And he takes hold of each of Zane’s legs, and starts to _pull_. There’s an awful, wrenching, popping sound -- then a tearing -- and one leg comes entirely off the corpse, like Frank is carving up a Thanksgiving turkey.

“This is so gross,” Frank says, finally sounding less than cool about it, and keeps pulling on the other one, adjusting his now-free hand onto the other hip.

Even Erik can’t quite watch that without his stomach turning, and he tries not to be too obvious about the way he tilts his face away, pulling his gun out just to unload and reload the cartridge, giving himself something to do. The adrenaline’s long gone now and Erik is just exhausted, wants nothing more than to be at home asleep next to Charles. But there’s this, first, and Frank’s dirty work, the ripping sound of dismembered flesh and bone.

“So,” Erik says, a bit awkwardly, to cover up the noise. “Aren’t you glad you took me up on this?”

“Oh yeah,” Frank says, sounding incredibly queasy. “Just ecstatic. Yay.”

He makes short work of the body all the same, and then it’s just a matter of putting the parts into the containers and covering them with a healthy blanket of lye. Frank starts pulling down the plastic as soon as Erik has clamped the lid shut on the last box, and Erik pushes the containers back onto the carpet proper so Frank can roll the mess up.

“Might as well just throw that in the garbage,” Erik says, picking up the bullet casings from the floor and slipping them into his pocket. 

Frank chokes a laugh. “Oh yeah, great idea. Throw out the plastic sheeting covered in DNA and hope the garbage men don’t notice. No, we’ve got to burn it. Or lye it, maybe. The carpet too.”

“We can’t burn the plastic, it’d just melt and make it worse. Lye won’t have any effect on it either. When I said the garbage I meant, after we’ve bleached it. That’ll take care of the DNA.” They could still see the physical bloodstains if they forensically examined it, but Erik doubts garbage men are that particular.

Frank nods tiredly. “You’ve done this before, I take it.”

“Mr Essex’s second grade science class. What, you haven’t?”

“Clearly I need to go back to summer school,” Frank says, and then says, “Excuse me, I’m going to be sick,” and goes into the kitchen to throw up in the sink, his shoulders heaving as his hands brace on either side, his whole body shaking.

Erik winces and tries not to gawk too much, going back over to the armchair where it all happened to retrieve his book. As he straightens up he glances out the window again, through that tiny crack between the curtains. It’s dawn now, the city a foggy grey and the earliest commute starting its slow sludge through the streets below. He’s fatigued down to his bones -- which, he thinks grimly, is all that’s going to be left of Jeremiah Zane in a few hours.

Frank takes his time, and after a few minutes of silence Erik hears the sink running, then the sound of water being gulped and then spat out. “Ugh,” Frank says quietly.

Another minute after that, he finally comes over to stand beside Erik, looking outside. “We’ll need to dispose of the carpet,” he says quietly. “I think we can probably cut it off at the edge of this section of the room, make it look like a rich person eccentricity.”

Erik nods, even if the prospect of doing one more thing to try and cover this shit up makes him feel like lying down on this same dirty carpet and sleeping for a year. “Now?” he can’t help saying, wanting too much for Frank to give them both permission to just … go home and come back tomorrow.

Frank hesitates, then sighs, sagging -- he looks exhausted too, dark circles under his eyes. “It’ll keep,” he says, patting Erik on the shoulder. “No point worrying about it giving us away right now when we’ve still got that guy in barrels in the living room.”

Thank God, Erik thinks, the tension draining out of his spine -- only to come right back a second later. “Fuck. I just realized we’re going to have to find a way to explain this shit to Caliban.”

“Worry about that tomorrow,” Frank says, and gives Erik a little shove. “I’m going to bed. You should, too. I’d be more worried about Daddy Warbucks if I were you.”

“Charles isn’t going to actually kill me for this. Can’t say the same for the kind of people who take to being shadowy criminal masterminds named after Shakespearean monsters.”

“Yeah, well, _Charles_ could melt that dude’s nervous system without even needing the chemicals and shit if he wanted to, while eating his fucking cereal and reading the fucking newspaper, so forgive me if I don’t cry you a river,” Frank says, and his nonchalance is nearly reassuring. “I’m more worried he’s going to see me as a bad influence and scramble my brain like an egg.”

Erik sighs, lifting a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. “Maybe. The bad influence part, not the brain part, since he can’t even read you. But I can’t see him being happy about me coming back here again. Not that it’s Charles’ decision, but … it isn’t like I can claim the moral high ground at this point.”

“Returning to the scene of the crime is a bad plan anyway, dude,” Frank says. “I’d say burn this fucker down, if there weren’t other people living in this building. Anyway. _Bed_. We can pick things up in the morning. Later. Whichever one comes last.”

“All right.” Erik straightens up properly, tucking his book under one arm and turning more properly toward Frank, reaching out to squeeze his enormous bicep once. “Thanks again. I know this isn’t what you asked for.”

“It’s not like there was anything on cable tonight anyway,” Frank says, with a wry smile, and shambles off towards the bedrooms.

After a long while Erik follows him, going into the still-darkened bedroom that was meant to be his on the next shift, toeing off his shoes to climb underneath the heavy covers. He’s asleep before his head hits the pillow, sinking fast into easy darkness.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: gore, attempted rape, references to past child sex abuse, violence


	40. Forty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no cw this ch

_Erik_

It’s eleven in the morning by the time Erik finally gets home, having set his alarm for ten and then still needing to make his way all the way back uptown, strangely feeling less rested after he slept than he did before. He keeps looking down at his shoes, worrying there’s a spot of blood on them that he missed, some evidence that just a few hours ago they were splattered with pieces of Jeremiah Zane, but they’re clean as anything. He wiped them down last night before he went to sleep, with a raggedy piece of towel soaked in vodka.

Erik lets himself into their apartment with some amount of trepidation, senses already latched onto the ring he made Charles and finding it not upstairs in bed as Erik expected but down in the kitchen, moving about that room, probably making himself a late breakfast. Erik closes the door quietly behind himself -- not that there’s much point; Charles will have picked up on his presence in the elevator. There’s nowhere to hide.

“Hey,” Charles calls, so -- _normal_. There’s a clatter of metal, pans moving. “Did you sleep in? I thought you’d have been back earlier.”

Erik drops his bag in the living room and follows the sound of that voice. Charles has no idea what happened. That realization dawns on Erik and brings with it a whole new tide of misery. Erik can’t bring himself to crack the shell of this normalcy. He wants to cling to it instead, wrap himself up in it like a cloth.

“Yeah,” he says as he walks into the kitchen, lingering in the doorway with his hands hidden behind his back. Charles cracks an egg on the edge of the pan, and it hisses as he lets the insides fall onto the hot surface. “It was a … late night. Frank’s still sleeping it off.”

“Oh?” Charles asks, “What happened?” He’s half-turning, his mouth shaped into a smile -- and then he stops, the expression dropping away and replaced with nothing, just a blank, like a loading screen before Charles’ brain has decided what comes next. He’s gone very pale, his hand on the frying pan handle so tight Erik hears his knuckles crack in the sizzling silence.

Erik doesn’t say anything. There’s no point in giving his reasons and trying to explain why he had to do what he did, not when Charles is replaying it from his memory over and over even as they stand here, watching in high definition as Erik put three bullets in Zane’s body like it was nothing. Erik doesn’t dare think, because if he thinks he’ll try to predict what Charles will say or do next. He doesn’t dare feel, not when he doesn’t know if Charles will -- 

He doesn’t dare finish that sentence, either.

“I … ” Charles starts, then turns and looks down at his egg, takes it off the heat, then switches off the hob. He’s facing the other way again, expression hidden. “Oh my God.”

“It was self defense,” Erik says.

“The first part was.” Charles’ voice is thick. “Fuck, Erik. I told you. I said something awful would happen.” He lifts one hand and swipes at his own face, then stops, the back of his hand pressed against his own cheek, his wrist pressed over his mouth. “Oh, God. You _killed_ someone.”

Erik shifts where he stands, fingers clenching into fists then unclenching and flexing out, like even his hands are desperate for a way to fix something, but there’s nothing to grab onto. He swallows.

“I’ve killed a lot of people,” Erik says.

“Not _recently!_ ” Charles exclaims, and he finally turns around, wild-eyed, every line of him tense and quivering like it has too much energy locked up inside it, like he might explode. “Or -- God, no, that’s not even true, because at the trial …!” He covers his mouth again, looking ill.

Erik presses his lips tighter together and bites down at the inside of his cheek. He can’t open his mouth and tell Charles there were other options, because there weren’t, not without putting blood on Frank’s unblemished hands. He can’t even say Zane would have died anyway, because it was still Erik’s shot that put him in that position. He did the only thing he could do, and it’s irrational to let Charles unsettle him like this. And yet. 

Erik slips his hand in his pocket and clenches it tight around the three bullet shells, melting them down in the heat of his grip until the metal burns him. If anything, this upsets Charles even more -- he jerks forward as Erik feels the pain, and he snatches at Erik’s wrist with desperate urgency, dragging his hand out and forcing his fingers open until he drops the casings. “No, don’t do that!”

Erik lets Charles drag him over across the floor to stick his hand under the sink faucet, turning on the cold water. Then they just stand there, Erik watching the water pour over his red and blistering skin and Charles’ shoulders shaking a little with every inhale.

“Fuck.” After a minute, Charles uses his other hand to tug Erik’s head down and presses his lips to Erik’s temple, hard, then leans his face there, hiding in Erik’s hair, his breath hot on Erik’s skin. Erik closes his eyes and tries to just breathe, in and out as his mind stretches to static. He slept for six hours but it feels like he didn’t sleep at all, the haze of last night finally settling its true weight into his bones.

“I’ll go back over there this afternoon and finish cleaning up,” he says after they’ve been quiet a while, wrapping his free arm around Charles’ waist and keep holding him close. “It’s pretty much taken care of at this point. I think we should just move on.”

Charles makes an awful sort of sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, his whole body hitching. “Even if it was self-defence, and I -- I accept that it was,” he says, voice as raspy as if he’d just smoked four cigarettes in a row. “God, Erik, you _killed_ a man, and then -- you and Frank -- you -- just _cleaned up_. It’s not … it’s not okay.”

“And what would have been okay with you?” Erik asks, trying not to sound irritable; Charles lifts his head, leaning back, almost pulling away. “What would you have done differently, then?”

“I don’t know! I don’t know what to do, or say, I just -- I can’t just _move on!_ ” Charles’ eyes narrow like he’s had a face full of onions, blinking as if he’s trying to wash it all away. “You just … ” 

“I could always have just sucked his cock for him if that’d make you happier.”

“That’s not what I meant,” and this time Charles really does pull away, looking nauseous, faintly green around the edges and angry, too, for the first time since Erik came home. “I don’t know what you want from me, but I can’t just say ‘oh dear’ and just -- pretend you didn’t shoot a man in the head when he was already down. Then _melt_ his corpse! I -- this is beyond my skillset, Erik, I don’t know what to do or say to you right now.” He turns as if he wants to move, but he doesn’t, twisting on the spot, his hands clamping down on the edge of the counter, holding on. His breath is coming fast, louder than normal. “God. Fuck.”

Erik shuts off the faucet and pats his hand dry with the dish towel, trying not to break the fluid-filled blisters on his palm. His skin immediately feels like it’s on fire all over again. He knows how it looks: like he’s cut himself off from his own emotions, as if it were as simple as pinching off the wire that runs to that part of his brain, nothing but a strange flatness inside him.

“Look,” he says at last, once he feels like he actually has something to say. “I know this isn’t something you’re used to. It probably shouldn’t be something I’m used to, either, but in a way I am used to it. I know it would be easier for you to swallow if I’d struggled more with what to do or how to handle the situation afterward, but the fact is, I already _knew_ what to do. I already knew how these things work. I’m just sorry you had to see it.”

“I feel like -- I can’t -- I feel like I have to tell someone,” Charles says, and his breaths have become sharp and rapid -- if he keeps on like this he’s going to hyperventilate. “I know about a _murder_ , that makes me an accessory -- ”

“Calm down,” Erik says, and he puts weight behind it. The effects are immediate: Charles’ breathing slows, his hands relaxing slightly where they’re still holding onto the counter. Erik touches Charles again, one palm at the small of his back, and rubs small circles there as if that might make any difference. Eventually he adds, dryly, “Besides, it’s not even murder. Manslaughter at the very most.”

“Please don’t joke,” Charles says, and wipes at his face again, not looking at Erik -- turned away, even though he’s staying stood there, letting Erik touch him. “Not only is that not true, this isn’t funny at all. This is -- this is a nightmare.”

Erik sighs inaudibly and tries not to let his mind go in what feels like the inevitable direction, drifting toward the things Braden-Newell had said that night down in the dining room, that way he made Charles sound like a nervous child so desperate for Erik’s reassurance. Braden-Newell was right of course, Charles _is_ an adult, but Erik is his Dominant. So Erik needs to be the one to keep him calm.

“I know,” he says gently, and finally he moves closer, reaching with his other arm to pull Charles back into a loose embrace, tilting his burned hand so the blisters don’t touch Charles’ shirt and holding him there awkwardly, kissing the back of Charles’ head. Charles doesn’t reciprocate, doesn’t turn around or even so much as hold Erik’s hand in return.

“I need to go think about this,” Charles says, so neutral that it makes Erik want to scream.

“All right,” Erik says, “fine,” and steps away, palm throbbing harder now. “Take all the time you need.”

Which turns out to be easier said than done, when Erik’s the one having to watch Charles as they go about their separate days, Charles avoiding Erik and only speaking to him when he has to. Erik replays those words in his head over and over, _I need to think about this,_ not sure what that means, if that means Charles is willing to betray him to the police, if Charles can’t love him now -- if this is what Elias meant when he said Charles was a fool. If Charles might give up this, Erik, everything they have together, for his bloated sense of idealism.

That Charles already ripped his ideals to ribbons and burned the tattered pieces the first time he looked at Erik that way doesn’t seem to come into Charles’ equation at all.

*

_Charles_

Charles spends a lot of the first day holed up in his office, poking papers around and trying to pretend to himself that he’s working while trying not to be hyper-aware of Erik passing by the doorway, occasionally hovering on the lintel, silently begging Charles to turn around -- judging Charles for being upset by his actions.

The fact that Erik can’t understand why Charles is upset is possibly the worst part of all. Charles has no idea how to deal with this. How to reconcile, in his mind, these two very different Eriks -- these two entirely-the-same Eriks, the one who loves Charles, who kisses him and gets flour on his cheek when he bakes, with that cold, practical, automaton, the one who shot a man and melted down his corpse as if it were nothing. As if it doesn’t even matter.

It’s not -- it’s not that Charles doesn’t understand that it was self-defense, that Erik was about to be raped and probably poisoned. That part he can digest, as painful as it is, and can be grateful for, that Erik was able to defend himself and that he wasn’t hurt. The part he can’t stop playing in his mind is the part where Erik stood over a dying, defenseless man, having already defended himself, and just -- shot him in the head.

That night Erik gets into bed with him and Charles rolls over and curls in against his side, the way he always does, and Erik hesitates just for a moment before he wraps his arm around Charles’ shoulders and keeps him there, bandaged hand light against Charles’ back.

Charles doesn’t know what else to do, what to say, so instead he opens his mind to Erik and shows him the way he feels -- the distress that Erik was put in such a position, his fear and horror at the consequences, the way seeing Erik so cold and calculating and pragmatic about disposing of something that used to be a human being has left Charles afraid he doesn’t know Erik at all. Shows him how the fact that he cannot understand that attitude, how Erik could be so … serene, is leaving him lost, with no idea of what to do about it. Charles’ own moral struggle with the thought of keeping it a secret, knowing he must but knowing he himself is damned by his silence. Not just by the law, but by his own internal compass.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Erik murmurs at last. “What’s done is done.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Charles says, keeping his eyes closed, his cheek pressed to Erik’s shoulder. He can feel himself rising and falling with Erik’s breath, the soft beat of Erik’s heart under his palm. “There isn’t an answer to this. It’s just how I feel. I know you think it’s stupid.”

“Not stupid. Just … naïve, I suppose. I know it’s shocking to you, but I can’t understand why you’d be so surprised that I handled it the way I did. Considering what I was taught growing up.”

“It’s frightening,” Charles admits, and he knows it might be the wrong thing to say, but it’s true, nonetheless, and he promised never to lie to Erik. “There’s a big difference between knowing you have that in you, and seeing it. It scares me that you can feel so little about ending a life. No matter how you came by it.”

He hears Erik let out a soft breath, and Erik’s hand shifts up to touch the back of Charles’ head, fingers sifting through his hair. “I know. I don’t want to frighten you. That was the first thing I thought about when it happened -- that you were going to be so upset.”

That’s worse, Charles thinks, but doesn’t say. Not, _I just killed a man_ , or any fear of consequences or guilt. But what would Charles think, as if Charles’ opinion is the thing that matters most. Not good or evil, murder or mercy. Upsetting Charles. It’s like having a pet tiger, one that brings home its kills as presents for its owner.

“What will you do with the … the remains?” he asks finally, when the silence has dragged out far longer than it should. Erik’s hand feels good on Charles’ sensitive scalp, and that, too, feels like a betrayal of trust, like it shouldn’t affect him, not now. But it does, like a natural relaxant, and Charles’ muscles are loosening, one by one, leaning more heavily against Erik.

“The bones will be weakened by the lye, so probably grind them up and mix them with water to make a slurry to pour down the garbage disposal with everything else. It’s not as bad as it sounds.”

Charles can’t help but imagine it as himself, torn apart by Frank’s monstrous strength, then dissipating into soup, poured away, just … gone, as if he never existed. He shudders, his stomach churning, and Erik’s arm tightens around him, holding him closer, paradoxically comforting. “Won’t -- ” He swallows, tries again to sound … no, he can’t sound casual about this. “Won’t the lye damage the pipes?”

“Lye’s alkaline, unlike hydrofluoric or hydrochloric acid, so no. That’s why Shaw and Essex liked it better for this sort of thing. Great for corroding organic material, doesn’t affect anything else.” Charles feels Erik’s mind close off in a strange sort of way, like it’s easier for him to talk about it if he doesn’t think about specifics, and all at once Charles is quite certain he doesn’t want to know how many corpses Hellfire had Erik get rid of, or how traumatizing those circumstances might have been, if those are repulsive to Erik when this isn’t.

“Oh,” Charles says, can’t think of anything better to say to that.

He can’t stop thinking, like some gruesome video on loop, about what if it were him, laying there bloodied and empty and ready to be disposed of, and Erik must catch the edge of that thought because he says, “Charles, you need to relax,” voice a little flat, like he’s scolding a child.

“This is a normal reaction,” Charles says, suddenly angry, and he pushes away from Erik, rolls himself free and sits up at the other side of the bed, gets to his feet, unable to simply lie there any more. His heart is beating so fast in his chest it feels like it might burst outwards, fly free of its own accord and leave the rest of him torn open and exposed. “Just because you wish I could just -- that I could not feel -- _this_ \-- ”

“It is _not_ normal to sit there and wonder if I would kill you and melt your body down afterward! Jesus Christ, Charles, get a grip. You _know_ me.”

He hears Erik moving behind him but Charles doesn’t want to be touched right now. “Don’t,” he says, and steps sideways, further into the corner. “I can’t just -- I don’t know this you, I don’t know what you would do if you had to.” Charles turns to look at Erik, who looks concerned and unhappy, his mouth twisting downward and Charles feels breathless and a bit dizzy. “What kind of person am I, if I just pretend this never happened and I just -- _hide_ it?”

“The kind of person who loves me,” Erik says. There’s a viciousness behind it, an intensity of emotion that doesn’t have a name. 

“I love you more than anything or anyone,” Charles says, shaking, “and that scares me at the best of times, but right now it terrifies me what I would do for you.”

Erik doesn’t respond, just looks at him with his eyes dark in the dim light, his uninjured hand clenched around a fistful of the bedclothes and his lips pressed into a thin line. He’s thinking that he doesn’t understand why Charles is surprised by that -- that love is supposed to be terrifying, that if Charles hadn’t known that before then perhaps he never loved the real Erik at all. Just the childish version of him Charles would prefer to be true, the version that doesn’t know how to dispose of corpses. That Charles must prefer the porcelain façade Erik’s built around his past to the person Erik really is.

“I don’t think I can sleep,” Charles says, finally, his voice a tight, unsteady break in the silence.

“All right,” Erik says.

Charles’ whole body feels restless and uneasy, too keyed up to sleep and yet exhausted, fraught with emotion; he doesn’t know what to do, what to say, and all he wants is the physical comfort of Erik close, but at the same time he can’t stop _thinking_. He has to stop thinking.

“Would you … ” He stops, swallows, continues, “... would you fuck me? Please.”

Erik’s expression shifts very slightly and his mind is quite suddenly blank, as if he’s wiped all thoughts away. “If you want.”

God, this is awful. Charles feels stupid just for asking, Erik must think he’s crazy, that’s why he’s hiding his thoughts. “You don’t have to,” Charles says, letting out a sharp breath. “Never mind.” He looks over at the drawn curtains, wishes he could just hide behind them until all this has passed. “I’m sorry.”

“Come here, Charles,” Erik says, holding out his hand, and there’s just enough order behind it for Charles to feel it rippling down his spine like cool water. It’s -- better, even if Erik’s mind is still so carefully empty of everything that isn’t pure sensation.

“Okay,” Charles whispers, and he goes to Erik, takes his hand and steps in close, leaning his forehead against Erik’s collarbone and just breathing, there, letting it all stop, focusing entirely on Erik’s smell, his warmth, his other hand coming to rest on Charles’ hip, then the back of his head again, somewhere Erik loves to touch him. 

“Take off your clothes,” Erik orders him, and Charles obeys, the act of doing so letting him start to disconnect from the fear, from the anxiety, just the feel of fabric under his hands, then skin, and then Erik orders him to lie down on the bed, and Charles obeys that, too, stares at the ceiling until Erik crawls on top of him, naked, and pins Charles’ hands to the pillows with cuffs made from the metal headboard, and then there’s no room for anything else in Charles’ head. He’s gone, floating away from all of that and concentrating only on Erik’s fingers between his legs, slicking him up, and then on wrapping his legs around Erik’s waist and crying out as Erik pushes inside of him.

 _Love you, love you, love you,_ Charles thinks as Erik fucks him, straining against his restraints, and Erik kisses him hard enough to nick Charles’ lip against his tooth, drawing blood. There’s something Charles is supposed to be worried about, but everything is heat and skin and sweat and Erik’s cock moving in Charles’ hole, and Erik thinking how lovely he is, Erik wanting him enough to blot everything else out.

Afterwards, when Charles’ hands are free, he touches Erik’s face, stroking his cheek, the swell of his lower lip, the curve of his ear, drifting in that calm, quiet place where everything is all right if Erik is here to be in control. Charles is tired, but he says, anyway, “Love you.”

Erik kisses him again, gently this time. “I know. Go to sleep.”

Charles does.

*

_Erik_

“We need to tell swineherd,” Erik says when at last they’re finished with their dirty work, him and Frank collapsed next to each other on the luxurious sofa and all the evidence now fully disposed-of. 

Erik and Frank have spent the whole afternoon in this same apartment, sending little bits and pieces of Zane down the garbage disposal and tearing out anything else that passes for evidence. There’s a massive area of bare floorboards now where the carpet used to be that could look sort-of avant garde if you squint at it right.

“That’ll be a fun conversation,” Frank says, his head tipped back against the couch cushions, eyes closed, every part of him limp. He hasn’t so much as questioned the need to do any of this, something Erik appreciates. It’s good not to be questioned about what has to be done, for someone to simply accept that Erik knows what he’s doing and has a good reason. Frank continues, blithely, “I really hope Zane wasn’t paying for transpo. People get way more pissed when you fuck up their revenue stream.”

Erik shrugs and, for the first time in his life, finds himself quite-reasonably thinking, _What Would Sebastian Shaw Do?_ “Well, shit happens,” he says after a moment. “Stores anticipate losses from shoplifting and damage and so on, and budget for them. This kind of loss just goes with the business.”

Frank shrugs in return. “At least,” he says, “we don’t have to worry about getting a bad Yelp review.”

Erik laughs, surprising himself a little, and he can’t help but think this is a pleasant change from last night. He leans to one side, bumping his shoulder into Frank’s and then just … resting there, pressed against him, feeling strangely sad inside. Or maybe it’s nostalgia -- he always feels like that, being here. It wasn’t all bad memories, after all. He had his seventh birthday in this safehouse, spent hours flopped on his belly on this same carpet pushing miniature train cars round a track with his power while Shaw looked on in approval and even let him eat a chocolate cookie. 

Of course, he’s also been fucked on every flat surface in this apartment. It wouldn’t really have made that much of a difference to let it happen one more time.

“Do you think I should have just gone with it?” Erik says after a while, not-looking at Frank, his voice coming out quiet and low. “It would have been less trouble.”

“Don’t be a dumbass,” Frank says, and his hand shifts over to what is probably supposed to be Erik’s knee but covers a fair bit of his lower thigh as well, squeezing. “Zane was prettier _after_ you shot him in the face. Imagine having to look at that on top of you for two whole minutes of huffing and puffing.”

Erik snorts. “Yeah. He wouldn’t have been my finest catch.”

Wonders if he’d fucked him anyway, once upon a time, if Zane was one of dozens Erik got on his knees for while wearing a blindfold, people too deep undercover for even Erik to see their faces.

Frank squeezes Erik’s leg again, and after a moment he says, “Hey, by the way. Sorry about the other night, at the party. I was pretty wasted.”

It takes a moment for Erik to remember what Frank means, sifting back through memory to pull up the buried sense of Frank’s mouth on his neck and his cock grinding against Erik’s ass, Frank doing everything he could to talk Erik into fucking him in that room full of mattresses.

“It’s fine,” Erik says. This time he does glance over at Frank, who is looking back, expression a little sheepish. “I know you couldn’t help yourself. It’s like you said the night before last. My ass is just _that_ great.”

“I am an insatiable beast,” Frank agrees, and slides his hand slowly, exaggeratedly, up Erik’s thigh towards his crotch. “Fancy a ride?”

Erik swats Frank’s hand away with a few inches to spare and just like that the two of them are back to their usual relaxed dynamic, easy and calm, no spectre of Zane’ corpse hanging between them. Not like at home, where Erik’s almost certain Charles would have been less pissed off if Erik had just let himself get raped. Perhaps he doesn’t mind sharing Erik; he wouldn’t be the first.

“Charles isn’t happy,” Erik says after a moment, not sure why he’s confessing this to Frank if not because he somehow ends up confessing just about everything to Frank, eventually. “Obviously.”

Frank gives Erik a steady look, some of the humor falling away from his expression. “Didn’t expect he would be,” he says, twisting a little to face more towards Erik. “Finicky, you know. You can tell just by looking at him.”

“He probably thinks I’m a sociopath.”

“Probably. Are you?”

“Doubt I’d know it if I was. You’d probably like me better that way,” Erik says with a tiny grin and an arched brow, and Frank says, “I don’t know, would it make you more or less bitchy?”

Erik rolls his eyes, trying to feel good-natured about things but finding it difficult when his mind keeps going back to Charles over and over again, like a piece of trash circling the drain.

“Do you think I should say something to him?” he asks Frank, even though he doesn’t know what he could say that he hasn’t already said. “It isn’t that he’s uncomfortable, I mean, I get that. This isn’t his … lifestyle. But he’s acting like I’m a different person because of this, when this has always been who I am. It was self-defense, but he treats me like I’ve transformed into a cold-blooded killer before his very eyes.”

Maybe that’s exactly what Erik is, Erik thinks morosely. He can’t bring himself to care about Zane, even if maybe he should. What does that say about him?

Frank winces, and he finally sits up, propping his elbows on his knees and letting his hands hang down between them. “Well,” he says, “it’s one thing to know your kid -- Domfriend, whatever -- is capable of something, but when he actually does it it kind of makes it real, right? You’ve always said he’s good at pretending shit is the way he wants it to be instead of the way it is. Like his politics and whatever. Charles thinks of things and people like they’re the nicest, prettiest, best possible versions of themselves. Right?”

Erik nods, shifting a little to look at Frank more fully, bringing one knee up onto the sofa cushion. “Right. Root of the problem, there.”

“So. The real question is, once you’ve burst his bubble, do you think he can get over it or not?”

“I don’t know. He has a strong moral compass, but then again, he was able to get over the problems he had about fucking me when he wanted it badly enough.”

It feels cruel to say, but it’s true.

“Bit different though,” Frank says, shrugging. “I mean, you _wanted_ the D. Killing a dude is a bit of a step up.”

Something turns in the pit of Erik’s stomach, a memory he’d mostly tried to ignore but one that keeps … surging up, somehow, like garbage that won’t stay buried. “Not at first. Not last December, I didn’t. Want him, that is.”

They never talk about it anymore, the fact that Charles knew Erik was only fucking him to keep Charles from leaving or the fact that Charles did it anyway, did it until he couldn’t pretend to himself that wasn’t what he was doing any longer. And even then, his best intentions didn’t last. Not that Erik would have wanted it any other way, of course; he wants Charles _now_ , loves him, but Erik wishes Charles didn’t want them both to pretend everything’s always been this way. 

“Hmm,” Frank says, then sighs, shrugging again. “Well, I guess you have to decide how much work you’re willing to put in to change his mind. Either he’s going to accept you as you are or he isn’t, simple as that. Either he’ll get over it or he won’t. But you also need to decide if you think it’s worth investing all that time and energy in someone who’s deliberately ignoring parts of you so he doesn’t have to work harder to love you.”

It stings, hearing Frank put it like that. Erik can feel himself trying to flinch away from it, to blank those words out of his memory immediately so he doesn’t have to consider whether they might be true. Only he should -- shouldn’t he? Charles is too comfortable talking about the terrible things Shaw and the others did, so long as they don’t put blood on Erik’s own hands. And he’s content having Erik in his bed as long as Erik doesn’t remind him why he climbed in in the first place. Erik’s the one who carries the burden of both their crimes.

“Yeah,” he says eventually, “thanks,” and they move on to other topics of conversation, but in the back of his mind Erik is still thinking about yesterday, about how Charles all but said he could imagine Erik murdering him in cold blood. What does that mean about them, that Charles can imagine Erik actually killing him, can even consider Erik capable of that? For their relationship, and for each of them in particular? Erik does understand Charles’ shock and unhappiness with the situation, but it’s that one moment Erik can’t quite get over, that moment when it occurred to him that Charles might not love him at all. 

While Erik knows that isn’t true, it does raise an interesting question, he thinks as he’s sitting in the train on his way back uptown to their apartment. Charles does love him, but what parts of him does he love, exactly? Is anyone capable of loving the pieces of Erik that were touched and shaped and molded by Shaw into his perfect weapon -- a weapon that might have been gathering dust these past several years but is still all too deadly when need be? Is this all Erik is, in the end … Shaw’s … _product?_

Erik had almost been able to forget about the doubts he’d had before, in California, until last night when Charles went to bed with him and tried so damn hard to wipe away the Erik he didn’t love by fucking the Erik he did. For the first time since that night Erik looked at Charles and saw him in a different light as well, the Charles that isn’t so pure and glass-bright, but instead the Charles that really exists when you strip away that idealism and dig down into the dirt, the Charles who has a conscience but who can ignore it perfectly well. If only when he wants to.

And there it is, another thing Erik had almost forgotten. The way it feels to stand face to face with the cause of it all again, that dark mirror of himself who drags everyone it meets into deadly orbit, that black hole that sucked in Shaw and Azazel and Creed and Charles, that reached out across the distance between them to Jeremiah Zane and pulled him in to his death.

When Erik gets home Charles is on the couch in the den, dead to the world, the television still on; he must have fallen asleep here, exhausted from last night. It means he didn’t hear what Erik was thinking earlier and Erik feels a surge of gratitude for that. He pushes them down, hard, and refuses to think like this around Charles where Charles might hear.

Erik goes to sit down on the edge of the cushion near Charles’ hip and rests his hand at Charles’ waist where he can feel it when Charles wakes up, both his body and his mind stirring. Charles blinks blearily and looks up at Erik, seeming unsurprised to see him there. “Hey,” he murmurs, voice gravelly. “You’re home.”

“I was going to get started on dinner soon,” Erik says. “Do you want to move upstairs so you don’t get disturbed by it? It might be noisy.” He thinks about carrying Charles up the stairs in his arms, Charles asleep against his chest like a child -- a strange thought to have, at a time like this.

“I should get up,” Charles says, his fingers finding Erik’s wrist, curling around it, holding him there gently -- not tightly enough to restrain him, a soft, tired sort of grip. “Is ... did … is everything … done? Now?”

Erik nods after a moment’s hesitation. “We took care of it.” He doesn’t want to end on that note, though, doesn’t want Charles to walk away from this still trying to envision in his mind what it must have been like, so he says, “Why don’t you come and help me with dinner? You probably can’t mess up a salad,” and smiles a tiny bit at Charles, who pushes himself upright from his slouch and says, “Okay,” and manages a small smile in return.

It’s easier when they’re both in the kitchen, on even terrain and doing something with prescribed elements to it. The conversation is stilted sometimes, the two of them both working around the sharp edges that threaten from the shadows, but they make it work, mostly, and just like he did when he first came home from California Erik forces himself to feel everything so much more strongly, so much more intensely, that he can drown out the echoes of his doubts.

*

_Charles_

It’s a relief, really, when Charles gets to the office on Monday and finds that his only afternoon patient has cancelled their appointment, leaving him entirely free after one o’clock. Normally he’d take the opportunity to do paperwork, or work on his blog, but today …

… today, Charles decides, he’s going to bunk off work and go find himself the space to really think about what the hell he’s going to do.

After his last patient leaves Charles packs up his own things and leaves the office, heading out onto the street and turning towards downtown, reasoning that he can find lunch on the way. It’s a beautiful, bright November day, the air chill but pleasant on his face, and Charles walks down the street just breathing it in, enjoying the feeling of being outside, not suffocating. Not fighting the feeling of being trapped.

It’s not fair to Erik, he knows. That first shot was self-defense -- Zane was trying to rape him, was hurting him, about to poison Erik, either to paralyze or to kill him. Of course Erik had to defend himself, Charles would expect nothing less. But it’s the way that Erik could just switch off and tidy up afterwards as if this were just another day at the office that still bothers Charles now, that and the fact that he himself is now a conspirator in a killing. 

As much as he knows why they have to keep it a secret, he can’t help but resent Erik a little for putting them in this situation in the first place -- for volunteering to help swineherd with his dirty little project, and ending up in an apartment with a rapist. For putting himself in the way of people like that, where he was always going to finish by having to defend himself, by putting both of them in this position.

That’s unfair, too. It’s not down to Erik to prevent other people from being rapists. But it was Erik’s choice to do something so dangerous and socialize with people hiding from the law, and now Charles has to try and reconcile the way he’s prepared to lie for Erik with the way he feels as if he shot Zane himself, the act of hiding it as bad as the execution.

Charles walks for about ten minutes, until he’s safely away from the immediate area of his office, and then he ducks into the nearest Starbucks, joining the end of the lunchtime queue and enjoying the anonymity of being one of thousands passing through, none of them worthy of more than a moment’s notice. Here, at least, he’s nobody, just the same as everyone else. Not worthy of notice, and certainly not someone who’s helping to conceal a murder.

“Charles Xavier?”

Oh God, who is it -- Charles freezes in front of the paninis, his hand reaching out for a tuna melt, and turns enough to see -- 

\-- Steve Rogers, the guy Raven set him up on that date with back in May, stood awkwardly behind him with a friendly, hopeful smile on his face. 

“I thought it was you,” Steve says. “I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.”

Well, fuck, Charles thinks, even as he smiles at Steve, a mixture of worry and pleasure in his gut. Erik won’t be happy, especially as troubled as they’ve been the past few days, everything off-balance and not-quite-right, but Charles is relieved anyway to see a friendly face, someone who doesn’t know about any of the things that Charles has done that he oughtn’t, who only has reason to think well of him. He lets his breath out in a sudden huff, deflating from his defensive pose and trying to slow his heartbeat.

“How are you?” Charles asks, once he realizes with sudden chagrin that he’s left it rather too long to be normal.

Steve, however is too polite to mention it. “Doing well,” he says, smiling back at Charles and scrubbing his blond hair back from his face. “I just finished a major project at work, so I figured I could reward myself with a large sugary drink.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” Charles says, and he’s trying to decide what to say next when the barista says, “Sir?”

“Let me get yours for you,” Steve says, stepping up alongside Charles, close enough their shoulders brush -- not intentionally on Steve’s part but a function of the close quarters and the sheer width of Steve’s upper torso. He’s thinking about his luck in finding Charles here of all places, by accident -- the word kismet is in his mind, both ridiculous and sublime, and of all days, Charles thinks, for them to run into one another, this is surely the most awkward, even as he reaches for his own wallet.

“You don’t need to do that,” he protests, a little flustered, now. “It’s fine, really.”

But Steve just waves him off and pulls out his wallet, placing his own drink order and paying for them both. He looks back at Charles once he’s got his receipt. “Well,” he says, “it was nice running into you.”

And that could be … that could be that, except Charles doesn’t want to be alone, not really. Not when he already knows what he’ll be thinking about if he is.

“You could … do you want to come find a table with me?” he asks, knowing as he does so that explaining it to Erik later is going to be painful, that he wishes he didn’t have to think about that but knowing that he does. And yet. “Just to have coffee, not as a date.”

Steve’s brows lift just for a second, but then he says, “All right. Sure. Just coffee.”

“Great,” Charles says, relieved, and ducks his head so Steve won’t see just how pleased he is, and interpret it the wrong way.

They settle in at a table near the window, Steve with his large hand cupped around the red coffee cup and Charles with his chai, waiting on his panini to be heated up. It’s awkward, a little, but it’s the sort of awkward Charles can live with. Much better than the awkwardness at home right now. “How’ve you been?” he asks, stirring some sugar into his cup.

Steve shrugs one shoulder, lifting his cup to take a sip of his drink.“Oh, you know. Same. I just got back from visiting a friend of mine out in California. The weather’s so much better out there, you know? Not that I don’t love New York, but … ” 

“Erik’s just been out there, too,” Charles says, before he even thinks about it -- about whether he even wants to talk about Erik. “Ah, Erik is my ward. I think I mentioned him last time.”

It’s so stupid. It’s so -- it shouldn’t be this difficult, this awkward, to talk about Erik. Nor should Erik be the only thing Charles wants to talk about, the only thing, he thinks, worth talking about, today. And yet. He manages a quick smile, trying to deflect Steve’s sudden curiosity.

Steve nods slowly. “I know,” he says, setting his cup back down. “From the news, admittedly, but it amounts to the same thing. What part of California was he in?”

“Berkeley, visiting the college,” Charles says, then takes a quick sip of his drink before changing the subject. “What did you think of that new building they’re planning for the Upper West Side? I saw it on the news and thought of you.”

Steve must know Charles is deliberately redirecting things, but he’s polite enough just to go with it, talking about his opinions on the design, the engineering, how he thinks the architectural style will match with the buildings around it. Charles tries to input his own opinion here and there but he doesn’t really know much about the subject, and so he mostly just listens, picking at his panini when it arrives, until at last Steve says:

“Forgive me if this is a bit blunt, but -- is everything all right, Charles? You seem … not yourself, today.”

“Oh,” Charles says, caught a little off-guard; he looks down at his half-eaten lunch, his half-drunk now-cold chai, and winces, hoping it’s endearing. “Is it that obvious?”

“A little,” Steve admits, and he’s chagrined for mentioning it at all, Charles can tell, but his concern outweighs that. “We don’t know each other very well, but I’m happy to be a friendly ear if you wanted to get something off your chest.”

Charles is surprised how much he wants to, although he’s only met Steve the twice -- he’s the sort of person you instinctively trust, and that’s dangerous, something Charles can’t afford, not when he’s keeping so many of Erik’s secrets -- and his own. “It’s been a really difficult week, that’s all,” he says finally, letting out a small sigh. “I can’t really tell you about it because it’s not mine to tell. But thank you for noticing.”

Steve nods, slowly. He’s thinking it must have to do with the person Charles is seeing, or with Erik. God. If only he knew how right he is, he’d probably report Charles right here and now to the police.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” he says. “How about you tell me about your work at the mutant center, instead? Raven told me you volunteer there.”

That’s easier, and after a minute or so Charles finally relaxes into the conversation, talking about something he’s passionate about to an interested audience. Steve is a good listener, actively engaged without interrupting, and it’s so good just to -- just to talk, with nothing fraught going on in the background, no risk of censure from society at large, just two adults having a conversation in a coffee shop.

When Steve finally has to leave he’s apologetic, feels it, too, and Charles wishes, just a little, that this could have been his life, then immediately feels utterly guilty for thinking such a thing.

“It really was good to see you,” he says, getting to his feet and gathering his things.

“You, too,” Steve says. “Well -- you have my number. Give me a call if you want to do it again sometime.” A small smile. “Platonically, of course.”

“Yeah,” Charles says, “I’ll do that,” and he finds himself smiling back.

*

He returns home that afternoon after Erik has already got back from school, having spent the rest of his afternoon in New York’s finest bookstores, browsing and generally distracting himself from everything else. He has ten new books in two heavy bags at his sides, and he heads upstairs with them right after he gets in instead of going into the den where he feels Erik sitting, doing something on his macbook.

Charles takes his time, excusing it to himself once he’s changed out of his work clothes by meticulously lining up the new books on his nightstand, stacked in the order he wants to read them in and carefully aligned at the edges. He hears it in Erik’s thoughts when he gets restless, wondering what Charles is up to, and then … well, better to look as if he were just about to come back down instead of as if he’s avoiding Erik, Charles thinks, turning and heading out into the hallway, meeting Erik at the top of the stairs.

“Hi,” Charles says, and manages a quick smile.

“Hi. Come downstairs and sit with me.”

It isn’t an order, not in the capital-O sense anyway, but it might as well be, as Erik has no intention of pretending along with Charles that everything’s all right. Charles lets out a silent breath and says, “Okay,” following him back down, through the gallery and into the den.

Charles wants to sit in his armchair, but he knows Erik would take it as a snub, so he sits down on the couch, although Erik stays where he is, standing there in front of Charles with his arms folded across his chest and an unhappy look about the set of his mouth.

“I don’t know how to say this,” Erik says after a long moment, and Charles can feel in Erik’s body all the tension that’s built up in his limbs, the way he’s trying so hard not to shift his weight like a child from foot to foot. “I don’t like the way things are between us right now.”

“Come sit,” Charles says, and he reaches for Erik’s wrist, giving it a gentle tug. Erik goes along with it, letting Charles pull him down onto the sofa next to him, Erik’s weight dipping the cushions and his thigh pressing up against Charles’, a line of heat through Charles’ trousers. “Erik … I know that this isn’t … that it’s hard for you to understand the way I feel right now. You think it should be something that’s about you, that I can see at a remove from myself. But I can’t.” 

Charles leans a little against Erik’s side, trying to be reassuring, even though he feels anxious and divided, torn between his ongoing horror at Erik’s disaffection with having committed murder and his wish to just move past it, to blot it from his memory and move on. “I can’t … knowing you killed someone, and that you don’t really … you don’t really seem to mind, has really shaken me. Even if he did … not deserve it, nobody deserves it. But even if he was a terrible person, and you had the right to defend yourself.”

“I killed a lot of other people who didn’t deserve it, too. Maybe this is just who I am.” Erik shakes his head, one of his hands curling into a fist against his knee. “I wish I could care about it, but I don’t. I know that makes me just like _him_. And maybe that was the whole -- maybe that was his point.”

It doesn’t take telepathy to know who Erik is talking about.

“It’s never been of your own accord,” Charles says, “and what Shaw or any of them made you do is irrelevant, that wasn’t down to you. You’re not -- you’re not a monster, Erik, you just -- you’ve been desensitized to death in a horrific way, and -- that doesn’t make you a bad person.” He puts his hand over Erik’s and squeezes it tight, shaking it a little. “It doesn’t make you an evil person, but … it’s hard for me to feel that from you, do you understand why? I love you, but hiding this … it makes me afraid that I’m on a slippery slope.”

“If it were under any other circumstances,” Erik says, “you know I would have let the police handle it. But it wasn’t. It was _there_ , and it was just like … it was _just like_ in that video, and I remember when I watched it I couldn’t stop thinking, if I could do it all over again, I’d kill all of them before I’d let them touch me.” Erik takes in a shallow breath. “So I didn’t let him touch me.”

Charles’ heart is in the base of his throat, fluttering against his collarbone. “I’m glad you’re safe,” he says, honestly, and he leans a little more against his side. “I love you. You’re not a bad person. I’m -- I’m sorry I can’t be what you need most, right now. I’m too invested, and this … it’s not something I can be sanguine about. But I love you. That’s the most important thing of all, for me. It’s the only reason I can even try not to think about it.” He turns his head and lays it on Erik’s shoulder, trying to convey trust through closeness.

Erik exhales, and after a second he lifts his free hand to stroke his fingertips through Charles’ hair. “Okay,” he says. “I just -- that’s all I need to know.” He draws Charles back a little with his fingers twisted through Charles’ curls and kisses him on the mouth, gently, chastely, his breath warm on Charles’ lips when they draw apart.

“I saw Steve today,” Charles says, leaning into Erik’s hand, letting him have control. “The Dom Raven set that date up with. He was in Starbucks when I was getting lunch.”

“Oh?” 

Erik hardly gives it a second thought, which Charles … wasn’t expecting. He half thinks it won’t last, that Erik might be unhappy once he’s finished processing that confession -- but all there is to do is say, “Yeah,” Charles still watching Erik’s expression. “We ended up having lunch together. Well, I had lunch. He had coffee. It wasn’t a date, though, I told him that upfront.”

Erik lifts an eyebrow. “I trust you, Charles,” he says. “You don’t have to reassure me it was all on the up and up.”

“I just wanted to make sure,” Charles says, relaxing a little more -- this is far better than he thought it might be, Erik flying off into a rage. Not that he ever has before, but he’s certainly been jealous in the past of anyone else taking up Charles’ time and attention. “I wouldn’t want you to think … even though I’m struggling with what … happened,” -- a better way to phrase it than ‘what you did’, Charles thinks -- “I’m still yours. That hasn’t changed.”

Erik tilts his head forward, resting their brows together. “I think if we hadn’t had this conversation, it might have worried me, if I’m honest. But we have.” His fingertips are light and cool at the nape of Charles’ neck. “I won’t begrudge you making friends with Doms, even Doms Raven made you go on blind dates with. As long as I know you’re coming home to me at night.”

“I’d do anything for you,” Charles says quietly, honestly, and he suspects that, really, it’s that feeling that’s at the heart of his disquiet -- knowing that, when it comes down to it, he’s no better than Erik. He’d kill anyone who tried to hurt Erik, and he’d lose sleep over it, sure, but that wouldn’t stay his hand.

Charles is not that different from Erik, not really, not under the skin. He likes to pretend he’s better than that, but he’s not, not really.

“I know.” 

Erik’s hand tightens around his, and they stay there like that for a while, the sounds of their breathing soft in the quiet air, Erik’s other hand coming to rest on Charles’ back and stroking up and down, then into Charles’ hair, where he spends a while rubbing his thumb over the base of Charles’ skull, the feeling deep and calming, until at last Erik starts to pull away, extracting himself from their embrace.

“I have to go get started on the pie I’m making for Madelyne’s birthday,” he says, untangling their hands.

“Okay,” Charles says, having to work a little to get words together; he was drifting a bit from the petting, and now he feels warm, needy, pulled unwillingly back to the surface. “What sort of pie?”

“A strawberry rhubarb galette. With extra sugar, of course, because it’s Madelyne.” Erik quirks a grin and heads off toward the kitchen; after a moment Charles follows, taking his usual spot at the table. 

It’s so … normal, it’s nice to focus on something else. Talk about something else. Charles needs normal right now, needs to pretend to both of them that the past few days haven’t happened and that they can just go back to the way things were. He folds his hands on top of the table and hooks his feet around the legs of the chair, settling in.

“That sounds good,” he says. “Maybe you should make two pies. One for Madelyne and one for home.”

“Funny you should say that,” Erik says, looking back over his shoulder at Charles with a tentative smile as he starts moving around the kitchen, getting out the flour and eggs and sugar, all the materials necessary for a pie crust. “I bought double the fruit so I could do exactly that. I know you too well.”

Charles smiles back. “You’ll make someone a wonderful husband,” he says, propping his chin on his hands. 

“I hope you’re not implying that’d be for anybody but yourself.”

Erik doesn’t look back at Charles this time, too busy mixing the wet materials in with the dry, head tilted forward as he works, but Charles can tell he really means it. Seventeen years old, and already so certain there could never be anyone else.

“I’m only teasing,” Charles says, watching Erik’s back as his arm moves, his shoulders shifting under the fabric of his shirt, his bare forearms strong and lean. “I just meant you’re a good homemaker. It’s not something usually associated with strong Doms.”

He feels Erik smile even if he can’t see it from here, and Erik dumps the dough out onto the floured countertop, pulling open one of the cabinet drawers to get the rolling pin, faint amusement rolling through his mind along with something else, something darker that Charles can’t quite put his finger on. “You know, Frank said I do all this because I get off on it. He thinks I’m turned on by -- what did he say? ‘Playing house’ with you.”

“And are you?” Charles asks; he suspects, personally, that it’s more to do with Erik enjoying looking after Charles, taking over the role that would more traditionally fall to the submissive, but that doesn’t mean Erik shouldn’t like it.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Erik says, but that’s totally at odds with the flush Charles feels heating up his mind, and the slight pinkness at the back of his neck. Erik flustered … it’s so much better than thinking about him cold, unemotional, and Charles goes with his instinct to reassure him, gets up from his chair and comes around to stand behind Erik, sliding his hands into the front pockets of Erik’s jeans.

“You’re making me a pie,” he says, leaning his cheek against the nape of Erik’s neck, his body against Erik’s back. “Do you like it when I eat things you make for me?”

In his peripheral vision, he watches Erik adjust his grip on the rolling pin, obviously affected by the question. 

“Of course I do,” Erik says, pushing the dough flatter again, then reaching for a handful of flour to dust over its surface. “And you like eating them, too. Maybe a little too much.”

“What about when you fix things that break?” Charles asks, and maybe he’s catching an inner warmth from Erik but he’s feeling a bit hot under the collar too, rasping his end-of-day stubble over Erik’s skin as he turns his head to press the other cheek against Erik’s nape instead, ostentatious. “Do you like proving you can look after me, all Dominant and capable?”

“Yes,” Erik says. “How primitive of me.” 

Even so, he’s leaning back against Charles’ body a little, now, and after a second he abandons the rolling pin, one of his flour-white hands jumping back to grasp Charles’ wrist, almost like he was going to move Charles’ hand but then thought better of it. Charles curls his fingers in Erik’s pockets, his fingertips catching in the crease where Erik’s hip meets his thigh, and he tugs Erik back against himself, then leans forward, catching Erik between Charles and the counter, a little puff of white bursting from the countertop. 

“I think you love playing house with me,” Charles says. He’s starting to find himself turned on by the intimacy of it, the thought of Erik taking care of everything, making their apartment their home; it’s inappropriate right now, feels wrong, somehow, but Charles pushes that feeling away to focus on Erik instead, keeping them snugly together, his hands braced against Erik’s thighs. He says, quietly, “I think it arouses you, the thought of me living in the nest you made us.”

Erik makes a soft noise and presses back against him, harder this time, his free hand splayed against the counter, no longer even pretending he’s trying to work. He’s tense against Charles’ body, his mind a tangled up mess of wants and anxieties.

“Is it too submissive,” Erik says after a second, almost carefully, like he thinks Charles will push him away, “if I want you to push me over and fuck me like this?” 

His hand has curled into a fist, now, in the flour.

“No,” Charles says, and rolls his hips against Erik where he’s starting to grow hard, the pleasure of it warming him inside. “I’m your submissive. I like to please you.” 

“Good,” Erik says, and then Charles reaches up to put his hand on the back of Erik’s neck before pressing him down, bending Erik over onto the counter and moving his other hand to start unfastening Erik’s jeans. His cock is hard when Charles slides his hand under denim to cup it through the fabric of Erik’s boxers.

Charles nuzzles at the little space behind Erik’s ear as he strokes Erik between his legs, his other hand still holding Erik in place. He looks in Erik’s mind to see what he wants -- he wants Charles to take the lead, to act -- and so Charles lets go of Erik’s neck to start working on his own trousers, slipping them down along with his underwear and then tugging down Erik’s jeans and boxers, letting them slide to the floor. 

“Is it a cream pie?” he asks, unable to stop himself, and Erik laughs, twisting to look at Charles over his shoulder; one hand reaches back to grasp at Charles’ thigh, keeping him close.

“I don’t know, depends if you want to stop to go fetch the condoms.”

Charles snorts, nudging in closer, and the head of his cock skates over Erik’s ass cheek, the friction delicious. “Stay there,” he says, and reaches past Erik to grab the bottle of olive oil from its spot beside the cooker, then pulls back from Erik enough to open it and pour oil over his fingers and trickles some down Erik’s crease, letting it run down over his hole.

Erik shivers a little, letting out a soft breath that’s only just audible. Charles can feel the heat in Erik’s body as if it were his own, Erik’s desire echoing through his mind, their arousal building off each other’s in a feedback loop. And when Charles sets the bottle aside, and runs his fingertips down between Erik’s buttocks, stroking over that fluttering little muscle, Erik shivers again, pressing back towards him and nudging himself onto the very tip of Charles’ finger.

“Stay there,” Charles says again, his free hand going up to settle between Erik’s shoulder blades, pressing him down against the countertop, into his dough. Then, carefully, he starts pushing his fingers inside, two together into Erik’s hot tight hole.

It’s so -- Erik is soft inside, clenching around Charles’ digits, and Charles knows just how good that’s going to feel on his cock, which is hard and rubbing against Erik’s thigh right now, waiting its turn.

“Mmm.” Erik tilts his head forward, exposing the bare back of his neck, his vertebrae showing tiny ridges beneath his amber skin. “Good, Charles,” he murmurs.

The praise just makes it better, and Charles leans forward enough to press a kiss to the back of Erik’s shoulder, screwing his fingers in deeper and working them inside Erik, curling them and rubbing little circles, trying to find … there.

Erik gasps, his whole body startling, one of his hands slipping in the flour on the countertop and sending a little plume of white bursting up into the air. “Again,” he says, and Charles rolls his fingertips over Erik’s prostate again, the spongy little place inside him so small to get so strong a reaction. The little noises Erik makes are intensely arousing, little gasps and moans as Charles plays with him, working him up from the inside; there’s a little splash of come dripping onto the floor from Erik’s erect cock where the pressure and pleasure on his prostate is pushing it out of him, getting him wet.

“Do you like that?” Charles asks, knowing the answer but wanting Erik to say it. “Would you like it more if I got you an apron to wear while I did this?”

Erik makes a strangled sound halfway between a moan and a laugh. “Fuck you, Charles.”

“I just want to make you happy,” Charles says, kissing Erik’s shoulder again, and it’s true, even when they’re fighting, even when Charles is scared of who Erik is and what he’s capable of -- he just wants to make Erik happy, to earn his approval and his praise and to feel this way, this light inside. He screws his fingers up into Erik, hard, knuckles shoving against Erik’s hole. “Isn’t that the fantasy? The husband comes home to the homemaker and bends him over the kitchen table? It’s very _I Love Lucy_.”

“You,” Erik gasps, squirming on Charles’ fingers, arching his back and trying to fuck himself on Charles’ hand, “are such a mouthy sub.”

“Do you like it?” Charles asks, and pulls his fingers out of Erik’s ass, stepping in close so he can lay himself over Erik’s body, letting his cock ride the crease between Erik’s buttocks and rubbing himself in the oil there, his arms curling around Erik’s waist, hands pressing against his thighs from the front. “I want you to be pleased.”

“You know I do,” Erik says, his ass tightening like he’s trying to catch Charles’ cock between his cheeks. “You know you please me.” His knuckles blanch where he grasps the edge of the countertop. “God, Charles. I want your cock so bad.”

Charles grinds in closer, his stomach clenching with anticipation, and he rubs his stubbled cheek against Erik’s back, shifting his hips down so that the head of his cock catches against Erik’s hole, then slides over it, bumping against the back of Erik’s sac. He pulls back again, nudging against that pink little curl of muscle, the blunt tip of his cock just barely pushing there, widening it. “Like this?” he asks, pressing forward a fraction of an inch, stretching Erik’s entrance without filling it.

“Yes -- yes, just like that.” 

One of Erik’s hands dips out of sight, reaching down between his legs to grasp his own cock; Charles can feel Erik’s wrist bumping against his hands where they’re still pressed to Erik’s thighs. He nudges himself forward, pressing against Erik with gentle force until the head of his cock pops inside Erik’s ass, the muscle squeezing down around him -- God, it’s so hot and tight and wet -- “Nnn,” Charles manages, his breath coming high and shallow. “Like this?”

“Yes. Now, more. Keep going.”

Charles groans at the order -- and it is an order, strumming through him like fingers down his spine as he pushes the rest of the way inside, Erik’s hole gloving his cock in warm wet pleasure, the oil slicking his way until he’s buried inside, panting against Erik’s skin and using his hands as leverage to keep Erik flush to him, their hips perfectly aligned. “Fuck … ”

“Such a good boy,” Erik says, breathes, his body rippling around Charles’ cock as if to pull him in deeper, as if such a thing were even possible. When Erik looks at Charles again over his shoulder his eyes are dark, cheeks flushed rose with want.

It’s so -- Charles feels so much right now, it’s hard to parse, all the different emotions mingling with the intensity of his physical pleasure at being in Erik. He can’t stay still, he has to move, and so he pulls back, sliding a couple of inches out of Erik’s hole and then pushes back in with a slap of oiled skin on skin, burying himself in there again, and then again, building a rhythm. Under him Erik arches again, pushing back against Charles’ hips, going with his rhythm, his hand moving faster on his own cock.

“You feel -- I love having you in me,” Erik says, voice raw, now, a little hoarse.

“I love you,” Charles gasps, thrusting harder, one hand moving to Erik’s stomach and the other reaching down to wrap around Erik’s own, helping him stroke himself off.

“Harder,” Erik demands through gritted teeth, and Charles obeys, fucking him with fierce snaps of his hips, his open mouth pressed against Erik’s sweaty back, ramming into Erik’s hole. They keep going like that for what feels like forever, Charles fucking into him, Erik groaning and making demands, the sound of wet flesh on flesh echoing in the kitchen until Erik’s thighs are trembling against Charles’ hips; he must be close, his mind a heated haze that sparks out into white when Erik climaxes, his come wet between Charles’ fingers and his hole contracting around Charles’ cock. Charles follows him over, breathless and groaning as he buries himself deep inside Erik and fills him, jostling against his ass as his hips twitch and jerk, trying to get in deeper.

For a minute or so they just stay there, leaning over the kitchen counter together, Charles laying against Erik’s back re-learning how to breathe; then Charles gathers himself enough to lift himself up, giving Erik space even as his cock slips free of Erik’s ass, softening now.

“Okay?” he asks quietly, and strokes his hands down Erik’s sides, resting them on his hips.

“Mmm. Yes.” 

Erik stays where he is for a second longer, though, before he finally bends down to tug his boxers and jeans back up over his ass, doing up the fly and belt by hand. He reaches for Charles when he turns around, pulling him in to kiss him on the mouth. He palms Charles’ oversensitive cock as he tongues at Charles’ lower lip and Charles shudders, and lets him, discomforted for the few moments before Erik lets go.

Charles loves Erik so much. It would be a lot easier if he didn’t.

Erik is thinking, though, about himself, and about what he’s been made into, and what Charles said about him liking domesticity, making a good husband -- except in Erik’s mind ‘a good husband’ means ‘a good submissive’, the two things twisting together until they’re inextricable, the way Shaw bent him into something he didn’t used to be leaving him this way -- enjoying playing house, wanting to be domestic. Able to kill someone and not care about it, just to clean him up like the rest of the garbage, apply cleaning spray and wipe down the surfaces to leave everything spotless again, including his conscience.

With this, at least, Charles knows what to say. It’s almost a relief, actually, for Erik to be thinking about something Charles knows what to do about.

“It’s okay that you like this,” he says once he’s caught his breath, staying standing there in front of Erik with his pants open and vulnerable, to make sure he’s as nonthreatening as possible. “Nobody’s going to turn around and tell you you’re not allowed, or that you’re a bad Dom.”

Erik pauses with his hand at Charles’ hip, fingertips light against Charles’ bare skin. “What do you mean?” he asks, his mind hesitating, uncertain what Charles is talking about, waiting for the punchline.

“Being interrupted for sex,” Charles says, letting his fingers trail over Erik’s chest and keeping his eyes low, submissive. He doesn’t want to set anything off in Erik, to make him feel bad -- but all the better to raise it now, when it’s there at the surface, than to let it fester when Erik thinks about it later. “I know it’s something that used to happen a lot while you were with Hellfire. It’s why you were really worried about what Frank said, that you like playing house. But it’s okay for you to like it. It doesn’t say anything about you to be ashamed of.” He looks up and gives Erik a little smile, trying to be reassuring.

Erik takes in a small, inaudible breath, and for a moment Charles’s not sure of his reaction -- only then Erik’s gaze skates away, glancing somewhere to the right. “I didn’t want it to mean that I …. I didn’t want it, before. This is different.”

“I know,” Charles says, and finally lifts his hand to Erik’s cheek, stroking his thumb over Erik’s cheekbone, then back over the shell of his ear, so soft and pliable compared to the rest of him. “It’s good, sometimes, to reimagine things that used to hurt us into nicer things, to replace them with something better. That’s normal. A lot of survivors find themselves fetishizing things that used to hurt them. That doesn’t mean you wanted it then, it just means you like it now, with someone you trust.”

Erik doesn’t say anything to that at first, he only lets one corner of his mouth twitch up and then leans in, brushing a simple kiss to Charles’ forehead. After a moment his hands fall from Charles’ body and he steps to the side, out from between Charles and the kitchen counter.

“Just because I enjoy this doesn’t mean I’m Shaw’s creature,” Erik tells him, and Charles says, “I know. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Then listen to yourself. I’m not his.”

“I know,” Charles says, and steps out of the way, so that Erik can start to move around the kitchen again, though his movements are a little agitated now, jerky at the edges. “You belong to you, Erik, no-one else. You can like what you like, I won’t judge you.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” Erik’s voice doesn’t waver in the slightest even as he sets a bowl down just a little too hard. “Get dressed,” he says a moment later. “We still have a job to do.”

That Erik might have killed that man because of Shaw -- that has never been what Charles’ disquiet was about. He’s far more afraid that Erik killed that man because of Erik.

“You have a job to do,” Charles says, reaching down slowly to start putting himself to rights, though he makes himself smile, leaning against the counter by the sink and watching Erik as he gets some more ingredients out of the fridge. “I don’t have to do anything until my pie is ready. Chop chop.”

Erik laughs, finally turning to examine the dough, presumably making sure it’s still fit for consumption -- there’s a burst of embarrassment and amusement when he realises there are nipple prints in it from where he was laid across it -- and Charles kisses his temple before going to sit down at the table to watch him bake, resting his chin in his hands and just smiling at Erik when he glances around, gesturing for him to get to work.

*


	41. Forty-one

_Erik_

> Dear Erik,
> 
> I received your message via our mutual acquaintance, and was saddened to hear that our guest was so rude towards you. Of course you were well within your rights to correct his behavior, and I trust that you dealt with the consequences with your usual tact and circumspection.
> 
> That said, in future I would prefer that you did not usher our visitors out so soon, as the project cannot continue indefinitely with a dark cloud hanging over it, putting off potential customers. I trust you will be able to take care of any unpleasantness with a softer touch, if required, though if stern words are unavoidable please continue to use them where absolutely necessary.
> 
> You will of course recall my concerns regarding your guardian, Dr Xavier, and his disapproval of our venture. I am worried that he will see this as a bad influence on your moral character and that he may invite outside scrutiny to what should be inside-only information, given his unusual level of access to intelligence of all sorts. Please confirm via our mutual acquaintance how you intend to take care of this, as I am loathe to discover whether your safety is less of a priority for the good doctor than his own moral integrity.
> 
> Yours faithfully,
> 
> Caliban

 

The letter arrived via courier, like the last one, delivered written with the same calligraphic script on the same heavy cream stationery. Only this time, when Erik has finished reading it through for the third time, he folds it up burns it, catching fire to the paper with a spark of electricity he draws out from the electromagnetic static in the air. If once he might have brought this to Charles, shown it to him and asked his opinion, those days are long over now.

Erik leaves the ashes smoldering in the hearth and goes back across the living room to settle down at his computer, opening up Tor and typing out a message to swineherd, telling him he’s given Charles a hush order and is certain Charles, as a -5S submissive, will not be able to break it.

It’s the kind of risk that if Erik were to find out, say, Frank were taking it, he’d recommend to Caliban that Frank be taken off the project altogether. He isn’t pretending he’s not a hypocrite. But … despite all his other faults, betraying Erik is one thing Charles would never do.

*

_Charles_

Charles is making the bed with a fresh set of sheets when Erik gets home from his after-school run, the front door closing downstairs with a loud slam. Erik doesn’t feel upset, though, he feels excited, and so Charles calls, “Up here,” still tucking the sheets into place as he hears Erik running up the stairs.

“Hi,” Charles says when Erik bursts into the room, flush-faced and bright-eyed. “What’s up?”

“I got a letter,” Erik says, and Charles sees now that Erik has one arm behind his back, like he’s hiding it from him, body taut with anticipation. “Can you guess what it is, without looking?”

Given that Charles sometimes struggles with facial expressions when he’s not using telepathy, guessing games are probably not his forte. “You won an internship?” he tries, though he’s not sure what could be recruiting at the moment and can’t remember Erik applying for anything.

“No. One more guess.”

Charles frowns. “Long-lost relative died and left you their estate?” That happened to him once or twice, growing up.

Erik shakes his head, grin widening, and at last he pulls a large envelope out from behind his back, closing the gap between him and Charles to hold it out to him, saying, “Look and see.”

The envelope is made of thick, nice paper, and on the top corner there’s a college logo -- “It’s from MIT,” Charles says, turning it over and tugging out the letter inside, on equally nice paper. He unfolds it with quick fingers, scanning through it:

> Dear Mr Lehnsherr,
> 
> It is with great pleasure that we extend you this offer of early admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology …

 

“This is wonderful news,” Charles says, making his voice happy even as he feels his heart sink inside of him, pathetic and wretched.

“I wasn’t expecting to hear anything for another few weeks at least,” Erik says, practically radiating happiness, speaking so quickly his German accent is even more evident than usual. “I’ll admit it, I was worried I wouldn’t get in anywhere, not because of any academic reason but just because of who I am -- no one wants a terrorist at their school, right? It’s bad PR. But maybe the attention I’ve been getting in the media lately has made up for that. Or maybe they just don’t care. They’re MIT, they can afford not to care!”

The thought of Erik going to such a good school should be heartening, should make Charles ecstatic -- and he is, in part, delighted for Erik and to see that he’s done so well, come so far since he came to live with Charles. But … the thought of Erik moving so far away, going to Boston and leaving home, leaving Charles, leaves him feeling heavy, like the other shoe has dropped and he’s been reminded of reality.

This thing of theirs, this relationship, could never really have survived Erik growing up. And isn’t that a sentence to say, to put it like that and remind himself that Erik isn’t … that Erik is still very young.

“You’re an excellent student and a high-profile survivor, it’s good PR for them if they can get you on board and you do well,” Charles says distractedly, reading through the rest of the letter, which is all about how to accept the offer, what happens next, all the usual, awful, terrible requirements for Erik to move to Boston. “This is wonderful, Erik. I’m glad people are recognizing you for your accomplishments, you deserve it.”

“I always thought I would go to MIT,” Erik says happily, walking past Charles and sitting down on the half-made bed, then tilting onto his back, face toward the ceiling. Not in many, many years has he seemed so much like a child, all the weight of his horrible younger years gone from his shoulders, as if they’d never been there at all. Charles looks at the familiar line of his features in profile and wonders -- if Erik goes away, disappears off to Boston, will he still seem familiar when he returns? “I thought it was a pipe dream, because Shaw would never let me go to college. And then I came to live with you and I thought, maybe, but probably not, I’ll never get in.”

Charles thinks about Erik moving out, of him leaving for college and only coming back on holidays and a few scattered weekends. MIT isn’t anywhere near so far away as many colleges Erik could get into, and it’s certainly better than Berkeley, on the other side of the country from Elias Braden-Newell; and yet … and yet Charles feels like something inside him is breaking, that he’s only holding it together by sheer force of will.

“I’m very proud of you,” he says, placing the letter down on the nightstand and reaching for a pillow to fit a new pillowcase onto it. “I’m not surprised at all that they want you. I’ll be surprised if anyone doesn’t.”

“Hmm, if I get in everywhere, I still think this is my first choice. So it doesn’t matter, now.” Erik tilts his face toward Charles, gazing at him from the foot of the bed as Charles fluffs the pillows.

How on Earth can Charles say anything to that without either giving his approval or ruining things for Erik?

“Well, it’s not Berkeley, at least,” he says, trying to make it a joke, but his tone isn’t quite right and he knows it, winces where he hopes Erik can’t see it and reaches for the edge of the sheet, tugging it up to cover the pillows.

But Erik isn’t oblivious, of course, and Charles feels the shift in the tenor of his mind when he notices something’s wrong. “You think it’s too far away?” he says, and Charles … he doesn’t know what to say.

“I think … maybe you shouldn’t limit yourself to just STEM subjects,” Charles says, finally, turning to look at Erik and attempting a smile. “You’d benefit from a more rounded curriculum, so … I’m not sure MIT is the best place for you.”

Erik frowns, just slightly, some of that unstained happiness starting to fade from his expression as he pushes himself upright again with his hands braced against the mattress. “They still make you take general education classes, you know. And I could always do electives at Harvard.”

“There is that,” Charles agrees, and he sits down next to Erik at last, leaning in to kiss him chastely on the mouth, wrapping his arm around Erik’s shoulders. “I really am proud of you. It’s a big achievement, and you deserve it. If you want to go to MIT, of course you should. I’d just like to see who else makes you an offer, too.”

Erik just looks at him, searchingly, like he’s trying to derive something from the movements of tiny muscles in Charles’ face. Charles may be imagining it, that he senses an element of disapproval to Erik’s tone when he does speak again. “That isn’t all of it, is it? It really is about the distance. You brought it up with Berkeley, and now, with MIT.”

Impossible to evade such a direct question without lying, and Charles winces, letting out a sigh. “I can’t say I like the idea of you being gone,” he admits, trying to soften it, “but I much prefer MIT to Berkeley for what I suspect are obvious reasons completely unrelated to the distance. I’m not going to choose for you, Erik, it’s up to you where you go to college. I’m just trying to offer advice.”

“Where would you _prefer_ I go, then?" Erik's tone acquires a bitter edge. "Perhaps you can give me a numbered list.”

“I want you to go where you want to go,” Charles says, letting his hand drop away from Erik’s shoulder. “Somewhere that will recognize your talents and let you stretch yourself, and where you won’t be under the influence of Elias Braden-Newell and his coven of lackspittle grad students. We always knew that you would have to leave for college one day, unless you went to Columbia or NYU, and you’ve already said you’re not interested in staying in New York.” He’s not sure how else he can explain things to Erik without having to make himself sound needy and selfish, which he is, but he’s trying hard not to be.

“You really hate Elias that much?”

“You know my thoughts on Elias. You disagree, but that’s your prerogative.” Charles can’t stay sat there any more, he has to get to his feet, uneasy and wishing he could just rewind the conversation, be more convincingly happy for Erik and avoid all of this. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve ruined it.”

“Probably not,” Erik agrees, but he seems more tired than angry, staying there on the bed with his hands braced against the mattress, below Charles’ height for once.

“I just … ” Charles breaks off, restlessly curling and uncurling his hands until he hides them in his pockets. “I’m really happy for you, Erik. I think it’s wonderful. I’m just … I’m being selfish on the inside and I’m trying not to be the same on the outside.”

“It’s like you said, we knew this was coming.”

“I _know,_ ” Charles says, glancing towards the hallway and wishing he could just walk out of this conversation, drop it in the middle and not have to come back to it. “I guess … I don’t want you to leave me again, and it feels like that, even if I know it’s not the same.” His breaths are a bit uneven, high and shallow in his throat. “You’re just -- you’re so happy to be leaving me, Erik.”

Erik’s brows go up, taken aback -- Charles feels the reactive flash of adrenaline in Erik’s heart, his long fingers suddenly clenching in the duvet.

“Grow up, Charles,” Erik says. It hurts like a kick to the chest, like having his heart stepped on. Charles stares at him, frozen as Erik continues, “I’m certainly trying to.”

Charles can only stare at Erik for a long, empty moment, before finally he says, “Never mind, then,” and steps back, away, his knees shaking until he locks them in place, the quiver only transferring instead to his hands. “I -- no, never mind.” And he spins on his heel and walks out of the bedroom, feeling hot stinging at the corners of his eyes that he blinks away, refuses to acknowledge. So much for being honest, all it did was let Erik judge Charles some more for not being perfect.

“Charles,” he hears Erik’s voice call after him, and then the sound of footsteps as Erik catches up to him on the stairs, longer legs enabling him to descend quicker and block Charles’ path, one arm held out in front of him and his hand grasping the guard rail. “You don’t get to say something like that and then just -- _walk away_ from me,” he says, and when Charles tries to go around him Erik steps to the left and blocks it, pressing his fingers against Charles’ sternum as if to keep him where he is.

“I don’t want to talk about this any more,” Charles says, leaning back to break the touch, but Erik’s hand presses forward, keeping the contact. “I’ll just make it worse, and I don’t want that. Leave it be, Erik.”

“You think I’m _happy_ to be leaving you?”

“No,” Charles says, honestly, reluctantly, glancing down and away, breaking the eye contact between them. “But -- I don’t want to talk about this. Please just let it go.”

But Erik doesn’t, of course -- he won’t, he never does. “Do you even _want_ me to go to college? Which is more important to you, that I have a normal life or that I’m always right where you can see me, all the time?”

The heat smoldering in Erik’s mind isn’t anger, not yet, but it will be if it isn’t extinguished -- if Charles lets it run its course it will spread and grow until it burns everything in its path. Of course, Charles thinks, closing his eyes for a long few heartbeats, of course Erik would force him to bare the very worst parts of himself.

“Last time you left … it wasn’t good,” Charles says, finally, his voice tight with suppressed emotion. “I didn’t cope with it very well. And if you go to Boston I won’t even be able to feel you. And I -- I’m a very selfish person, Erik, and I’m trying not to be, but ... I want you to go to college, I want you to have everything you want and everything you don’t know that you want, too. But I don’t want to feel like that again. And I’m sorry about that. I don’t want to put this on you, but you pushed.”

“You’re talking about when I stayed with Raven,” Erik says, “not Berkeley?”

“Yes,” Charles says, wrapping his arms around himself, defensive.

“It won’t be like that this time,” Erik says, and he goes up one more step, bringing him closer to Charles, close enough he can set his hands on Charles’ shoulders, heavy and warm. The heat in his mind abates, slightly, but doesn’t vanish. “Last time I left because things had ended with us and I couldn’t deal with how I felt about it. We weren’t speaking to one another, and it wasn’t easy for me, either. But if I go to Boston -- or California, or North Carolina, or anywhere else -- it will just be because I need to. Because I’ll be eighteen, and going to college, and getting an education so I can make something of myself. It’s what I’m _supposed_ to do. It won’t be the end of the two of us.”

But that’s not the problem. “You won’t be _here,_ ” Charles says, can’t meet Erik’s gaze to see the look on his face when he realizes how wretched Charles is. “I’ll be alone, unanchored, unable to feel your mind. I … I’ve spent so long connected to you that disconnecting is like having a lobotomy. And I hate myself for telling you this, for being so -- so self-centred. You have to go to college. I have to stop -- I have to stop.” Stop doing all of this, letting himself be this way.

“Why didn’t you say something when I applied?” Erik asks, his hands moving on Charles’ arms now, up and down, slowly, slowly. “I didn’t apply anywhere closer than Princeton or Yale.”

New Jersey and Connecticut. They’re both hours away.

“Because you don’t want to be here any more, and I want you to be happy,” Charles says, and he leans forward so he can rest his forehead against Erik’s shoulder, leaning into his warmth and hating himself for that, too, for needing it the way he does, like an addict who can’t stop taking up that one last line, that one last score. Erik smells like himself, like his skin and his detergent and his shampoo, the way the bedsheets smelled when Erik was gone.

“Is this really about college?” Erik asks at last, quiet and near.

“What do you mean?” Charles asks, but he already knows what Erik means, really. He just doesn’t want to think about that, either.

“Are you sure this isn’t about Zane?”

Charles can’t stop that name from invoking the worst images in his mind -- pictures he caught from Erik like a disease, the way the blood spattered, the sound of tearing flesh and the little gasp Zane gave when Erik stood over him with the gun, about to beg for his life. He shudders helplessly, feeling a bit sick. “It’s not about Zane,” he says, trying to forget the sense memory, not his own -- of the smell of it, thick and meaty.

“All right,” Erik says, looking dubious when he steps away at last, his hands dropping back down to his sides. He touches thumb and forefinger to Charles’ chin, tilting his face up so Charles has to keep holding his gaze. “I’ll visit,” he says. “On weekends.”

Except that now that Erik’s raised it, Charles can’t let it go, those eyes haunting him still, vivid in his mind as they went glassy and emptied out into the void. “You’re growing away from me, lately,” he says, looking directly into Erik’s eyes and feeling his heart rising in his chest, trying to escape his body entirely and flee the country. “College, yes, and -- and Zane, too. This isn’t that, but -- I can’t reconcile how you could kill him like that, after he was already down. You didn’t have to do that, Erik. He could have -- you didn’t have to do that. He was already on the floor. Defend yourself, yes, but … ”

But Erik’s eyes aren’t cold and heartless the way Charles thought they might be. If anything his gaze softens, an element of comprehension there that wasn’t present before and Erik says, “He was already dead, Charles. Only, it would have taken him twenty minutes -- thirty, even, his stomach acid eating his body from the inside out and digesting him while he was still alive. I saw Azazel leave people like that, sometimes. It’s torture. It’s a horrible way to go.”

Charles isn’t sure he’s convinced it was mercy or kindness Erik felt that day, but perhaps, he thinks, he can accept the thought that Erik was putting a bad person out of his misery. “If you’d called an ambulance, maybe he would have lived,” he says, the thought not leaving his mind.

“Maybe. I sincerely doubt it.”

“I just -- I know why, I know where it comes from, but I just can’t understand how you could do that,” Charles says finally, and this is the real root of the problem, the true center, the knowledge that he can’t understand the choices Erik made, that they’re beyond his ability to empathize with the person he loves the most. “Given everything you’ve seen … ”

“Given everything I’ve _seen?_ ” Erik steps down now, away, incredulity rewriting the look on his face. “Everything I’ve seen tells me I won’t let myself be a victim again. I’ll do what I have to do to protect myself, the same way I would you. Or do you like me better that way? When I’m the casualty of other people’s decisions and not making decisions in my own right?”

“No,” Charles says, stung and stricken by the feel of Erik’s mind pushing him away. “No, I’ve always wanted you to be in charge of your own life.” He takes a deep breath, trying to balance himself, to work out what the right thing is to say. “I would always rather you protected yourself by whatever means necessary.”

“Well, it certainly doesn’t seem that way. You’re entitled to feel how you like about it, but you don’t seem to care how I feel about being attacked -- _again_ \-- or about the fact I had to resort to using _Essex’s_ tactics just to finish the job. Essex, Charles! I’m hardly thrilled.”

And that -- there’s an element of truth to that that stops Charles’ protests in his throat, catching under his voice box, unwilling or unable to be said. He hesitates, his hands coming up to catch his own elbows, arms folding across his stomach. “I never did ask, did I,” he says, the words coming out thick and laden with regret. “I just assumed I knew. I’m sorry.” Slowly, awkwardly, Charles’ knees bend and he sits down on the step behind him, the wood hard under his ass as he processes the fact that he’s failed Erik yet again. “God.”

Erik exhales audibly, his hands perched on his hips for a moment while he looks out over the open gallery, toward the other rooms, his mind still a jumble of irritation not-quite-untangled.

“It doesn’t matter,” Erik says after a second, his tone crisp and decisive. “What’s done is done. I plan to do my best to forget about it. You can do what you want.”

Since going back in time and preventing the entire incident from ever happening at all isn’t an option, Charles supposes he’ll have to settle for feeling guilty and regretful, and trying to make it up to Erik somehow. He can feel it, now, Erik’s unease and unhappiness with what happened, his confusion and hurt -- unmasked, perhaps, by Charles finally looking for it, instead of assuming the reactionless front was the truth and seeing what he wanted to see, instead of what was there.

Charles is a terrible person. He looks up at Erik, and as he does he knows that he’s the one who’s ruined Erik’s happiness today. “I’m sorry I spoiled your news,” he says. “I really am proud of you, you know.”

“I know,” Erik says, softening, and he finally reaches out a hand to pull Charles reluctantly up to his feet, Erik leaning in to kiss him briefly on the forehead, then the lips, his hands resting light on Charles’ waist. “I know you are. You’re the reason I was able to do any of this, so -- thank you.”

“All right,” Charles says quietly, leaning against Erik a little more than he means to. “I just want you to be happy. More than anything else. You need to do what’s best for you, Erik.”

“But you need to let me decide what’s best for me. I’m practically a grown-up now, you know,” Erik says, turning a wry smile to Charles as they descend to the gallery. “I can figure it out.”

That doesn’t really help, only serving to highlight once again that Charles is … he’s robbing the cradle, and he’s getting in the way of Erik’s future. He doesn’t know what to say to that, so instead he says nothing, just lets Erik take care of him and wonders if he can ever get to a place where he doesn’t ruin everything by loving Erik too much.

 

*

_Erik_

Charles seems to withdraw even further over the next couple of days, loathe to leave the apartment when not given an explicit reason to. It doesn’t take an intellectual giant to connect the dots between this and their conversation the other day. As glad as Erik is that Charles is finally giving him space to work through Zane on his own terms, he wishes it weren’t … _quite_ so much space.

The fact of the matter is, Erik can’t stop thinking about what he first thought of in California -- things he’d never thought before he was outside the sphere of Charles’ telepathic influence. Before he was away from him long enough to have a clear head and look back on things and … well. It’s not that Erik thinks Charles has been telepathically influencing him, not intentionally anyway, but even now Erik thinks about it so much more when Charles isn’t there. Perhaps so he doesn’t have to look Charles in the eye while he wonders ….

While he wonders useless things. Irrelevant things, because Erik made his choice that afternoon in Westchester, and he has no intention of going back on it now. Or ever.

“Charles,” Erik calls from downstairs, swinging empty cloth tote bags from one hand. He has his face tilted up toward the kitchen ceiling, like he thinks Charles will actually hear him better if he looks up, impatient and all-too-aware of the time. “Hurry up, everything good will be gone by ten!”

Erik goes to St Stephen’s Greenmarket every Saturday morning when it opens at nine, religiously, and it’s a struggle to get Charles to come with him in the best of times, but worse lately, with Charles reluctant to do anything more than lounge about in his sweatpants and vegetate in front of the television. He’s so slothful sometimes Erik wouldn’t be surprised if he started accumulating lichen.

Erik can recognize the signs, knows Charles is right on track to get back to how he was when Erik was staying with Raven and Hank, and a thorough Google review suggests that getting him out and about and doing-things is the best way to stave it off. Erik does his best, but that saying about horses and water is as true as always.

“I’m coming,” Charles calls from upstairs, his voice muffled by the distance, but the brush of his mind, soothing, is as close as ever, like the touch of a hand. After a minute or so there’s noise from the gallery, and then Charles finally appears, still shrugging into his sweatshirt. He looks tired. “Good morning.”

Erik catches him with an arm around the waist, kissing him on the lips. “I made you English Breakfast,” he says, and pushes a travel mug into Charles’ hand.

Charles takes it, already lifting it to his mouth. “You’re too good for me.” His eyes are awake, at least -- that’s good, and he smiles at Erik over the rim of his mug. “Shall we go, then? It’s your vegetables that are flying off the stalls, after all.”

Erik smiles and pulls him along, forcing them both to take the path through the park to expose Charles to as much proper sunlight and birdsong as he can. Erik has plans for today, and none of them involve sitting around at home doing nothing. Charles will help him make lunch, which they’ll eat in the park, then they’re going shopping for some nice new sweaters, sweaters Charles will want to wear _outside_ , picking up new books at the Strand, then eating dinner out. Finally they can go home, but only if Charles plans on letting Erik drink with him, otherwise they’re staying out as late as Erik sees fit and counting airplanes flying past overhead.

First, though, is the farmer’s market.

It’s already busy when they get there, even though they arrive right as the stalls officially open. Erik passes Charles one of the bags and gives him orders -- real, Dominant ones -- to bring him five of the prettiest red apples he can, standing there and watching as Charles shivers, that sense of comfort and calm coming from him like a waft of scent, then goes to the nearest stall to examine the apples, picking over them carefully alongside the other early birds.

When Charles comes back, his apples in a brown paper bag, he presents them to Erik with a flourish, covering a yawn with the back of his other hand. “Here you go.”

Erik opens the bag and inspects them, although it’s more of a formality for Charles’ sake than because he particularly cares about the aesthetics of his apples. “Good,” he says, lifting his gaze back to Charles. “Come on, then. Let’s get what we need for the risotto.”

Charles seems a little better now that they’re out among other people. Maybe this is what he needed: just to get out of the house and be exposed to real humans with real thoughts in their heads, not just the two-dimensional images on screen and Erik, whose thoughts of late have mostly been about his senior thesis. They pick out the vegetables together, and the meat from the butcher’s stall, Erik passing one of the bags over to Charles when it gets full so he can keep filling the empty ones.

“Is this meat kosher?” Charles is asking the butcher, when Erik hears suddenly from behind them, “Erik! Charles! Fancy seeing you here!”

When he turns Erik is surprised to see Raven making her way through the early morning crowds, especially accompanied by a towering Greek god of a Dom. The man trails behind her as if he’s shy, but his eyes are unabashedly fixed on Charles.

“Hello Raven,” Erik says, forcibly burying his curiosity about the Greek god in favor of smiling at her and giving into his far greater curiosity -- why is she even here? She’s about as much of a morning person as Charles is, which is to say, not at all. Possibly the Greek god dragged her along, the way Erik did Charles, although now that he thinks about it, that doesn’t make much sense either.

“Oh, Raven! And Steve, hello,” Charles says, sounding rather startled; his hand has tightened on the strap of his shopping bag, Erik can feel his finger taut inside the band of his ring. “What are you doing here? Not that it’s not nice to see you both, of course.”

 _This_ is Steve? This -- this _deity_ of a man, who looks more likely to have been carved from marble than made of flesh? Erik doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone so classically beautiful. If it weren’t for Charles, and if Steve were gay, Erik would absolutely, _absolutely_ and happily fuck that.

Raven just smiles, the corner of her mouth crooking up. “We were hanging out looking for something to do in the early hours, and Steve suggested the market. Why, are we encroaching on your territory?”

“No, not at all, it’s fine,” Charles says, his manners clearly kicking in. “Steve, this is Erik; Erik, this is Steve Rogers, one of Raven’s friends.”

“Hello,” Erik says again, feeling robotic and off-kilter as he extends his hand to shake Steve’s. Erik’s hand looks almost feminine in Steve’s grasp, his fingers too long and too slim; Erik hadn’t realized there really was something a Dominant hand ought to look like before he met Steve Rogers. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you from Charles.”

Steve smiles at him, friendly and bright. “The pleasure is all mine, he’s told me a lot about you, too.”

“Charles, I wonder if I could borrow Erik for a few minutes,” Raven says, unsubtly. “I need some advice on … uh … rutabagas. You know.”

Charles hesitates, casting a glance at Erik, but then finally says, “Of course, love. My vegetable expert is your vegetable expert.”

Erik gives the Greek god -- Steve -- one last appreciative look before letting Raven lead him off. They go surprisingly far, even though Raven must know Charles can read her mind anywhere in the city. Raven draws him around near the cranberries, piled up in scarlet heaps next to the fennel. and pretends to look down at the produce.

“The rutabagas are over there,” Erik says, pointing with raised brows, although he thinks everyone present is well aware Raven’s just trying to get Charles alone with Steve.

“I have no idea what a rutabaga is,” Raven says, shrugging. “It sounded good though. How are you?”

It occurs to Erik that this might be a follow-up on her intervention from earlier in the year, when she stopped him outside his school and offered to let him stay in her home. He hopes that’s what this is: a follow-up on old crimes, not that Raven’s figured them out once again. Although, had she, Erik suspects she would have skipped the theatrics and simply called the police.

Erik grabs a plastic bag and starts filling it with handfuls of cranberries, needing to have something to do with his hands.

“I’m fine,” he says, not looking at Raven so she doesn’t have a chance to read his guilt off his face. “How’re you? How’s Hank? Does he know you’re out here with Adonis?”

“You mean Steve? Yeah, Hank knows,” Raven says with a snort. “I’m not gay, so Steve’s not exactly a threat to Hank. And he’s well, thanks for asking. He’s working on a new research grant, aimed at looking into why you never give me the answer you know I’m fishing for when I ask you, then make me interrogate you instead of just ponying up like a decent human being would.”

Erik would laugh if he didn’t feel like cringing. He forgot Raven could be so … blunt about what she wants. He gives her a brief glance -- enough, he hopes, to make it seem natural that he’s talking to the cranberries instead of to her when he says, “He hasn’t done anything. You can go give him a treat and tell him he’s a good boy, if that’s what you’re after.”

Raven swats at Erik. “I just want to be sure you’re all right, Erik, especially if Charles is dating again. It’s healthy for him and for you, you know?” She reaches out and takes a handful of berries, the color shocking against her blue skin. “It doesn’t have to be Steve, but I wanted to make sure you’d be supportive, too. Charles cares what you think.”

 _Only sometimes_ , Erik thinks, despite himself.  Despite the fresh air his stomach rolls inside him, that motion swelling into a sense of unease.

Erik looks up at Raven properly this time, twisting his plastic bag shut and looping it into a knot. “To be honest,” he says, and since he _is_ being honest, he can face her as he says it, “I don’t think Charles is interested in dating anyone else right now. But if he did, Steve … well, Steve seems like a good choice. He’s attractive, he’s a high Dom so he could possibly put Charles down. He’s the right age.”

“Physically, yeah,” she says, putting back her handful of cranberries - a bit of a faux pas, really, but the stall owner isn’t looking and Erik isn’t going to tell on her. “Mentally he’s like, ninety. So they’re a perfect fit.”

Some kind of age-defying mutant, Erik figures, which sounds …. Well. Steve is sounding better and better all the time. Erik should probably be jealous, only he isn’t, really. Maybe because he knows Charles wouldn’t ever leave him again by choice, knows it bone-deep, like he knows the sky is blue and the grass is green.  Charles has bound himself here -- sometimes, Erik worries, at the expense of his dignity.  It's not an entirely pleasant realization.

“So you brought him here, hoping I brought Charles along with me,” Erik says.

Raven makes a sound of agreement, then sighs, turning to face Erik properly and putting her hands on her waist. “Look,” she says, glancing over towards the stall owner, who is still at the other end helping an elderly lady. “I want Charles to be happy, I really do, and I think Steve would be great for him. He’s kind, he’s intelligent, he’s strong enough to deal with Charles and he’s not a teenager. I know, too, that the two of you still have a freaky little codependent thing going on, even if you’re not doing the do any more, and I think you’ll both be better off being less like Siamese twins. I figured, kill two birds with one stone. Set Charles up a bit and talk to you, get you on board. Is it working?” She gives Erik a firm, questioning look.

Erik glances back across the market at Charles, who is still talking to Steve with his groceries over one arm, looking a little more awkward than Erik left him.  He wonders if Charles is listening in, and he knows Raven isn’t going to be satisfied until she’s quite certain.  He has to put an end to this, if it's ever _going_ to end -- and so when he turns back to her he says, “Things aren’t like how they were when they first ended. I’ve had time to think about what happened, and I -- I know what he did was wrong. He took advantage of my trust for him, and so -- “ God, this is horrible and uncomfortable, and Erik makes himself hold her gaze, takes a steadying breath to say, “So, you were right. But I still care about him.”

She looks at Erik for a long few moments, considering, then finally says, “Of course you do, Erik, you’re family. But I’m glad you’ve got more perspective on what happened now.” The stall owner is coming across, no doubt lured in by Erik’s produce, and so Raven says nothing more, just steps in and wraps an arm around Erik’s shoulder, drawing him into a hug.  It's too tight, Erik’s stomach rotten and unsettled but he leans into her embrace all the same, her coat wrinkling under the pressure of his fingertips against her back.  In a strange sense he feels like crying, pressure pushing against his chest that doesn't have an origin. He's glad for the excuse to step back when the stall owner arrives, passing over the money for the cranberries, and Raven tucks her hands into her pockets, waiting patiently for him to be done.

“Let’s go for a wander, give them some more time,” she says, head twitching in Charles and Steve’s direction.

Erik very much doubts that’s what Charles would rather, but he thinks the general gist of her words in the direction of where he can feel Charles’ presence in his mind again as they start walking around their side of the market, close enough that their shoulders bump occasionally. Charles’ chagrin comes as response a moment later, but Charles doesn’t protest -- and alongside that chagrin is a friendly awkwardness towards Steve that’s nowhere near to total rejection.

Erik looks down at the sidewalk, tracking the movements of his own shoes.

“He should like Steve,” he says, and he doesn’t realize for a moment that he’s said it out loud.  He considers leaving it there, but the silence draws out into awkwardness and so it’s hard not to just keep going, letting the words rise up inside him instead of vomit. Next to him, Raven turns to look at him, raising one eyebrow. “Don’t you think? There’s no reason for him not to.”

Raven nods. “Everyone likes Steve.”

It's -- anticipation, that’s what this is, old familiar wings fluttering inside him. “But he went out with him once already, and he didn’t ever call him,” Erik says. “Saw him again at a coffee shop a few weeks ago, and he didn’t then, either.”

The wings flutter, and then beat inside him, unignorable, flapping against his ribcage and he turns suddenly and stops there in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at her, his hands both clenched into fists.  His mind's whited out so he doesn't have to think about what he says or its implications; he just speaks, plunging forward because he has to know, has been thinking this ever since California even if just quietly, just in the back of his mind ...

“What does it mean if he could be with Steve, who’s a high Dom and an adult and perfect, but he -- if he only wants me, instead?”

Raven stops, too, frowning, and she lowers her voice as she says, “Erik, are you worried that Charles is going to try to start things up again? Because you know you can come stay with Hank and me again any time you like. And if he does, tell me and I’ll call the police. You don’t have to do that yourself. I’m here for you. He’s my brother and I love him but I won’t have that. I won’t.”

Not anticipation anymore -- what Erik feels now is something deeper and worse, dread, thick like tar, and his mouth goes dry, just thinking about -- God.  He would never do that. he _loves_ Charles, would do anything for them to be able to stay together. He feels the blood drain from his cheeks, leaving them cold and him shivering, deep in his guts.

“No,” he says, quickly, before he can even finish processing her words because he can’t allow her to even entertain the idea longer than just a few seconds, too afraid she’ll see the truth written all over him and want to take matters into her own hands. “No, of -- of course he wouldn’t do that. Again. I just mean, I can … tell. How he feels.”

He shouldn’t be saying this to her. This was a mistake.

“This isn’t about Charles,” he says, deciding he doesn’t want to know the answer to his question anymore. He doesn’t want to hear _that word_ on Raven’s lips. “I tend to find myself in these sorts of situations. That’s all. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Erik … ” She trails off, a frustrated look on her face before she reaches out and clasps her hands around Erik’s upper arms, holding him there, firm but gentle. “You’ve had a shit hand. And Charles … well, he fucked up royally and regardless of why he did it, what attracted him in the first place, it’s still wrong and it’s still not your fault. It doesn’t mean anything about you other than that you’ve been unlucky in your life. Okay? If Charles is still pining after you and not letting Steve take him out properly, then it says a lot more about Charles than it does you.”

Somehow that only makes everything worse, and Erik turns roughly away from Raven, getting his back to her just in time for the gag that catches in his throat. He takes in several deep breaths, filling himself with the cold November air, blinking against the bright sunlight, before he finally turns back to her and says, knowing he’s shaking but not able to stop, “Come on. Let’s go check on them. Come on. We’re going.”

He can’t keep talking about this, can’t hear her say another word about the whole thing. He starts walking and just trusts her to follow, his hand icy around his grocery bags. He can hear Raven just behind him, her coat rustling as she walks, and she’s wonderfully, blissfully silent, saying nothing else until they find Charles and Steve standing at a chocolatier’s stall sampling the wares, at which point Raven says, “I should have known. Charles has such a sweet tooth.”

“I have a sweet everything,” Charles says, clearly trying for a good mood; Steve laughs, but Charles is looking at Erik, sending him the feeling of a hand slipping into his own and squeezing. _Are you okay?_

 _I need to leave,_ Erik tells him, his insides swimming horribly, threateningly. _You can stay if you want, but I -- I have to go._

“So what’s good?” Raven asks, looking at the menu; Steve is giving Erik a rather concerned look, his mouth opening to say something, when Charles interrupts.

“Erik, are you ill? You don’t look well,” he says, lifting his hand to place it on Erik’s forehead. He looks worried sick himself, brows drawn close together, and his palm is cool on Erik’s skin. “Do you need to go home?”

Erik glances sidelong at Raven, hating the way he almost feels he needs permission from her to leave without it seeming suspicious. He makes himself look back at Charles instead and says, “Yes. It was nice to meet you, Steve.”

He considers inventing an excuse, _breakfast didn’t agree with me_ or something, but it feels like it’d be a belated addition now, awkwardly hanging on to the ends of his words and drawing attention to itself.

“It was good to meet you, too, however briefly,” Steve says, tucking his thumbs into his jeans pockets and looking between Erik and Charles -- without suspicion, instead rather fond, like he thinks Charles-as-father is adorable. If only he knew. “Charles, give me a call sometime if you want to grab coffee.” It’s almost a direction, not quite a question, but Erik has bigger things to worry about than whether or not Steve is half-ordering Erik’s submissive around.

Raven frowns, but she just says, “Give me a ring if you need anything, okay?”, and it’s directed generally enough that it could pass for being meant for Charles.

Erik can’t get them out of here soon enough. He doesn’t trust himself to look back over his shoulder until they’re well into the Park and Erik can take several deep breaths of cleaner air, checking just to make sure Raven and Steve aren’t miraculously right behind them still but not slowing his pace even when he sees the coast is clear. He can’t bring himself to look at Charles right now, not after the mistake Erik just made. He keeps his gaze fixed on the horizon, hand clenched so tight around the handles of his bags he can’t quite feel his fingertips anymore, and just walks, leaving it to Charles to keep up.

“It’s all right,” Charles says, having to hurry on his shorter legs to keep pace with Erik, looking a bit pink in the face. “Erik, you haven’t done anything wrong. Raven isn’t stupid, she’d know that things couldn’t just go back to normal. You haven’t revealed anything new.”

“I don’t know why I said any of that,” Erik tells him, his breath freezing in the air in front of his face, crisp clouds drifting up toward the pale grey sky overhead. “I started talking, and I couldn’t stop, and now she thinks -- she knows, there’s something going on. You heard her, Charles.” His guts are still tight and bloodless.

Charles’ hand comes to curl around Erik’s elbow, tugging to make him slow down, until they’re at a more sustainable pace, walking more like regular New Yorkers. “It’s because it’s true,” Charles says, without letting go, his voice utterly calm, accepting. “I did betray your trust, and what I did was wrong. You’re just starting to come to terms with it, to understand that that’s what happened. It’s been happening for a while.” When Erik turns to look at him Charles’ face is calm, too, as if what he’s saying doesn’t affect him at all.

“No,” Erik says. “I don’t care about that kind of thing. You know that.”

It feels not-right to be talking about this out here, in public, where anyone could overhear them -- even though Erik logically knows no one could, the people behind them too far away and everyone else going in a different direction, only able to catch snippets of the conversation at a time. Logic isn’t much good, though, when Erik feels like this: feverish and afraid, like he’s losing his mind too quickly to piece it back together in time.

Charles shrugs, his hand shifting on Erik’s elbow. “I know you want that to be true. It’s all right, anyway. It’s good, it means you’re recovering.”

He still isn’t looking at Erik. If they were alone, indoors, Erik would find some way to make him, put himself where Charles has no choice but to look Erik in the eye. But he can’t touch him at all out here, not in any way that might mean something. The frustration of that lances alongside all the rest and Erik decides to ignore what Charles said; they can talk about that later, when there isn’t the threat of Raven’s interpretation to contend with.

“What was she thinking?” Erik asks him, never more grateful to see their apartment building appear through a gap in the trees as he is right now. “Do we have anything immediate to worry about?”

“She’s going to talk to me about it, of course,” Charles says, “but that’s it. Like I said, it wasn’t news to her that I’m still attracted to you. It’s why she’s pushing me at Steve so enthusiastically.” At that he smiles, small and self-loathing, adjusting the weight of the produce bag over his far shoulder. “It’ll be fine, Erik. Really. Don’t worry. After all, I took care of things with Collins, didn’t I? I’m sure if push comes to shove I can manage Raven as well.”

It’s not a possibility either of them likes considering, but Charles far less than Erik, Erik knows. The doorman lets them into their building and he spares a brief, flat smile for the concierge while they wait for the elevator, holding onto silence as defense until the doors slide open and let them inside, out of sight and out of range.

Erik pushes the button for their floor and finally turns toward Charles more properly, his grasp loosening on his bags even if his heart is still clenched in his chest. “You really aren’t upset that I risked us like that? I could have ruined everything.”

Just one misplaced word -- God, it had been as if Erik wasn’t even in control of himself, babbling away their secrets as if he all-but needed Raven to know. He can’t fathom why he did it. It must have been a temporary insanity.

“If anyone gets to tell someone what’s going on, to out us, it’s you,” Charles says, simply, his expression soft -- but there’s a tide beneath it, a feeling Erik can sense in Charles of a self-hatred so deep it’s stopped hurting, condensed down into a diamond inside of him, like a cherished possession. “You have the right to tell whomever you want, Erik -- I won’t stop you.”

The elevator pings at their floor and Charles gets out first, Erik following behind and feeling more lost than ever, opening the door to their apartment with his power on reflex. It seems strange to find it waiting for them unchanged, as if they’d never left. Erik doesn’t know why he almost expects it to have self-destructed in their absence.

“Go put these in the fridge,” Erik tells Charles in lieu of saying anything else, passing him the bags of groceries. “Then come back into the den.”

“All right.” Charles takes them and disappears into the kitchen, where Erik can feel him moving around, hear the sound of the fridge door opening and bags rustling as Charles decants their contents. Erik himself strips off his coat and scarf, hanging them in the gallery closet over his shoes. In the den he sits down on the sofa, in the middle, and watches what he can see of Charles through the doorway to the kitchen as Charles moves from counter to fridge to pantry, putting things away. His stomach feels heavy, laden down to his feet.

Charles comes back quietly, pausing beside the sofa, not yet sitting down. “Would you prefer me to take the sofa or to kneel?” he asks, his voice soft.

“Take off your jacket,” Erik says instead of answering, and watches as Charles does, his strong fingers moving pale against the darker fabric; Erik wants to kiss them, every one, at knuckle and at nail. Charles slides the coat off and folds it, setting it down over the back of one of the armchairs, and Erik reaches out a hand for him to take and says, “Come here.”

He pulls Charles down onto the couch next to him, settling down so he’s lying lengthwise with Charles pressed to his chest as if they were sleeping upstairs in Charles’ bed, both of Erik’s arms around Charles’ body and his hands rubbing slow and smooth up and down his back. It feels so much better just to hold him like this, Charles in his arms and close where Erik can smell the scent of him and feel the familiar press of Charles’ hands against his chest.

“All I want, more than anything, is for us to be happy,” Erik finds himself saying after a while, his own eyes shut and his chin tipped down toward the crown of Charles’ head. “I want us to be happy together.” He wonders if Charles would even know what he meant, if he referenced that telepathic tide he felt in the elevator, cold like an ocean. His hands keep moving on Charles’ spine. “I can’t stand it if you hate yourself.”

“You’re not happy, though,” Charles says, almost drowsily, distant. “You love me, but you don’t like me very much, lately.”

That stings, and Erik has no good answer for it. He wants to protest it wholesale, but it’s no good pretending to a telepath things have been as perfect between them as they once were. He tightens his arms around Charles’ body and tilts his head down further, pressing his brow against Charles’ shoulder. He falls into a daze like that, an uneasy half-sleep, comforted by Charles’ presence and the warmth of his skin even as he tastes the poison that seeps into their blood.

 

*

_Charles_

Raven calls Charles that evening to ask him out to drinks the night following, and there’s no real point in putting it off, so Charles agrees, only shrugging when Erik asks him about it and saying, “It’ll be fine, don’t worry.”

Erik is so anxious to be certain he hasn’t ruined things between them, hasn’t dropped Charles in it with Raven. It’s sweet, really, the way he’s fretting over it, over how Charles feels and whether Charles is putting on a brave front -- but what Erik doesn’t understand is that Charles has made his peace with it all now, that he’s finally accepted who he is and what he wants and how he feels about it. It’s not … it doesn’t have to be some big drama, any more. Charles knows they started badly and that it’s his fault, and perhaps someday Erik will hate him for it the way he should, the way he’s supposed to. Charles hopes he won’t, of course, but even that is selfish, wanting Erik not to recover so that he’ll stay with Charles.

In any case, Charles is relatively cheerful when he goes out to meet Raven at Grove, a bar out in SoHo that she sends him the directions to in a text message.

He finds her in a back corner booth, tucked away with a bottle of vodka and another of cranberry juice; she must have sweet-talked the barman into leaving it with her. “Hi,” she says when Charles reaches her side, and gestures for him to take the opposite bench. “If you want something different you’ll have to go order, but this seemed efficient.”

“Uh-huh,” Charles says, amused, and sits down, shrugging out of his coat and folding it to lay it aside on the sleek velvet of the booth. “How are you?”

“I’m good. How are you and Erik?” Raven asks, and clearly tonight is going to be one of those nights, one of the ones where she takes no prisoners, because she’s already thinking of yesterday’s conversation, Erik’s face and the way his voice had shaken as he spoke. “He seemed pretty down at the market.”

Charles takes a deep breath, then pours himself a vodka cranberry, figuring that he might as well be tipsy for this conversation. It’s deep red at the top, the color fading further down, dissipating into nothing. “We’re struggling, sometimes,” he says honestly, taking a sip of his drink -- it’s dry, parching his mouth even as he wets it. “You don’t just … _carry on_ after something like that happens. We’re managing, though. You need to not push it too hard, Raven, you upset Erik yesterday.”

Raven frowns, her blue brows beetling. “I’m not the one who put him in that situation to begin with, Charles. I’m pretty sure he was already upset before I got to him.”

“Look,” Charles says, as strongly as he can, “After a certain point it’s simply not your business, Raven. I love you, and I love you for helping Erik when he needed to get out of the apartment and to get away, and for supporting him and giving him that. God knows he needs that from someone who isn’t me. But at the same time, you’re stirring a pot that doesn’t need stirring up again. It’s hard enough without that.” He sighs and takes another, bigger sip of his vodka.

“Charles,” Raven says, and leans forward, her expression intense, her entire mind focused on Charles and his face, listening for his voice, her eyes firm and demanding. “Is something still going on between you? Tell me the truth.”

And Charles says, “No, Raven, for God’s sake,” using every skill he ever learnt as a child to make it believable, everything he knows that isn’t telepathy, that isn’t doing the same to Raven as he did to Collins. It’s hard to lie to his sister, harder still to tell himself he’s making the right decision in doing so, but -- but, he reasons, not doing so would hurt Erik more badly, if Charles were taken away.

It’s selfish logic, but it’s a reason to follow through. “I’m not a predator,” he adds, his voice rising a little at the end, defiant.

Raven is still watching him, interrogating every quiver of an eyelash, every quaver of his lip -- but he seems to pass muster, because she says, “Of course you aren’t, that’s not what I’m asking, Charles, Jesus,” and sits back a little on her bench, a strange sense of frustration in her, frustration that she can’t end this now, conclude the awfulness of knowing her brother fucked his teenage ward, still wants to, still lives with him. Even if she doesn’t want the scandal or for Charles to go to prison, there’s a part of her that would be relieved to be able to close that chapter, write it off and be able to move on.

“I’m not ready to start dating again,” Charles says, pushing his temporary advantage; he’s near the bottom of his glass so pours himself another drink, grateful for Raven’s ‘efficiency’ in providing alcohol. “I appreciate that Steve is amazing, but it wouldn’t be fair to him or to me. I need to get back to a better place first.”

Raven makes a dubious sound that’s almost swallowed up by the background music of the bar. “Okay,” she says, finishing her own vodka and reaching for the bottle. “You should date him, though. He’s super perfect, you’d make a great couple. Really.”

“I’m sure,” Charles says, and that’s the kicker, he is. If it weren’t for Erik Charles would have been all over Steve like a rash, and he can’t deny part of him still wants to be. ”I promise I’m doing my best to take care of Erik. Okay? It’s not easy, but I’m trying.”

“Okay,” Raven says. “Just … you can tell me, okay? If you need to talk, I’m here for you. I still love you, even if you have royally fucked this up.” She reaches for his hand across the table and squeezes it. “Like, if you need to talk to get over your monstrous crush on Erik without screwing him, I’m here even if I would be grossed out. If you start screwing him again I’ll kill you then report myself to the cops.”

Charles wants to be sick, but he makes himself say, “Noted,” and thankfully after that Raven lets the conversation move on to other things, less charged.

He gets home some time after midnight, expecting Erik to already be asleep; however as soon as he’s paying attention he finds Erik lying in bed in that strange stage between sleep and wakefulness, even his dozing thoughts tense and apprehensive. Charles is quiet as he strips off his shoes and coat, and he creeps upstairs on socked feet, slipping into the bathroom via the guest bedroom to keep from disturbing Erik as he strips down, brushes his teeth, uses the toilet.

Despite all of this, when he finally emerges from the bathroom and into the bedroom Erik’s eyes are open, watching him, and so Charles says, barely above a whisper, “Hey.”

Erik shifts beneath the sheets, languid and cat-like as he reaches an arm out across Charles’ side of the bed, heavy and beckoning. He doesn’t seem awake enough to manage more than that, even if the sizzle of apprehension on the fringes of his thoughts suggest he’ll have woken himself up properly in just a few moments, the anxiety unavoidable.

“What happened?” Erik murmurs without moving again, his eyes still on Charles.

Charles moves across the space between them, shifting up onto the bed and tucking himself under the covers, laying down beside Erik and taking Erik’s hand in his own. “Nothing new,” he says, tangling his fingers between Erik’s. “She asked me if we were okay, I said not really but we’re working on it. She asked if we’re together, I said no.”

He feels relief blanketing Erik’s sleepy mind, and after a moment Erik finds the momentum to shuffle closer to Charles, until his head is half-on Charles’ pillow and their knees are bumping together under the blankets. “Good,” Erik whispers. The next words come like one of Erik’s strongest orders even though they weren’t really meant that way, Erik too tired to maintain his own defenses and titrate it down -- “Good boy.”

The strength of Erik’s approval is intense as it ripples through him, like being stroked from his throat to his groin, making him want to bare himself, to give himself over; Charles’ hips twitch of their own accord, his cock stirring. He makes a soft noise and Erik must catch it for what it is, because he blinks once, slowly, then moves closer again, pressing his overheated body against Charles’.

“I’m almost twice your age,” Charles says, but it feels --

“Good,” Erik says again, “boy,” and his hips undulate against Charles’ like molasses, one leg twining around Charles’ waist and drawing him in so his other leg can curl there along with it and keep Charles there, pressed against him as Erik’s eyes flutter closed.

Charles moans under his breath, embarrassed and turned on all at once, his hips moving in time with Erik’s and rocking his hardening dick against Erik’s body, feeling Erik’s cock awakening where it’s pinned between their bellies. He’s not sure he deserves to be called good for lying to his sister, but there’s something about the way Erik says it that feels -- Charles can feel Erik’s approbation deep inside himself, wants to believe he deserves it, automatic and needing it more than he realized. “I’m not good,” he says, trying to be truthful.

Erik has an arm around Charles’ body somehow, now, trapped beneath Charles’ weight, his other arm insinuating itself down between their torsos and pressing against Charles’ lap, rubbing him there even as his leg clenches tighter around Charles’ waist. “Mmm,” Erik mumbles, grasping at Charles’ cock through his boxers, his breath hot on Charles’ neck. “Be bad, then.”

It’s an order. More than that, it’s permission -- and Charles moans, feeling surrounded, pinned by Erik’s limbs as he winds his own arms around Erik’s middle and frots against his grip, head tipping back to make room for Erik’s lips to kiss his throat.

 _Be bad_ \-- the words resonate in Charles’ head, and he lets his hand slip down Erik’s back to slide into his underwear, grabbing at his ass. His cock throbs, warm between his thighs. “Please … ”

Erik sucks on his earlobe. “Please what?”

Charles’ breath hitches, his heart aching, and he can’t verbalize what he really wants so he shows Erik, instead, a burst of longing for Erik’s love, for his acceptance and approval, for Erik to be pleased with Charles -- not just his actions but his heart, his self, to be _enough_. It feels bittersweet in his mouth, like the taste of an overripe plum. Erik wakes up more, at that, kissing Charles’ face, his cheek and his nose and the corner of his mouth, then finally his lips themselves.

“I do love you,” Erik says, hand clenching in Charles’ hair, too-hard. “So much --”

It’s almost painful to hear it, as raw as Charles is feeling right now, so Charles leans forward to kiss him on the mouth, has to crane his neck a little, pulling against the hand in his hair even though it hurts. His own hand slips a little further down onto Erik’s bare thigh, using it to tug him even closer so their hips can stutter together, Charles’ cock sliding through Erik’s fingers, the friction making his breath catch.

Erik moves his hand, but it’s only to catch a handful of Charles’ boxers, tugging at the fabric ineffectually. “Take these off,” he orders, and Charles pulls his hand out of Erik’s underwear to drag at the thin cotton, the elastic stretching down over his hips as he uses his shoulder and knee to brace himself up enough to slide them off, kicking them further down the bed. Nude, Charles reaches to do the same to Erik, though it’s made difficult by his leg hooked over Charles’ hip -- Erik disentangles himself long enough for Charles to push his boxers down, then Erik kicks them off somewhere at the end of the bed, beneath the covers.

In the dark room Erik’s eyes are bright, fixed on Charles’ as his hands wander over Charles’ exposed body, too quickly, like he thinks Charles will stop him if he doesn’t do it fast. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“That I want you,” Charles replies, curling into Erik’s body again, laying there on their sides so close, marooned together in the center of the bed, his arms wrapping once more around Erik’s waist. He wants Erik’s love so badly that he feels like he could die.

Erik kisses him once more, sucking hard on Charles’ lower lip. “Then prove it.”

Charles’ breath comes out in a tremor, and he pulls Erik in tightly against himself, kissing Erik back with a desperate feeling high in his throat even as his hips rock forward again, rubbing his cock into the crease at the top of Erik’s thigh; Erik’s erection is pinned against Charles’ belly, the soft skin of it dragging against Charles’ stomach. And Charles’ mind … his mind he wraps around Erik too, showing him how much he wants him, the urge enveloping them both. Erik makes a soft noise against Charles’ lips, and Charles thinks, _hold me again, please, like you were before,_ needing the security of it, the sense of constriction, of Erik in control.

“Lube first,” Erik says, and Charles sends him the feeling of acquiescence before pulling away, rolling over towards the nightstand to open the drawer and take out the bottle of lube. He feels strangely adrift until he can roll back into Erik’s arms, the lube clutched in one hand, and he leans his forehead against Erik’s to breathe there for a moment before flicking open the lid with the tip of his thumb and squirting some slick onto his hand. It feels cold, and Charles reaches down to take hold of Erik’s thick, heavy cock, stroking it from root to tip.

Erik moans quietly and shifts, reaching his arms around Charles’ body the way they’d been earlier, the way Charles asked, pulling him in close and keeping him there. His breath is hot on Charles’ shoulder, hips tilting toward Charles’ hand, and Charles keeps going, curling his grip around the shaft and squeezing in pulses, working Erik’s cock and feeling Erik’s pleasure so close to him in his mind, reassured by the way Erik’s arms are restraining him. Being held makes him feel more secure, always has done, and it calms some of Charles’ desperation, making it easier to concentrate on stroking Erik between his legs, slowly massaging him.

Erik murmurs Charles’ name, his fingers digging into Charles’ back as his cock pulses in Charles’ grasp. His mind is all heavy arousal and need, with fatigue only dragging it down at the edges, and his drowsiness is catching, making things almost dreamlike, just the motion of Charles’ hand -- bent at an awkward angle, but he doesn’t mind -- and the feeling of it, of making Erik feel good. Charles bends his head and kisses at the angle between Erik’s neck and his shoulder, wishing he could suck a mark there, knowing he doesn’t dare.

His own cock throbs, neglected, and Charles’ hips twitch, pushing it against the back of his own hand and over Erik’s stomach; Erik shivers slightly and Charles does it again, builds a slow rhythm matching that of his hand, his cock rocking against Erik’s sweat-slick belly until he rocks back a little too far and it slips down, underneath Erik’s cock, tucked against his sac.

“Here,” Erik says, releasing Charles long enough to reach down between their bodies, squeezing enough lube out of the tube to slick his thighs before he nudges Charles’ cock down between them. When Erik presses his legs together Charles groans, the hot wet tightness of it almost like being inside him, and he fucks forward, unable to help himself, rolling into that squeeze and clutching at Erik with his arms, his hands, clinging to him for more.

“Good?” Erik asks.

“Yes,” Charles says against Erik’s neck, feeling his pulse beating under the skin against his lips. He manages to disengage one of his hands and push it down to take hold of Erik’s cock again, stroking it against his own belly, his palm keeping it there so it rubs against him as Charles thrusts between Erik’s thighs. The tip of it is wet, and Erik thrusts a little more quickly into Charles’ hand now, the head of his cock rutting against Charles’ stomach and leaving a damp trail there.

They rock together, panting, slick sounds loud in the quiet room. Charles can feel it building inside him, reaching some unknown peak before finally he comes, his cock spurting between Erik’s thighs and making the tight squeeze even slicker; he moans and sets his teeth to Erik’s skin, biting him.

Erik’s nails dig into his skin, the swirl of arousal in his mind tipping over into Charles’ and making him feel like his climax is longer than it really is, drawing it out as he manages to keep his hand moving on Erik’s cock. It’s another minute before Erik comes, gasping and shivering against Charles’ body, a warm wet splash that Charles coaxes out of him, petting him until finally he feels Erik becoming too sensitive to stand it, and he stops, letting his palm rest where it is, cupping the softening head of Erik’s dick against Charles’ navel.

Charles lifts his head and tilts up to kiss Erik on the mouth, slow and deep. Erik’s hands slowly relax against Charles’ back, his right hand smoothing down toward Charles’ ass. His eyes are slow to open when Charles pulls back, lashes fluttering a little.

“I don’t want Steve because I don’t have space to want anyone but you,” Charles says, his voice thick in his throat. “There’s no -- no sinister reason. Just this.” How could anyone else make him feel as much as this, as deeply as Erik does?

Erik’s hands drift up to cup Charles’ face between them, his thumb smoothing the swell of Charles’ lower lip. “I know,” he murmurs softly. He kisses Charles’ forehead, then tips his head back down again to look Charles in the eye. “It was a stupid thing to question. I don’t know why I said it.”

Charles knows why. It’s because Erik is starting to know what Charles knows about himself, this closeness between them finally letting it come into focus, like he’s finally near enough to the lens to see inside.

“Let’s wash up and go to sleep,” Charles says, and rolls away again to fetch the wet-wipes from the drawer.

 

*

> Dear Dr Xavier,
> 
> I hope you and your ward are well. Erik’s company was much appreciated on his visit to California and I would be more than happy to host him again in future if he wishes to travel.
> 
> I will cut to the chase, since we do not have the sort of relationship that lends itself to small talk; I would like to request that you provide lodging for my student, Peter Parker, on his trip to New York this December, as a favor to me in view of our past relationship. Peter is a good lad and is looking for a job for after his thesis is completed, and has interviews lined up at several New York schools. He would be no bother, is friends with Erik, and is, after all, your academic brother. He is originally from your city, however his last remaining family member, his aunt, passed away two years ago and as such he does not have other options within New York that would not stretch the budget of a lowly graduate student.
> 
> Please respond as soon as you may to confirm if this will be possible so that I may make alternate arrangements if your hospitality is not available.
> 
> Yours sincerely,
> 
> Dr Elias Braden-Newell

*


	42. Forty-two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter

_Erik_

Peter Parker shows up as expected on the first day of Cal’s winter break -- which is the same as Columbia’s but several days earlier than Trinity’s. It means Erik is still taking his high school classes in the morning when Charles leaves to pick Peter up from the airport, but it gives him the space to be there waiting in the apartment by the time they return, with a late lunch on the stove and fresh flowers in the vases, the whole place much cleaner than even Erik normally requires and a guest bedroom open and aired upstairs.

“Erik, we’re home,” Charles calls as the door opens and shuts, more for Peter’s benefit than Erik’s; he knows Erik has heard them, and has already reached out to touch his mind, like the brush of a familiar hand.

Erik abandons his laptop in the dining room, coming out into the gallery to greet Peter properly with a smile, followed by a one-armed hug with a pat on the back. “It’s good to see you again,” he says, and Peter echoes the sentiment, letting Erik take one of his bags to put in the closet for the time being, tucked in between the piles of his and Charles’ shoes.

“Lunch will be ready in a quarter of an hour or so,” Erik says, kicking the door shut behind them with a soft click and leaning back against the wood door. “How’s Elias?”

“Lizardy,” Peter says, grinning, his hands tucked into his jeans pockets. “He’s well, you know, same as he always is. That man never stops. He’s like clockwork. Just ticking along getting shit done. He’s pretty pissed about the law New York just passed, the one banning segregation of mutant and human schools, but that’s par for the course.” He shrugs. “He says hi, by the way.”

Erik grins, not-looking at Charles because he doesn’t particularly want the moment soured by Charles’ dislike of the man, and pushes off the door, gesturing for Peter to follow them into the den instead. “You can use the X-box or the television whenever you like,” Erik says, taking his usual seat on the couch and moving his p-set off the other cushion and onto the coffee table, out of Peter’s way. “Charles has more movies and games than you could ever hope to watch in a lifetime.”

“Not true, I’ve watched almost all of them,” Charles says from his armchair. “It depends on how highly you value ever going outside.”

They both laugh, although Erik’s is a little forced; he knows Charles probably worked his way through every last one of those DVDs and games while mired in a pit of depression and surrounded by the detritus of his own existence. They weren’t entertainment, they were ways of living that weren’t being-himself.

“Do you want anything to drink?” Erik asks Peter, mostly just to have something to say, redirecting his own thoughts away from considerations of Charles’ illness.

“A soda?”

“Sure thing. Coke Zero all right?” 

Peter nods and Erik goes to fetch it from the fridge, listening to the sound of Peter and Charles’ conversation continuing in the other room. It’s all small-talk and pleasantries, the sort of thing Erik doesn’t like and never got very good at. When Shaw had company Erik’s job was to be seen and not heard. Erik might not be able to make light conversation, but he can certainly kneel on the floor without making a single movement for three hours straight.

When he comes back into the den, Charles is laughing, saying, “I’m not surprised. Dean Alscombe was ferocious enough when I was there, I can’t imagine he’s mellowed in his old age.”

“I once got in his way and the man nearly tripped over, I swear he tried to get me kicked out of the college,” Peter says. “I would have webbed my way out of there if the custodial staff wouldn’t have killed me for leaving a mess!”

Erik passes the Coke Zero to Peter and sits back down, happy to let Charles take the reins of the discussion. That way, he can interject with commentary here and there without having to manage the bulk of it himself and inevitably end up saying something unintentionally insulting. He trusts himself enough to have a clever one liner here and there, but not to carry the bulk of a casual conversation; too often Erik’s found himself falling into a topic of discussion only to learn afterward that it was inappropriate -- the discussion of sex with the mutant center kids at Westchester comes immediately to mind, as does Erik’s once enthusiastic monologue at Madelyne of the best possible handgun for shooting a target who’s trying to run away.

After a while Peter sighs, stretching his legs out in front of himself, and says, “If it’s okay with you, I think I’ll go for a walk, work out some of these sore muscles. Central Park is safe in daylight, right?”

“Mostly,” Erik says, thinking of the few times reporters have chased him around the park looking for a comment, not listening when he repeatedly reminded them that he is underage and so they’d need Charles’ permission. “Do you mind if I join you? I’d kind of like a break from my p-set, anyway.”

“Sure, go for it,” Peter says, getting to his feet. “Local sherpa is always welcome. Let me go grab my coat and my camera and I’ll be ready to go.” He heads straight out of the room without waiting for a reply.

Charles shifts in his seat, a small smile on his face. “I like him,” he says, propping his chin on one hand. “He’s not like Elias’ usual students.”

“What are they usually like?”

A snort. “Ferocious.”

“And? That sounds like a good thing.”

“Not the way they do it.” Charles shrugs, folding his legs up under himself in the chair, tailor-fashion; it’s clear he’s not coming, the way he’s settling into the cushions. “Anyway, Peter is different. I’m surprised Elias took him on.”

There’s a clatter from the stairs, and then a moment later Peter reappears, wrapped up in his thick coat and with an expensive-looking camera slung on a strap around his neck, still in its case. “I’m ready when you are,” he says to Erik, who pushes himself up to his feet.

 _Maybe it’s time to rethink old prejudices,_ Erik tells Charles with a small smile, before he turns to Peter and says, “Let’s go,” following him out into the gallery, pulling on his own coat and scarf before they head out and downstairs via the elevator. 

It’s snowing when they get outside, fat flakes drifting down from the gray sky overhead and accumulating in their hair and on their shoulders. Central Park itself is drifts of white, the bare trees stark in this landscape, like bones. Erik pulls his gloves out of his pocket and puts them on; he’s never had great circulation to his extremities. Peter does the same, shivering and blowing out a cloud of steam into the frigid air.

“You’re a photographer?” Erik asks, tipping his head toward the camera after they’ve been walking a bit, talking about not much at all.

“I like to think so,” Peter says, lifting it in his hands; he’s been snapping steadily, though Erik can feel that it’s a film camera, not digital, the reel turning inside the mechanism. “It’s a bit of a sideline, really. Hard to make real money at, but satisfying, you know?”

“What is your subject?”

“I take art photos mostly,” Peter says. “People and places, interesting faces and things I see. I like to try and capture bits of life people don’t notice. Hard to sell those, though. I’d make more doing weddings or family photos, but that’s pretty boring to be honest.”

He shows Erik a few of the photos he’s taken just since arriving in New York: snow-covered benches, the skyline blurred by falling snow, a child dropping a mitten, then a small dog snatching it before the child could reclaim it, the child’s mouth frozen in a comic ‘o’. They’re skilled in a way Erik can’t put his finger on, a quality he and other people he knows try to achieve with their iPhones and filters but can never quite manage.

“I’d love to be able to do that,” Erik says when Peter finally puts the phone away, giving him a small half-grin. “I’m just … Instagram-quality, I suppose.”

“It’s mostly practice,” Peter says with a shrug. “And thinking about how you show things and what you want to show. Taking a picture of something is easy. Saying something in that picture is the hard part.”

Even so, he shows Erik a few tricks on his iPhone, mostly to do with framing the subject on his screen. The ‘burst’ effect, it turns out, is also rather handy, especially for objects in motion where it’s hard to find the perfect shot. Erik experiments on the remainder of their walk, and by the end of it he thinks he has a few photos he likes, including one of Peter with his camera in his hand and his mouth open slightly, concentrating with snow frosting his eyebrows as he takes a picture of something in the distance.

There’s something about it, about seizing a moment in time and immortalizing it digitally, that appeals to Erik. He doesn’t have any pictures of himself or of his life growing up -- not unless you count the video from the safehouse -- and while some would say that’s a good thing, the part of Erik that still feels affection for Shaw and the others as his family does wish that he could just flip open an album and look at Azazel’s pleased smile when Erik liked a present he brought him, the way Emma Frost glittered in diamond form in full sunlight, Shaw sitting pensively at the kitchen table with his cigarette burnt down to the filter, a curl of smoke drifting overhead. Erik might remember these images, but memory is a fickle thing. Can he trust his own recollection? Did Quested really have that one uneven tooth? Did Essex wear that-precise-suit on that-precise-day?

Lunch is ready and out on the table when they get back to the apartment, Charles laying the cutlery in place and turning to smile at them when they get in, a tea towel flung over one shoulder as if he’d just finished cooking lunch instead of simply laying it out. “Did you have a good walk?” he asks.

“Cold,” Erik says, he and Peter joining Charles at the table, Erik’s laptop safely put aside on the unused chair. “Mmm. Charles, this looks delicious,” he adds, giving Charles a small smirk as he looks up at him.

“It should do, you made it,” Charles says, nudging Erik’s shoulder with his knuckles, amused. “Erik does most of the cooking around here, I’m hopeless.”

“It looks great,” Peter says, picking up his fork and setting to. It must taste great, as well, because Peter devours it with the kind of enthusiasm Erik hasn’t seen since he made Frank a birthday cake last month. 

Sometimes Erik wonders if it’s visible on his and Charles’ faces -- in the way they look at each other, the way they take care not to touch each other too often or too intimately -- what they are. What they have been, to each other. As if there’s a tether between their bodies, visible whenever they’re in the same room: that palpable magnetic cord that binds them. Erik takes care to sleep the whole night through in his own room, just in case, unwilling to take the risk after the fiasco with Collins. 

Peter settles in well enough over the next few days, although the easier it gets for him the harder it gets for Erik and Charles, who are still too wary of repeating past mistakes to risk so much as being alone together for any extended period of time. They manage to steal a few kisses in the kitchen a few days in, but even that feels like an egregious risk. Peter, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to notice -- he’s just as polite and happy as he always is, even as Erik and Charles balance themselves on the edge of a blade.

As they fall into an uneasy routine, Erik finds himself forgetting, sometimes, that he and Charles are together, that they have anything else between them besides this filial camaraderie. It feels like being fourteen again, young enough that he didn’t know how Charles felt, back when the only thing he saw in Charles’ eyes when Charles looked at him was love and affection, unstained by desire. There’s something nostalgic and comforting about it, like what Erik imagines having a parent might have been like -- a real parent, not Shaw, or whatever became of him-and-Charles.

That doesn’t stop him wanting to put Charles down on his knees.

*

_Charles_

Charles becomes aware of Erik’s new interest only slowly over that first week of Peter’s visit, little snapshots of thought followed by the click of Erik’s phone; he doesn’t think much of it at first, but it quickly becomes obvious that Erik is really getting into photography by the way he always seems to have his phone ready to snap, and the way he pores over his laptop in the evening, showing it occasionally to Peter for comment.

Maybe it’s foolish, but this, at least, is something Charles can help him with, even if he’s entirely ineffectual with everything else right now. So on the first day of Peter’s second week with them Charles comes home from work with a plastic bag in one hand, which bears the Best Buy logo on the outside and several hundred dollars worth of camera equipment inside. He leaves it on Erik’s bed, for him to find when he gets home from running.

Charles is reading when Erik comes downstairs after his shower, assembled camera in hand and his mutation flicking through the controls, experimenting. He pauses in the doorway as Charles looks up, lifting the camera to his face and clicking the shutter, snapping a photo. 

“Hmm,” Erik says, examining the results on the screen, a tiny smile playing about the corners of his lips. “Already better than your current Facebook profile picture.”

“I should hope so,” Charles says. He’s relieved that Erik likes it. Silly, of course -- it’s a top-of-the-line DSLR camera, Erik ought to like it. But still. “Given my current photo was taken on a five-year-old camera phone, if it wasn’t better I’d have to take that back for a refund.”

Erik’s mouth twitches again and he glances back up at Charles, still lingering in the doorway with his thumb tapping at the camera’s chassis. “You didn’t have to do this, you know.”

Charles smiles, and shrugs, folding his book closed in his lap, a finger marking his place. “I know. I wanted to.” Besides, it’s not as if he doesn’t have the money. “This way you can still fill up your phone with music instead of needing so much space for pictures.”

Erik makes a soft noise and doesn’t say anything, still examining the camera; Charles looks to see what he’s thinking, and is a little embarrassed to find that Erik is musing that Charles doesn’t have to buy him things to earn Erik’s love. Protesting would be too much like agreeing -- and, possibly, maybe a little disingenuous -- so Charles pretends he hasn’t heard it and looks back down at his book, smoothing over the corner of the cover where it’s bent a little.

“Do you like it?” he asks casually.

“Of course,” Erik says, easily enough -- and his smile is wider this time as he finally steps forward out of the doorway, coming to join Charles on the sofa, leaning back against one armrest with his feet propped up on the cushion between them. “Thank you. Really.”

Peter is still out at his interview for the day -- today it’s over at Princeton -- so it makes it safe for Charles to reach over and pick up Erik’s feet, drawing them into his lap so he can work his thumbs into the soles, massaging them. It’s really nice, to be able to touch Erik like this, to have the reassurance of knowing he’s not going to be watched or judged but can just _be_ with Erik in a calm and peaceful way. Charles has been very tense this past week waiting to get caught, for Peter to turn around and accuse him, to somehow just _know_. To be sitting here instead rubbing Erik’s feet, serving him after his run, is relaxing.

He senses the light tremor of gratification in Erik’s mind as well, and hearing that is … reassuring somehow, like permission. Erik lifts his camera and snaps another photo and immediately tilts his head down to peer at it, judge it. 

“You could probably sell a picture of your bare feet to a tabloid and get a few thousand for it,” Charles says, smiling a little, and drags his thumb around the ball of Erik’s foot, rubbing around the base of his big toe.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Erik says. “A few hundred at most.”

He passes the camera over to Charles, though, and when Charles looks he sees the photo isn’t of Erik’s feet at all -- it’s of him, just his face and the line of his shoulders, his gaze downturned toward his work and his mouth soft, focused. He looks … Charles doesn’t know how he looks. Like someone doing something they care about.

“You’re good at this,” he says, wanting to cover up his own uncertainty, seeing himself in that light -- framed so carefully, loving something just out of shot.

“Not really. It’s only a good picture because you’re in it.”

When Charles looks up he finds Erik is watching him, without the sharpness in his gaze that Charles has come to expect as of late. It’s hard not to want him, then, to get drawn into something they’d promised each other would wait until after Peter has left -- no knowing when he’ll return home, how long they’d need -- and so Charles puts the camera down between them and goes back to rubbing Erik’s feet, stroking over his insteps, his fingertips resting over the jutting bone of Erik’s ankles. After a moment he bends over and presses a kiss to the back of one foot, then the other, soft dry brushes of his mouth that feel somehow illicit.

“Come here,” Erik says softly, and Charles shifts closer along the sofa, his hands slipping from Erik’s feet so he can lean over within reach for Erik to let Erik pull him in and kiss him, very lightly, like a whisper against his lips.

After that things fall by the wayside -- one more kiss becomes two more, three, and then they’re getting to their feet and going upstairs, the camera in one of Erik’s hands and Charles’ fingers entwined with the other.

Afterwards, when they’re laying quietly together in the mussed sheets, Charles dozing with post-coital languor, he hears the _click_ of the shutter and a whirr of the camera mechanism and he opens his eyes to blink up at it right before it goes off again, dazzling him.

“Hey, no,” he says, turning his head to look at Erik and frowning, reaching up for the camera, but Erik dances it higher out of reach with his powers, dangling above them. “Erik, what if someone finds those pictures?”

Erik isn’t looking at the camera; his gaze is still on Charles, cheek resting on a folded arm. “I’ll upload it to my computer tonight and delete it from the camera. I’ll keep it in an encrypted folder with two-step verification security. Don’t worry.” His fingers uncurl, tips grazing against Charles’ ribs. “I don’t have any good pictures of you.”

“According to you, there are no good pictures of me,” Charles says, and he subsides, bringing his reaching arm back down to rest at Erik’s waist. “Maybe I’m just not photogenic.”

“It’s not that,” Erik says. “It’s just that all your photos are from when you were practically my age. And when I said I don’t have any good pictures of you, I really meant naked pictures.”

He grins, the expression quick and bladelike, and Charles chokes, caught entirely by surprise. It’s a spectacularly bad idea, no matter what Erik says about encrypting the images, and Charles might not have any hang-ups about his body -- he knows he’s in good shape, that he’s attractive enough -- but even so that doesn’t mean he wants to be photographed nude.

“Erik,” he says, turning further onto his side so he can shield his more private parts if Erik starts snapping. “Don’t be silly.”

“I won’t if you don’t want me to. But wouldn’t it have been nice to have those sorts of photos available when I was away in California?”

Charles snorts. “Do you really need photographs of me to remember what I look like naked by now? You’ve seen me often enough.”

“Never often enough,” Erik says, and he moves closer now, shifting his leg up to hook his ankle around Charles’ calf, tangling them together. His eyes are closed when he kisses Charles’ shoulder, the tip of his nose brushing Charles’ skin. It’s sweet, and Charles sighs, relaxing a little as Erik’s hand skates over his side, possessive and commanding.

“Someone will find them,” he says, though with less fervor than before, his eyelids drooping, Erik’s casual Dominance making him languid. “It’s risky. Don’t you think?”

“Of course I think it’s risky. Nothing about this isn’t risky.” The backs of Erik’s fingernails trace over the rise of Charles’ hip bone. 

Charles feels almost mesmerized by Erik’s close attention, the lightness of his touch after so long without, the hypnotic pleasure of skin-on-skin even after they’ve both come and been satisfied. “Maybe you’d look back on them in a few years and wonder why you wanted me at all,” he says, not really negative, just an observation. “Risky.”

Erik makes a disgruntled noise. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, and the light touch is replaced by the weight of Erik’s body as Erik drapes himself properly atop Charles -- not doing anything, just lying there, his arms crossed on Charles’ chest and, when Charles opens his eyes, Erik’s chin propped on his hands and his gaze on Charles’ face. “We don’t have to take photos of you. We can take photos of me. You can keep them on your phone and wank off to them when I’m at college.” He smirks.

“That’s worse than you having pictures of me,” Charles says, fondly, and reaches out to stroke his fingers through Erik’s messy hair, tidying it a little and leaving furrows in it where his fingers have passed, sweat dampening Erik’s locks. “I’d look far worse than you would if anyone found those on my phone.” Besides, Charles suspects he won’t have much of a sex drive once Erik has gone, if past experience is anything to go by. He won’t need them. But he doesn’t say that.

“Too bad,” Erik says. “I was hoping you might make it your lock screen.”

Charles laughs, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and that’s when the camera flashes again with a _snap_ of the shutter; he tugs on Erik’s hair for punishment, a sharp little yank, and Erik yelps, but even that doesn’t wipe the grin off his face. 

It’s easy then to tug Erik down to kiss him, Charles’ eyes closed and lips parted, the lightness of it filling him up inside until he feels like he could float away on this feeling, the ease between them for the first time in a while and Erik’s mouth on his, pressing forward; somewhere in there they roll back onto their sides, and Charles is vaguely aware of the camera going again, of Erik’s hand on his waist pushing the covers down to expose their bodies from the knees up, of more photos being taken, but Charles is too distracted to care.

They end up having round two like that, even Erik losing his concentration for taking pictures, but afterwards Charles finds himself being posed, loose-limbed and heavy-eyed, so that Erik can take some solo shots of him, naked and sweat-beaded from sex.

Later they end up with Erik lying on his back next to Charles, camera propped up on his bent knees, flipping through the photos with the screen tilted toward Charles. “What do you think?” he says, tapping the button to continue past a picture of him and Charles, kissing, Charles’ head tilted back and Erik’s eyes half-lidded. “I can delete them if you’re really worried.”

Charles feels like he should tell Erik to delete them all, knows he should, in fact, but he can tell how pleased Erik is to have them, and it’s hard to say no to that when Charles wants so much for Erik to be happy again the way he was when they first reunited. So he says, finally, “Can you really make them secure? Not put them on the cloud, for damn sure, but otherwise enough that nobody else can get to them? Especially the ones with both of us in them.”

A grin splits Erik’s face, bright and wide, everything Charles was hoping for. “Yes. Yes, of course.” He drops his hands from the camera, which hovers in midair where he left it as Erik twists over to press a messy kiss to Charles’ cheek, reaching to tangle his fingers up in Charles’ hair. Charles closes his eyes, letting out a soft breath. 

“I just like being able to see us like this,” Erik says, satisfaction leaking from his mind and seeping into Charles’ thoughts, coloring them. “It’s so … normal.”

Impossible not to wonder if perhaps what Erik is really looking for is proof, something external he can use to show himself that their relationship is what he wants, and not what he fears.

“Okay,” Charles says, turning his face towards Erik’s hand and kissing the inside of his wrist. “Just be careful, all right? Hellfire level careful. Those pictures are an automatic jail sentence for me.”

“I won’t let them take you away from me.” 

Erik is still smiling, the expression soft and light on his face, and Charles wishes they could just stay there all evening, but Peter could be back at any time, and so finally he says, “We should clean up and get dressed,” and slides over to the side of the bed to go wash himself of the evidence.

*

_Erik_

It’s just a few days before Peter is due to leave, and Erik has offered to take him around to some of his own favorite places in the city: various bookstores, ice cream parlors, and cafés. They’ve just left Forbidden Planet, a comics and graphic novel store on Broadway, when Erik stumbles mid-step, sensing the sudden shift of a large amount of metal, his awareness of the city and the buildings faltering off its careful axis. The sound of the explosion follows just a fraction of a second later. 

It jars Erik down to his bones, the noise vibrating down his spine along with the loss of balance from the metal that’s still-shifting, falling, crumbling down toward the ground --

He looks to Peter, frowning, says, “Construction?”

It’s only then that they hear the screams.

Pieces jolt into shocking place, other memories of other streets and other buildings, Erik’s power a surging symphony --

“Holy shit,” Peter says, and he starts to run -- _towards_ the noise, instead of away from it like everyone else, his lanky frame dodging swiftly between obstacles -- _damn_ he’s fast. Erik hesitates just a half-second before launching after him, sprinting until he catches up to Peter, his heart battering his sternum and he knows, he _knows_ , it’s the rhythm of his pulse: Hell-fire, Hell-fire, Hell-fire.

When they get there, past the rabid crowds of fleeing civilians, into the negative space they’ve left behind, there are only a few people Erik can see standing by the burning, crumpled building, past the incongruously still-standing sign for _St Edward’s Middle School_ \-- and those three people are ones he recognizes instantly just from the way they stand, the way they’re dressed and the way they turn to look at him like dogs on a scent.

Avalanche. Sunspot. And …

Erik can feel himself burning up inside as if Sunspot had already attacked him, because the figure standing closest to the flames, broad and enormous and wild, is Victor Creed, his teeth bared in a furious grin.

“Kitten,” he calls out, his voice ringing over the sound of the collapsing building -- is the ground really shaking underneath Erik’s feet Avalanche’s work, or is it his knees? “Have you come for your milk?”

Erik cuts off his thoughts before he can finish them, because they aren’t necessary, words aren’t necessary. Only his power is necessary, and metal, that hum of magnetism shivering through the city as Erik grasps onto the pipes beneath the city streets -- the nearest thing he can reach that isn’t part of an inhabited building, none of them are wearing metal, they didn’t take the risk -- and launches it full-force at the nearest Hellfire agent.

Sunspot yells as the pipes wrap around him, and ignites, starting to heat up; the pipes will melt soon, but it buys Erik enough clarity to remember -- Peter. He sinks his ability into everything metal he can find on Peter’s form, using it to throw him bodily back, away, toward safety. “Get out of here!” Erik yells, and hopes Peter hears, because he doesn’t dare tear his gaze away from Victor Creed’s snarling face, stalking towards him.

“Take care of your own bad guys,” Peter shouts from somewhere behind Erik, and the sound of his running footsteps disappears only for him to _swing_ past Erik on the end of some kind of rope and slam feet-first into Avalanche, who goes down with a loud outcry; Erik calculates quickly, intuitively, how long it will take for Creed to get to him and decides it’s enough time to sink his power into the rebar that scaffolds the concrete of the school, propping it up better, refusing to let it collapse any further. It takes a good part of his attention, but his power isn’t an exhaustible resource -- there’s plenty left over to defend himself as he steps closer to Creed, closing the distance between them.

Creed glances aside at Peter, his monolithic brow rising; “Brought a fucking playdate, did you?” he calls to Erik, tramping over fallen masonry with a loud crunch of his boots. “Come on then, let’s see what you’ve got this -- ”

He’s stopped mid-word by the gurgle of blood bubbling up in his mouth, product of the length of copper pipe jutting from his stomach, the other end of it buried in the asphalt and pinning him to the street like a butterfly on velvet.

“Stay,” Erik orders him.

Sunspot’s starting to free himself of the metal, now melted slag, that had pinned him down; Avalanche is still fighting Peter, who has shot a plaster of web over Avalanche’s face. It’s not much time, but it’s enough for Erik to think Charles’ name as loudly as he can and hope to god Charles is listening.

 _What -- oh!_ There’s a sense of sudden surprise, then worry and anger and determination all at once as Charles refocuses, and Erik thinks at him, _Freeze them where they are and get your friends from the CIA down here. I’ll look for survivors._

 _Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs,_ Charles says, and all at once Sunspot and Avalanche collapse to the ground like their strings have been cut; Peter gets in another punch to Avalanche’s face before he realizes the guy is unconscious and sits back, saying, “What the fuck?”

“Charles,” Erik says by way of explanation, already halfway across the street before he hears, feels, a wrench of metal -- Victor Creed dragging himself free of the spear Erik put through him, struggling against Charles’ control and shouting with pain.

 _I can’t hold him, he’s slippery --_ Charles says, and Victor snarls and shoots Erik a look before dashing away, far faster than should be possible after such an injury, before Erik’s even recovered from his surprise enough to stop him.

“What the everloving fuck,” Peter says, even more heartfelt this time.

Erik doesn’t know what to say. Part of him wants to go after Victor, but … he’s paralyzed, caught staring instead at what’s left of the school. Dust clouds the air, tiny fragments of concrete that hurt to breathe and sting at the corners of Erik’s eyes. He’s never seen the site of a mission after they were finished -- they always teleported out long before this point, as soon as the damage was done. The school was already mostly-collapsed by the time Erik got to it; he doubts anyone will have lived, refuses to think about small bones crushed under the weight of all this rock and metal.

Erik reaches for the rebar again and, instead of sending it after Victor, starts pulling huge blocks of concrete free, dumping the useless rock into the street and out of the way. Not a great solution, he finds quickly enough -- there’s too much of it, and Erik is forced to start levitating it far overhead and just crossing his fingers that the concrete won’t break away from the steel and fall on top of all their heads.

“How the hell did Charles knock those other two out?” Peter asks when he catches up, eyes wide. “Isn’t he at work?”

 _Not there, there are some minds further in to your left,_ Charles says in Erik’s mind. _I’m on my way._

“He has pretty good range,” Erik tells Peter, which is understating it. “Dig here.”

He gestures to where Charles had indicated, and they start working together to pull the thick slabs of concrete off the ground, Peter’s web serving where there’s no rebar for Erik’s power to latch onto, clearing the rubble as quickly as they can and wrapping it up into a bundle to keep it from collapsing onto their heads when Erik raises it into the air and out of the way. Erik’s heart nearly stops in his chest when they find the first body, a small girl in a pink skirt with her limbs crushed and her head … her head not really a head, not anymore. He carries her body out of the way, lying it gently in the street as far as he can get from the unconscious Hellfire agents. There’s blood on his arms and shirt when he returns to the ruined school, and he and Peter can’t even look at each other, can’t say a word. They keep working in grim silence, moving what’s left of the structure and the people in it until they finally -- finally -- find someone Charles says is alive.

It’s a man, a teacher probably, his features obscured by the brilliant, swollen bruising on his face and white bone thrusting out of his forearm, his clothes all the same dust color but his chest rising and falling almost imperceptibly. 

“Hey,” somebody shouts from the street, and when Erik turns to look he sees it’s a firefighter jumping out of a truck, a whole crew of them piling out now and coming over. “Kid! You okay?”

They think he’s a student, Erik realizes dumbly after several long seconds.

“I’m fine,” Erik says when they’re close enough, still kneeling there in the dust next to the first survivor, gripping his power tighter still in the rebar overhead. The firefighter squats down next to him, looking at the unconscious man, and Erik says, “He’s still alive. There are more of them. Survivors. Under here.”

“You the one holding that lot up?” the guy asks, pointing upward; when Erik nods he says, “Okay, how long can you do that for?”

“Indefinitely,” Erik says, “but I’m only holding onto the metal, not the concrete.” There’s no telling whether or not it will start breaking off, if gravity will win out over the adhesion of Peter’s webs. How long the web will stand the strain.

Cop cars pull up behind them on the street, along with a loud babble of voices as they find the two remaining Hellfire Club members seemingly passed out; the firefighter ignores it and says, “Okay, then let’s find us somewhere for you to park it while Franz gets this guy a medic. You’re Erik, right? Erik Lehnsherr?”

Erik looks at the man, actually looks at him for the first time, now. He’s solidly-built, strong and capable with kind brown eyes and dark skin that’s overshadowed by the brim of his helmet. Erik nods, a bit belatedly, and it only just occurs to him -- the only witness who can claim Erik didn’t make this happen is Peter Parker. As far as anyone else is concerned his being here is no coincidence. He did this, just like he did the Flatiron Building, just like he did the Opera House and the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Cool,” is all the guy says, though, and he offers Erik his hand. “I’m Len. Now, let’s get cracking. We could really use your mutation here, I gotta say. Your dad anywhere about to give permission? Could be a bit grisly, mind.”

“Charles is on his way,” Erik says. “I have telepathic permission.” And, he thinks, it’s unlikely Len or any of the others would be able to stop him. He can’t help feeling partly responsible, just because he used to be Hellfire himself -- or because he never turned in the free Hellfire agents’ names, a crime that still feels unbearably like betrayal.

Peter’s with another firefighter some yards down, the pair of them working together to move rubble into the street, and there are other people arriving now, too, offering to help; a medic picks his way over to them, and so Len gestures for Erik to help him with the next piece of collapsed wall, adding it to Erik’s collection.

 _There are more children in the basement,_ Charles says, accompanied by a feeling of his being in a cab, trying to get closer to Erik’s side of the city. _They’re all right, the tremors didn’t collapse the basement. The priority should be the two people trapped ahead of you and to your left, it’s a teacher and student, the student’s legs are caught under concrete and the teacher has a concussion by the feel of it. I’m keeping them calm._

Erik’s surprised they’re conscious at all, but he relays the information to Len and starts lifting more rebar, letting it accumulate in a small concrete planet orbiting above them until the firefighters clear off an intersection a block over for Erik to start directing his rubble to. The two next survivors are, indeed, still awake when Erik gets to them, child and adult both crying, shaking, and Erik realizes in a distant sort of fashion he’s shaking as well.

 _I’m nearly there,_ Charles says, his mind bolstering Erik’s, supporting him. _I’m having to walk ten blocks to get anywhere close, but I’m almost there._

*

_Charles_

Trying to get to the site of a terrorist attack is a nightmare. Charles would slap himself for saying so, ignoring the true nightmare, if he weren’t so concerned about getting there in time to prevent Erik from being arrested -- he can see it coming, the coincidence of Erik’s being in the area, of Hellfire simply passing out without hurting him, the way the police will suspect him. The cab driver will only take Charles so far, and so Charles power-walks the rest of the way, his mind still flexed around the two Hellfire terrorists, keeping them unconscious and helping Erik to find survivors. He’s trying to find Victor Creed again, but the man is like a fish, too slippery to hold; his mind is telepathy-resistant, and eventually Charles has to give it up to concentrate on the things he can do to help right now.

Later Charles will let himself think about the human cost of this tragedy, of the brutal violence of it all and the children murdered in their classrooms, teachers struck down -- but for now he has to focus.

He arrives to a scene of chaos, elbows his way through the gathering crowd to stand at the edge of it for a moment behind the police tape, taking it all in. The rubble, twisted metal and shattered concrete collapsed in on itself, melted in places from Sunspot’s fire. The ambulances and police cars and fire engines. The helpers scattered across the site of the destruction, what used to be a school, pulling aside concrete to try and find … well. There aren’t many survivors. Hellfire were depressingly thorough in their pancaking of the building.

Charles finds Erik’s mind over on one side of the site helping clear away debris from on top of the doors that lead down to the basement, and he says, _I’m here,_ even as he flags down a police officer to say, “I’m Charles Xavier, I’m Erik Lehnsherr’s legal guardian and I’m a telepath. I’d like to speak to whoever’s in charge so I can help you find the survivors.”

The officer frowns, looking him up and down, and his mind’s a cue that he doesn’t believe Charles -- thinks he’s too young to be anybody’s parent, thinks all they need is another Hellfire agent coming onto the scene to kill the first responders. “Let me see some ID.”

“Of course,” Charles says, and fishes out his wallet so he can show the officer his driver’s license, complete with unflattering photo and the ‘M’ symbol that shows he’s a mutant. “There. Now. Do you want me to prove I’m a telepath as well?”

“Telepath?” The man says, frowning. “You responsible for these two?” He points at the Hellfire agents, Sunspot and Avalanche unconscious in the rubble.

Charles nods, then qualifies, “In the sense that I’m holding them in suspended animation, yes. I’ve never met either of them.” He has to stop himself from justifying his actions, as if what he’s done might be considered an infringement on their rights, or as if he might be judged himself for taking out some terrorists -- his teeth clack together as he bites down on the impulse, impatience replacing it. “Can I please speak to the officer in charge now? We’ll need to discuss how to contain them if you’re transporting them, as I can’t hold them like this forever. I’ll have to let them wake up sooner or later if they’re leaving my near range.”

The officer just looks at him a second longer, then reaches for the walky-talky at his belt and pulls it to his mouth, speaking a few words into the other end. “Wait here,” he tells Charles, and turns away, saying nothing further, making Charles wait until eventually another uniformed officer joins him, this one’s pocket pin saying he’s a Captain.

“Mr Xavier?” The Captain grabs the edge of the tape, tugging it up to let Charles duck under and onto the crime scene. “Come with me, please,” he says, and starts walking to a small tent that’s been constructed on the periphery of the scene, next to all the SWAT vans and police cars, apparently being used as base of operations.

Charles follows, ignoring the curiosity of the crowd and the cameras that are already filming the destruction, the media out in force; the Captain ahead of him is thinking about five different things at once, plans and personnel and Charles and a press statement, and whether someone’s called his wife to let her know he’ll be late home. Charles stays quiet, not wanting to intrude on the man’s thoughts, until they reach the tent and can duck inside.

In the tent is a large table covered in equipment and bottles of water, a couple of officers sat there on radios co-ordinating the efforts outside. The Captain takes Charles over to a spare pair of seats and gestures for him to sit down.

“CIA will be on scene any minute now and we’ll have to hand this over to them,” the Captain says. “I’ve had my people put suppressors on the Hellfire agents. They’re cuffed and in the van, so you can let them go whenever you’re ready.”

“All right, thank you,” Charles says, and he relaxes his hold on the three unconscious mutants, putting a suggestion in their heads that they stay asleep for a while; no point in making things any harder for the police than they have to be. “There. They’ll wake up in half an hour or so, there shouldn’t be any ill-effects.”

“Good.” The Captain turns his attention to a clipboard he’s got sitting on the table, flipping through the pages. “Now, you say you’re Lehnsherr’s guardian. That’s good, because I’m putting him under arrest. You’ll need to accompany him down to the station, though I don’t expect the feds’ll let him stay there long. Do you have a lawyer?”

Charles frowns, and reaches out to Erik to check on him -- Erik’s being placed in handcuffs as they speak, his anger a seething heat and his mutation already fighting the suppressor bands, arguing with the officer -- then folds his hands in his lap, his lips pursing. “On what charges?” he asks, keeping his voice calm and focused. “Erik has been helping ever since it happened, is that now a crime?”

“Bit of a coincidence that he shows up at the scene of the crime as soon as it happens, don’t you think?” the Captain says dryly, scribbling something down on his clipboard. “He’s got a record, and this is right up his alley. Unless you can prove he wasn’t involved, or until forensics gets back and says no way his mutation tore down that building, my hands are tied.”

No point offering telepathic evidence; it would be plain to anyone that Charles isn’t unbiased, and so he lets out a slow breath and says, “He didn’t do anything to contribute to that mess outside, I can assure you, but I understand why you need to be thorough. Erik was helping to dig out the basement where there are students trapped with one of the teachers, you’ll need to ensure someone takes that over. Other than that I’m afraid I can’t feel any minds still living.”

Horrifying to say it so calmly, and Charles swallows down his emotion forcibly, making himself stay in control -- the last thing Erik needs right now is for Charles to lose his cool and make it more difficult to get him free. No doubt Erik will be blaming himself for this, angry at the police and at Hellfire and everyone else, too, and he’ll need Charles to be calm and in command of himself to keep things on an even keel.

“That’s that, then,” the Captain says, slapping his clipboard shut and getting to his feet. “The feds will be here soon, and they’ll want to talk to you too, I imagine. I’ll have your kid brought over here for the time being, until we sort out who’s going where for questioning.”

“Thank you, Captain.” Charles nods, and the man leaves the tent at a brisk pace, off to commandeer some officers to work on clearing the basement doors.

It’s not long before two officers bring Erik inside, and Charles can hear cameras flashing and people speculating already at the sight of him in handcuffs -- people are already tweeting about it and spinning wild accusations about Erik’s involvement, ones that make Charles wince, knowing how unpleasant the fallout is likely to be, even when Erik is proven innocent. “Hi,” he says, as Peter ducks in after them, camera in hand. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” Erik says, taking the folding chair next to Charles, Peter on Charles’ other side. His wrists are bound in front of him rather than behind his back, at least -- maybe they assume, with the suppressor bands, Erik won’t be able to get them off. “They think they’ll let me go once the feds get here to confirm. Peter’s got photos from earlier today proving we weren’t anywhere near the crime scene, and it looks like the threats that were sent about blowing up a human school to protest that new segregation law came from somewhere out of state.”

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Charles says, and instead of touching Erik’s cheek like he wants to he settles for resting his hand on Erik’s knee, giving it a small squeeze. “You did everything right, Erik. I’m proud of you, even if I wish you’d run away from danger for once in your life.”

“To be fair,” Peter says, leaning forward in his seat, “I was the one who started running first. My bad. Sorry, Charles.”

“We got two of them, but Creed got away.” As much as he’s still furious over the injustice of being in handcuffs, it’s nearly overshadowed in Erik’s mind by his fury at that simple fact, his brows pressed into a scowl and his gaze directed outside the tent, at the SWAT van where they loaded the Hellfire agents.

“Thank God he ran off instead of attacking again,” Charles murmurs, blanching with sudden horror at the thought of Creed’s coming back at Erik again, at Charles being unable to stop him.

Even if it would have been awful, Charles can’t help but think it would have been good riddance to bad rubbish, had Creed died; even if he’d just been caught and forced to stand trial for his crimes it would be better than this, but with him in the wind Charles knows Creed won’t suffer the way he made Erik suffer, almost two years ago now, or the way he’s made others suffer through his violent rampages, the hundreds of parents now bereft of their children, crushed under the rubble outside. Charles can’t help but be aware of it all, unable to tear his attention away -- it’s horrific, feeling and seeing the teams as they’re digging out the bodies of the students who were trapped by the attack, murdered for no reason but madness.

“I’m proud of you,” he says again in lieu of anything more profound to say, wanting Erik to know that he knows how important this is to him, but unable to really express it when distracted by all the pain outside.

Erik glances at him and says nothing, but at least Charles knows he heard. He’s remembering meeting Creed in that derelict apartment building in the South Bronx, the way he tried to order Creed down and the way he failed.

Erik should never have been in that position in the first place, Charles thinks, but doesn’t say, because it won’t help anything now. Instead he squeezes Erik’s knee again, and they sit quietly like that until the FBI to arrive and clear Erik to leave.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: mass death/child death


	43. Forty-three

_Charles_

Peter leaves shortly after the attack on the school, once the FBI and the police are happy with his statement -- he’ll probably have to come back to provide further testimony at some point, given that he was as involved as Erik was in both the counterattack and helping clear some of the wreckage. Still, he doesn’t have the same history as Erik, so it’s easier for the law to see him as a foolhardy but brave bystander.

It’s good to have the apartment back to themselves, after that, and Charles feels more relaxed not having to worry if they’ll be caught out, but at the same time things still aren’t quite right between him and Erik. Erik is reserved at odd moments, darkly contemplative, and as much as Charles tries to lighten things -- putting up their Christmas decorations with lights and tinsel everywhere, and an enormous real tree that the delivery men have to haul up the back stairs of the building, it being too big for the elevator -- it doesn’t seem to shift Erik’s strange moods, where it feels like he’s trying to change how he feels about Charles by sheer willpower, affectionate one moment and standoffish the next.

A month or so after Peter leaves, Charles is in his home office writing up some case notes when he gets the email he’s been expecting for the past twenty-four hours, like waiting for a poison ivy rash to appear.

> Charles,
> 
> It would feel disingenuous to call you ‘dear’ after we’ve been at odds so long, however I felt I must write to you to thank you for so kindly hosting Peter at your home these past three weeks. He is outside of our disagreement and a very promising young man, so I do appreciate your unbending enough to fulfil your ‘familial’ obligations.
> 
> I heard of course on the news about the attack on that Manhattan school, and that Erik and Peter and I believe you yourself were involved; it is truly shocking that people would go so far, and yet I suppose it is only to be anticipated when such prejudiced laws keep getting passed. Perhaps it is the only way people will listen; however I would appreciate it if any future students of mine who may end up in your care were kept away from acts of terrorism. I take my guardianship very seriously as you well know. I’m sure you are very invested in your ward as well. Deeply so.
> 
> In any case, I hope that in the near future you will allow me the small courtesy of returning the favor and caring for Erik in return. I really do feel he has great promise, and I should hate to see it wasted, stifled, shoved under a bushel by well-meant intentions that would only serve to extinguish his light too soon.
> 
> Your old mentor,
> 
> Elias Braden-Newell  
>  Geofferey B. Tobias Distinguished Professor of Mutant Studies  
>  Professor of Social Psychology  
>  The University of California at Berkeley

Charles reads the email with pinched lips, knowing full well that he should take every potential slight as one in fact; Elias rarely minces words, and he never implies anything he doesn’t mean to. Once he’s scanned through it twice he moves to delete it, but before he can Erik comes in behind him, laptop in his arms.

“I got an email from Elias,” Erik says, laptop floating down to rest on the desk next to Charles’. His gaze lingers on Charles’ computer screen over his shoulder. “He invited me to come stay with him over spring break.”

That must be what Elias had meant by ‘returning the favor’. “That’s nice,” he says, though without inflection, since there’s nothing he can say to that. “Do you want to go?”

Erik hums out something nondescript, hands coming to rest on Charles’ shoulders, then sliding down his chest as Erik bends over to look at Charles’ monitor properly, reading the email. His cheek is soft against Charles’, their temples tilted together. 

“I think so,” he says at long last, fingertips trailing against Charles’ stomach. “Perhaps not the whole time, though.”

Charles sighs, disappointed both at Erik’s wanting to go and at his utter failure to react to Elias’ unpleasantries, but it’s hardly a surprise, nowadays; hell, Erik probably agrees with Elias that Charles is keeping Erik from being the brilliant mutant supremacist he could be. “What does he have planned?” he asks, trying not to sound bitter. “He already showed you the school.” It’s not as if this is some -- some _joint custody_ arrangement, where Elias gets Erik on holidays and Charles has to accept it like some abandoned spouse trying to tolerate their child’s love of their other parent. Elias has no claim here, and the implication, even if only in Charles’ mind, makes him feel jealous and sick. “Maybe you can drive around in his Lexus and tell humans they suck together. It’ll be heartwarming.”

A sharp flare of irritation in Erik’s mind, at that; Erik withdraws, taking a step back away from Charles’ seat. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, Charles.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, trying for a conciliatory tone without turning around, the muscles between his shoulders tense and unhappy. “That was unfair of me. I didn’t mean to snap at you, he just -- Elias literally just sent me an email blaming me for you and Peter being involved in the terror attack, implying that we’re too close, and outright saying that I’m smothering your potential. I’m not exactly well-disposed toward him right now.”

“Well, you already knew he’s an asshole,” Erik says bluntly, though he does reach out to grasp the back of Charles’ neck, squeezing lightly. “Even so. I’m not going to let either of you use me as a weapon against the other. I don’t want to be caught in the middle of this. Understood?”

The tone Erik uses is fine, not annoyed or irritated or bitchy, but It’s still galling, the implication that Charles is being unreasonable by showing his distaste for Elias openly for once instead of trying to hide it. His insides clenching with frustration, Charles stiffens, trying to control his expression. It’s all he can do to keep from snapping again. “I have never used you against him,” Charles says, his hands tightening in his lap. “I’ve been more than accommodating, as you well know, given the way he’s trying to turn you against me and the way you seem to listen to him. If you want to go then that’s fine, it’s your choice, Erik. But don’t expect me to pretend to like it. It would be disingenuous when we both know I can’t stand the man.”

“He isn’t turning me against you,” Erik says, a little more firmly this time. “I won’t deny he’s trying, but he isn’t succeeding. I told him the same thing when I was in California as I’ll tell you. I’m not a prize you’re competing to win.” Erik’s hand drops from the back of Charles’ neck. “That’s all.”

Oh, that is it. Stung, Charles turns in his seat, the hurt flashing through him like a bolt of lightning.

“Then don’t talk to me about him, because the fact you’re willing to let him try says everything, really, doesn’t it,” Charles says, looking Erik right in the eyes, nothing submissive about him at all. He refuses to lie for Erik’s comfort that Charles isn’t deeply hurt by it, that Erik can so easily set Elias’ behavior aside when Erik claims to love Charles, to want him to be happy, and yet keeps doing this. “If you want to go to California then that’s your prerogative. You’ll be of age in five months and then you won’t even need me to sign forms for you.”

Erik takes another step back, his arms coming up to cross over his chest, fingers digging into his own skin. The sharp lash of anger in Erik’s mind sparks electric in Charles’ sense of him, a sudden heat burning in the air between them. 

“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing,” Erik says, mouth pressing out into a thin line.

“It’s a good thing,” Charles says, the words stinging even more sharply -- that Erik would throw their respective ages back in his face ... “Then you can just go to California when you want to and I won’t have to hear about it and sign off on it.” He turns back to his desk, unable to keep his expression under control any more. The implication that he doesn’t want Erik to be of age, that he prefers him underage, cuts deeper than Erik’s betrayal over Elias.

“How refreshing,” Erik says coldly, “that you might let me out of your sight.” 

He turns, goes -- Charles hears the click of his heels on the floor as he stalks out of the office and into the gallery, and he has to fight himself not to say something worse, not to bring Erik back to have everything out -- to set what is already smoldering between them on fire, turning embers into a conflagration they may not both come out of.

Charles leans back into his chair with a huff of breath, teeth gritted, feeling the back of his neck prickling -- even though he knows Erik isn’t watching him, he still feels exposed, like the argument might start up again at any moment. It’s not about Charles’ feelings about Elias, though he hates him. It’s about the fact that as much as Erik claims to have told Elias to stop bitching about Charles, he’s taken it in and he’s processed it and it’s there, between them, poisoning everything. It’s about the fact that Charles knows Erik thinks the same as Elias does about mutants and humans and about their relative importance, and that no matter what Charles says, Erik was always going to make those same bad choices, but now that Elias is involved he can only serve to magnify that until Charles can’t make excuses for Erik any more -- can no longer pretend that their differences aren’t greater than the things that draw them together.

If they don’t get caught out, and things continue this way, Charles is one hundred percent certain that some day Erik will do something awful, and Charles will have no choice but to end things.

It takes him a long time to cool down, every muscle in his body tense and unhappy, sat rigidly in his desk chair with a pen clasped so tightly between his fingers that Charles is amazed it doesn’t crack. When he’s finally calm, though, Charles knows that at some point they’re going to need to speak again, and he’ll be damned if he’s forced to apologize when he knows he’s right.

So instead he lays down his pen, takes a deep breath, picks up his current novel and walks into the den where Erik is sitting reading. Without saying a word Charles moves around to the other end of the sofa and sits, curling his legs up and opening his book to the marked page.

They sit there in tense silence like that for a long time, the only sound that of their turning pages and the shift of weight on the sofa when Erik adjusts his posture. It must be hours, Charles nearly at the end of his book, before Erik tilts his down and looks over to him and says, “Do you want something particular for dinner?”

“Not really,” Charles says after a moment spent loosening his tongue, unused now to speaking -- his mouth is dry. “Are there options?”

“Well,” Erik says, “there’s lamb stew, or shepherd’s pie, or I can make meat-stuffed peppers. Mostly: there’s lamb, and I need to use it somehow.”

Charles doesn’t want to rock the boat again, so he just says, “Shepherd’s pie sounds good. Thank you,” and looks back down at his book, though he’s not reading any more. He wonders what else would be appropriate, doesn’t want to come across as if he’s forcing himself to be polite. “I liked it when you put cheese on the top last time.”

“I can do that,” Erik says, and he marks his spot in his book, setting it aside and pushing up from the sofa, stretching his arms overhead. “It’ll be ready in an hour. If you have time to make a salad to go with it, I’d appreciate it.”

“I think I can manage that,” Charles says, getting to his own feet -- it would feel natural here, normally, to duck in for a quick kiss, but not right now.

Even if Charles can’t fix their relationship, he can at least fix a salad.

*

The next day, finally, there is some good news. This, at least, Charles knows what to do about. It helps him to vent some frustration, too, to take out a poison pen on people who utterly deserve it.

>   
>  **CEREBRO**  
>  Tuesday 18th February
> 
> **Hellfire Club sent down below (to jail that is)**  
>  Yesterday as I’m sure you’ve heard on every media channel known to man, the Hellfire Club’s captured officers were finally sentenced after four long years on trial in the Netherlands for their crimes. Now presumably en route to the new mutant-only US Federal Penitentiary on Riker’s Island in New York, these six are finally going to face justice for what they did -- if anything can ever balance the scales of their horrendous rap sheets.
> 
> This is a long-awaited outcome to something we’ve all known since before they were even arrested -- that these people are evil, and have to be locked away for the good of the rest of us who don’t want to murder and rape and destroy for the sake of destruction and claim it for a cause that doesn’t want our own face to become its poster child.
> 
> People talk about history being written by the victors, and terrorists becoming freedom fighters when they win but savages when they lose. That’s often true, but given what has come out over these years of the true extent of the Hellfire Club’s activities, I don’t think anyone can truly claim they fought for a just cause.
> 
> These were no Che Guevaras, no Malcolm Xs. These were people who looked down on those unlike them, whom they saw as lesser, and whose sole intent and purpose was to crush those lesser beings under their feet. And now that they have been sentenced in a court of law -- one that follows rules, aimed at fairness and justice, rather than random acts of bias and hatred -- it is important that the mutant community acts to ensure that Sebastian Shaw and his merry henchmen don’t become the next t-shirt stars, martyrs to the cause they almost destroyed.
> 
> We must remember what they did, not what they said they did. Who they were, not who they wanted us to believe they were. And above all we must remember the hundreds of people who died at their hands, victims of time and place, humans and mutants both, because Hellfire didn’t discriminate when it came to making a showy gesture to prove how big their dicks were.
> 
> Remember who Hellfire really is. Not an association of freedom fighters, but a group of terrorist murderers who sought only their own glory through violence and mayhem. They’re still out there, without their old leaders but waiting to grow back, if we let them. It’s up to us to starve them of the light until they wither and die out along with the rest of the vestigial organs we have never needed.

*

_Erik_

Erik isn’t present when sentencing occurs. He finds out via television like everybody else, his reaction filmed by the Associated Press and distributed to all the major news networks. It was an easy choice, really -- Erik didn’t need the money they offered, so he had it donated to a mutant charity instead. It’s just that he didn’t want to see Shaw and the others again. Not if he didn’t have to, and if they were acquitted … well, it was unlikely, but Erik would have killed them on the spot, international television be damned. This way, all they have on camera is the look on Erik’s face when they read the verdicts, still staring at the screen even as Charles embraces him on their sofa and tangles a hand up in his hair, Erik shell-shocked and unable to look away.

There aren’t words to describe his relief, his vindication -- but he struggles to find them anyway as he stands outside the apartment building afterward, responding to an inquiry from CNN.

“I’ve seen firsthand the impact the Hellfire Club had on the world -- on infrastructure, of course, but more importantly on human lives. There’s so much destruction they’re accountable for that wasn’t even brought up at trial … not because it didn’t matter, but because a written testimony of the Hellfire Club’s crimes could fill several books. The Hellfire Club’s activities are not representative of the aims of the mutant civil rights movement. It is just and right that they should pay for their crimes.”

It’s exhausting just to say that much, the statement half-prepared and half-improvised, Erik’s hands still shaking where he has them clasped behind his back and out of sight. He’s dizzy with the metal in front of him, cameras and lights and electricity, the hum of electromagnetism a loud buzzing in his ears.

“Erik,” one woman calls from the front row, her notebook clutched in one hand, a pen in the other, “How do you really feel knowing the people who raised you will now be in jail for the rest of their lives without parole? It must be difficult to separate the two things, the people you saw as your parents and the terrorists who abused you.”

It’s a good question, a terribly apt one. Sometimes Erik misses Shaw, Azazel, Emma so much it’s a physical ache in his chest, a permanent sense of loss. Knowing he’ll never see Emma in her room, picking out a perfume -- never have Azazel bring him another book. It feels like those things happened apart from everything else, two lives lived in neighboring dimensions. 

“It is hard,” Erik says after a moment. “I loved all of them very much. In many ways I still do. Sometimes it feels like the people who did those terrible things and the people I loved weren’t the same, and I could just love the good parts of them without acknowledging the rest. And in a way I think it’s good to remember that they were capable of the same feelings and thoughts as we all are. They aren’t monsters. That’s very important. No one is born a villain or a hero. All of us have the capacity to do evil things, and it’s up to us to make the choice to do the _right_ things, instead.”

He cuts the questions off soon after, disappearing back upstairs where they aren’t allowed to follow. The television is still on in the living room -- they’ve just played Erik’s segment, streamed live, and they have talking heads analyzing his words already. Erik shuts it off with his power.

“You did really well out there,” Charles says, coming over to stand behind Erik and wrapping his arms around his waist from behind, pulling him close. “I’m proud of you.”

“I can’t believe it’s over,” Erik says.

“It’s been a long time coming. To be honest, these trials often take even longer than this. This was relatively brief.”

Erik nods, but what he really feels is a strange sense of being untethered -- cut loose, after four years of this trial being one of the few constants in his life, tying together everything he did and everything he was. No more speculation, no more constantly seeing his childhood rehashed in the news, no more lawyers with their affidavits and subpoenas. It feels like what he imagines graduating college will be like: a wide and empty unknown, waiting to be filled with whatever he decides to put there, both promising and terrifying at the same time.

His phone buzzes in his pocket for the hundredth time and Erik reaches back between him and Charles to draw it out, glancing down at the screen. He has dozens of missed texts and calls, the most recent several being from Frank and Madelyne. Probably they both want to discuss the trial, to make sure he’s okay in their own particular ways.

“You don’t have to talk to anyone you don’t want to,” Charles says, and he lets go of Erik’s waist to come around and stand in front of him, reaching out instead to rest his hand on Erik’s upper arm. “Even to me. If you want to call them, or talk about it, you can. But you don’t have to if you need time.” He smiles, soft and warm and reassuring, so much more like Dr Xavier, now, than he’s been in a long while. “Whatever you need.”

“Thanks,” Erik says. He smiles back at Charles, although the expression feels a little forced, not-quite-right. “I’m fine. This is a good thing.”

“It’s sad, too, though,” Charles says, gently. “Whoever and whatever else they were, they were still your family. It’s okay not to feel one hundred percent happy or sad or angry right now. It’s normal. They weren’t just strangers to you, the way they are to most of us. It’s easy for me to just be happy about it, but that’s not how you have to feel.”

Erik nods, trying not to give into the strange urge to crush his phone in his hand, reaching instead to slip it back into his pocket. “I think the worst part,” he admits after a long silence, the words coming as function of a decision to tell Charles, thinking of it like a tiny door opening in his heart, willing to offer Charles entrance, “is that there’s nothing I can do, now, to … make it up to them. I used to think one day, I’d do something so good, so _well_ that they’d decide to love me properly. Shaw wouldn’t need to punish me anymore, I could be a real officer, their real child, and I wouldn’t have to keep fighting so hard all the time.”

He attempts a small smile, but it feels broken on his mouth. “I know that was never really a possibility, but it only now feels like it.”

“Mmm. I can understand that,” Charles says. “It’s easier, sometimes, to convince ourselves that if we try harder, if one day we’re perfect, things will magically change and we’ll get what we want. Rather than accepting that they won’t. It’s difficult sometimes to let that go, even when we know better. There’s no shame in it.”

It feels like it’s been so long -- years, maybe -- since Erik reached out and embraced Charles, but he does it now, pulling him closer and wrapping him up in his arms, Erik’s chin resting at the part of Charles’ hair and Charles’ arms coming around him in turn, closing around Erik’s waist. His heart beats a little faster for it, Erik feeling warm from within when he thinks about the option of having this -- Charles, this affection, so much better and more freely given than anything Shaw had to offer -- for the rest of his life. 

“I tried to fight for your love like that, once,” Erik murmurs, his eyes shut, Charles’ hair smelling like lavender. “Do you remember? But you never made it so I had to earn it. You loved me already.”

He can feel it when Charles smiles, more a sensation in his mind than anything else, tentative and tender. “You don’t have to be perfect for me. You know that. I’ll love you no matter what you do. Even if I don’t like it.”

Erik nods, and the motion brings his lips down close to Charles’ ear; he goes with it, kissing him there, then lower, at his neck. Charles’ body shivers lightly in his arms when Erik’s teeth catch his lobe, and Erik draws back to press their mouths together, so badly wanting now to strip away all the barriers remaining between them and merge somehow into one being, one body and mind and heart. He’s never wanted any person more than he wants Charles, in every way that’s possible.

“I want you,” Erik confesses, his hands moving lower on Charles’ hips, “upstairs.”

“All right,” Charles says, tilting his forehead forward against Erik’s. “If you want to talk about it some more, though, now or later, just say. You know I’ll listen.”

But Erik doesn’t want to talk right now. He shows Charles exactly what he wants, taking him apart piece by piece, until both of them are exhausted and satiated and spent, pulling their clothes on again in the aftermath. Like this it’s so easy to forget about everything else; to look at Charles and just see _Charles_ , not Charles who is also his guardian, or Charles who turns thirty-one this spring, or Charles who may have bought from Erik something that shouldn’t have been for sale.

“It’s almost time for lunch,” he says, instead of anything important, pushing away the fog of the trial. “Do you want anything?”

“Sure.” Charles smiles, stretching his arms out over his head, shirt riding up enough to show a hint of pale belly. “I’d suggest we ordered in, but the poor delivery guy would never get past the mob outside.”

So Erik makes them sandwiches instead, simple ones they eat at the kitchen table with glasses of orange juice. Erik doesn’t want to dwell on the trial, but he can’t distract himself with anything else, either, so after a while he gives in and calls both Frank and Madelyne back, giving his usual assurances that he’s fine, everything’s fine. Madelyne doesn’t believe him, of course, and the only thing Frank says is, “Come over. I have pizza and video games.”

It’s something to do, so Erik goes, using Charles’ sympathetic telepathic help to skirt the media and make it downtown to the subway station. Not that being on the train is much better -- he’s too recognizable, now, and even if no one says anything to him his mutation still means he notices when the girl opposite him sneaks a photo on her iPhone. 

Things are quieter in Morningside Heights. It’s mostly residential area up here, people going about their daily business with little concern for whom they pass on the sidewalk. Erik’s a little envious, even though Frank’s apartment itself is tiny and dimly-lit, too far away from the rest of the city and the pulse of its cultural and intellectual centers to hold much personal draw for Erik. 

“Hey,” Frank says when he opens the door, his free hand scratching the side of his nose. His hair is scruffy, as if he’s only just got out of bed, even though he’s been texting Erik for a couple of hours. “Come in. You’re too famous to be on my stoop, people will think I’m a hooker.”

Erik grins, the expression reflexive and refreshing, and steps in when Frank leans aside to let him past. The promised pizza boxes are stacked up on Frank’s coffee table, X-box controllers a tangled mess on the floor in front of Frank’s tiny TV. The papers scattered on the table and sofa are homework, Erik imagines, although how Frank navigates that ocean is beyond him. Frank follows him in, and Erik waits until Frank has settled himself down on the sofa before he takes a seat on the floor nearby and tilts his head back against the seat cushions, letting out a soft breath.

“So,” he says after a second. “What’s your hourly rate?”

“Depends,” Frank says, his legs shifting wider on the sofa until his knee brushes Erik’s shoulder. “Mondays and Tuesdays I take two bags of Fritos, Wednesday Thursday three boxes of Goldfish crackers, and weekends are root beer. Gotta keep stocked up.”

“Too bad. I only have ramen.”

“Be more considerate next time, this bod doesn’t come from eating ramen,” Frank says, and he gestures up and down himself like he’s showing off the goods, grinning at Erik. “Too much salt, not enough good American trans fats.”

Erik gives Frank a bit of a wry look and makes a disbelieving noise. “Because there’s an ounce of fat on you … where, exactly?” 

But he does push himself up enough to snag one of the pizza boxes off the table, drawing it into his lap to check the contents: four cheese on a thin crust. Frank really does know him too well. It’s still warm enough that Erik can’t justify getting up to stick it in the microwave, so he eats it like that, over the closed cardboard box. Frank helps himself to the other box, a deep dish meat feast. If Erik ate that he’d weigh twice as much by the end of it, but Frank puts it away like he’s got a black hole inside him, and drinks almost a litre of soda with it.

Erik’s phone keeps buzzing in his pocket -- what must be the twentieth time just since he’s arrived. At last he tugs it out and unlocks it with his fingertip, glaring down at the long list of unread messages, half of them from media outlets or strangers who somehow got ahold of his phone number. 

“Someone must have leaked my number online,” Erik mutters, scrolling through. “I have -- Christ, I have _four hundred and thirty-two_ unread messages.”

Frank snorts and leans forward to look over Erik’s shoulder. “Shee-it. So you do. Give it here, I’ll tell them to fuck off for you. Vultures.” He holds out his hand, curling and uncurling his fingers, grabby; Erik passes the phone off to him and reaches for another slice of pizza instead. 

“Tell them you’re my handler,” Erik says, smirking a little. 

“I’ll tell them I’m your hooker,” Frank says, and starts tapping.

It takes him a while; Erik has finished his pizza by the time Frank gives the phone back, his meal accompanied by the swooshing sound of messages and emails flying away into the ether, Frank’s big fingers careful on the touchscreen. When he’s finally done he drops the phone back into Erik’s lap and says, “There, now nobody will want to talk to you ever again. Though you might have a new reputation for blaspheming.”

“I can live with that.”

Erik does double-check his outbox just to make sure Frank didn’t send anything particularly egregious, but there’s nothing too risky said to anyone whose opinion really matters. And Frank left the media’s messages untouched for Erik to deal with later.

“Man, you should get a blog, or a tumblr or something, like the President,” Frank says, settling back into the sofa, which groans under his weight. “Then you could talk to your adoring public directly instead of having to go through the media leeches. ‘Hello, my children, today we are going to learn about pipe bombs and how not to lose an arm!’”

Erik laughs out loud, although in the same instant he can’t help thinking it’s actually a really good idea -- he’s been in the public eye ever since he started being _allowed_ out in public, and until recently the narrative has been constructed entirely by people other than himself. His _Nylon_ interview has served to offset that some, but there’s nothing wrong with a two-pronged approach.

“Yes, okay,” Erik says, probably surprising Frank at least a little. “Can you show me how to make one, then?”

Frank shrugs. “Sure. Grab my laptop and we’ll set you one up.”

Erik’s actual name is already in use as some kind of appreciation blog on tumblr, so he sets up a variant and leaks the URL on twitter. Frank collaborates with him on an FAQ, which Erik is pretty sure will be the single most important page on his entire blog, if only so he can answer what has so far been the most burning question on people’s mind, “How many times did you get fucked per day as a kid?” with “One less time than Shaw’ll get fucked per day in prison.”

“What’s your star sign? Subs love that mess,” Frank says, entering a new line.

“Taurus.”

“What? No way. You’re such an Aries,” Frank says, but he types it in anyway. “Favorite color?”

Frank mostly wants Erik to fill out the ‘personal interest’ sorts of questions, which Erik indulges for a while, but eventually he makes Frank give it over so he can talk about politics and separatism and his opinions on the trial.

“It’s strange to think I’ll never see them again,” Erik says, after they’ve finished with the blog. Frank ended up moving to the floor with him after a while, and Erik has stretched out there with his head resting on Frank’s thigh, a few coins idly spinning overhead, directed by Erik’s fingers. Frank’s muscular leg isn’t the most comfortable pillow, but something about the human warmth is nice right now, like a reassurance that just because Hellfire’s gone doesn’t mean everyone is.

Frank grunts. “I’m sure the prison will have a conjugal trailer out back if you get a hankerin’ for nostalgia,” he says, blunt as always. “Shaw probably put you down as his prison wife.”

Erik flicks one of the coins against Frank’s temple, eliciting a gratifying ‘Ow!’ “You know what I meant.”

“Yeah,” Frank says, “I do. But it’s not like you’ve been going round for brunch every Sunday the past few years. They were already gone, if you don’t count funtimes in the Netherlands getting fucking shot at by Creed and all them.” He shrugs. “I guess it’s hard for me to see it as a bad thing. They weren’t good for the cause, they were as bad as toddlers waddling around smacking things to get a reaction.”

“Maybe, but they were still my parents.” Erik spins the coins up higher, higher, near to the ceiling. “I think a part of me always expected they’d just get acquitted and I’d end up going to live with them again. Not logical, but ….”

A hand comes to rest on Erik’s chest, patting him there a couple of times, over his heart. “Yeah, I get that. Sometimes I keep expecting my father to turn up, even though I know he won’t, just because it’s what I was used to for so long. It gets ingrained.”

Erik bites his cheek to keep from pushing, there; Frank doesn’t speak about his father often, but Erik has no doubt it’s for a good reason. 

“Conditioning,” he says instead.

“Shampooing and blow-drying, too.”

Erik smiles, a little, and lets the coins drop down into the palm of his hand, then slide off onto the floor next to his hip. If he were Frank, if abuse were something he left at home when he went away to college, would he have stayed gone? Or would he have kept looking back over his shoulder -- flying back on holidays, hoping things might have changed but always knowing they wouldn’t?

“If you want,” Frank says, casual and calm, “we could always go break them out. They’ll be in New York soon. I reckon we could do it, between your powers and mine.”

Erik’s heart skips a beat.

“For what?” he says, carefully, hardly daring to think of the possibilities -- as if Frank were Charles, as if Frank could pluck them from his mind if he weren’t perfectly silent.

“I don’t know, revenge? To go on a rampage with?” Frank says, and he shrugs, the motion jiggling Erik where he’s leaning against him. “Pretty much whatever you want, I bet they’ll be in suppressor bands as well as the prison wall system.”

Erik exhales slowly, the coins on the floor inching across the carpet toward his fingertips before Erik thinks to stop polarizing the electromagnetic fields near his body. “If I did,” Erik says, “it would be to kill them. Not for any other reason.”

He can’t quite tell if Frank is serious or not. Even if he is -- well, as much as Erik would love to have his chance with Shaw, it would be too risky an endeavor with just the two of them. Oh, they could get Shaw out all right, but they’d either leave witnesses or they’d have to massacre everyone they came across.

“Something to think about, anyway,” Frank says, still sounding almost sleepy, like he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care how seriously Erik takes him. “I mean, personally, not that into the idea of a revenge killing murder spree. But up to you. I still think I’d have a shot with Emma Frost.”

Erik closes his eyes, shutting out the sight of Frank’s profile overhead and the slow circulation of the ceiling fan. The pizza isn’t quite sitting right in his stomach, possibly because he so rarely eats greasy food, tiny knots tying and untying in his gut.

“There are a lot of names on my list,” Erik says at last.

A quiet beat before Frank inhales and says, “Yeah?”

“Mmm. It wasn’t just the officers, you know. Shaw used to let people borrow me. At parties, or at other Hellfire safehouses.” Erik’s pulse is a quick throb in his temples, just a little too fast. “The safehouse we use for the fugitives? Cameras in the walls. Anyone tasked with anything important, I seduced them first. Shaw wanted the option of blackmail if things went south.”

Frank makes a noise Erik interprets as disgust. “That’s nasty. Surely not everyone took the bait, though? I mean, there’s only so many rapists out there, you’d hope.”

Erik opens his eyes; Frank’s expression is bland, but attentive, his gaze trained on Erik’s face. Hard to read. “Of course. Not everyone. But Hellfire agents aren’t exactly known for their discriminating moral judgment, so as you can imagine that was disappointingly rare.”

“Ugh,” Frank says, with a sympathetic wince. “Maybe Hellfire should have hired more gays, since you were acting subby at the time.”

“I don’t know. On one memorable occasion, I talked a gay Dom into it, too. Admittedly, I did warn him it was for blackmail, and that his only other option was to take his chances with whatever other dirt Shaw might be able to get on him.” Which, had there been no dirt to be found, the Dom in question likely would have ended up under quite a lot of it. Shaw was always more paranoid than restrained. “But in the end, he decided to take his chances with me.”

Erik recalls it vividly, if only because the Dom had gone out of his way to be careful with Erik. It wasn’t _good_ by any stretch of the imagination, and Erik was still only nine years old, but the Dom who wasn’t sexually interested in him was the first Dom to actually treat Erik like a human being. 

“Oh?” Frank’s eyebrows rise, surprised. “Is he on your hit list, too, then, if he had no choice?”

Erik’s lips tighten, the lingering ambivalence for that Dom fading fast. “Don’t kid yourself. There’s always a choice. He fucked me to save his own skin, and I doubt he gave me a second thought after that before they showed the raid on the news.” Just returned to his mission and his life, both still safely in his hands, and to hell with the child he sent back to Shaw’s keeping. Erik pushes himself upright, the coins flying from the floor back into his pocket as Erik takes in a deeper breath, one that swells his chest and presses hard against the anger that burns there. “He had a choice.”

“Mmm, I guess,” Frank says, sounding unconvinced, then sighs. “It’s all so fucked up. Like, I can kind of understand how people got sucked into Shaw’s aura, you know? Like, there’s a part of me that wants to be sympathetic. But then I also know how batshit crazy he was, so low down he could crawl up under a snake’s belly. Hellfire achieved some great stuff on the QT, but the main group was madder than a wet hen. It tainted the whole thing.”

Erik twists around to look over his shoulder at Frank, heart still throbbing in his stomach. “Of course Shaw was very charismatic. He wouldn’t have attracted followers if he hadn’t been.”

But in Erik’s opinion it isn’t an excuse for what the Hellfire Doms were willing to do to him in order to stay in Shaw’s good graces. Erik can’t imagine doing that for anyone. Not even Charles.

“Like a crazy, crazy flower to a swarm of bugs,” Frank says. “You think they’ll put him in solitary, keep him away from the other prisoners? Keep him from influencing them?”

“I don’t know. Possibly. I can never tell if the US considers that ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ or just baseline conditions for supermax security.” Erik doesn’t really care. Or -- well, that’s not true. He just doesn’t want to care. He wants to be able to think about Hellfire without feeling anything. He wants it to have happened to another Erik, in another life.

He isn’t sure he wants to talk about this anymore, either.

“I need to be getting home,” Erik says after a while, pushing himself up to his feet and letting Frank unfold after him like a shifting mountain. “Trial results don’t mean I don’t still need to do my homework.”

Frank snorts, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. “Dude, pretty sure you could get a pity A from every teacher in your school. Just saying.”

Erik shakes his head, grabbing his satchel from the floor and hitching it up over his shoulder. “I want the grades I deserve. Maybe it doesn’t matter at this point,” his college letters should be coming any day now, “but it matters to me.”

“Fair enough,” Frank says, walking over to the door, all of four steps. “Call me if you need someone to bail you out.” He smiles and nudges Erik’s shoulder with his fist, carefully, no force behind it. “Don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t.” Erik lifts his hand to grasp Frank’s wrist before he can draw his hand away, squeezing lightly. “Thanks. Really.”

Frank tips his head to one side and says, “Don’t mention it. No, really. You’ll ruin my rep.”

Rolling his eyes, Erik leaves, taking the train back down and across town and feeling -- not better, but not as strange and disoriented as he felt before, unanchored and drifting. He alerts Charles as soon as he gets off the train and is grateful just to be back in his own familiar space again as he ascends the elevator to their apartment and finds Charles waiting for him in the gallery. Home.

*

_Charles_

The next couple of weeks are strange, nothing feeling quite right but nothing explicitly wrong, either. Erik is restless, his thoughts turning often to Shaw and the others, and no matter how Charles tries to distract him, to give him other things to focus on, Erik can’t help drifting back to them, thinking about them being so close, now, on Riker’s Island, torn between wanting to see them and wanting to kill them.

Charles can understand the impulse, he really can -- if he knew Cain were in the same city as he was Charles isn’t sure he could keep from prodding the wound the way Erik is, like a tongue exploring the socket where a tooth has been lost. He’s just grateful Riker’s is shielded from telepathy as well as mutation-suppressing, so he can’t reach out and listen to Shaw’s grandiose self-importance in the middle of the night when the urge strikes him.

Still. As little as Charles wants Erik to go, perhaps it’s for the best that he gets his college acceptance letters at the beginning of March, in ones and twos, thick and thin envelopes from all over the country.

Erik is accepted to Berkeley -- of course, Elias wouldn’t have it any other way -- Stanford, Duke, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Caltech, the University of Virginia, and Carnegie Mellon. He’s not accepted to Chicago, Yale, or North Carolina, though he gets a personal note from the Chicago admissions officer saying how much they admire his tenacity and that they hope he will bear them in mind for any graduate work he might look to do in future.

“Do you know yet who you’re going to choose?” Charles asks, when they’re sitting at the long table in the library looking at all the offers laid out before them, all of them inviting Erik to attend these prestigious colleges. “I know we talked about MIT before.”

Erik shakes his head, still thumbing through one of the brochures that arrived in the mail, paging past glossy images of diverse students in cutting-edge laboratories or sprawled out on grassy knolls. “MIT is still my top choice,” he says, “but the more I hear about Stanford, the more I like them, too -- and Princeton and Duke also have good engineering programs.” He sets down the brochure, looking up at Charles. “I suppose I have to decide if I want to focus on tech or not. If I go to MIT or Caltech and decide later on I want to get involved in politics, it’ll be a little too late.”

Charles feels both his heart clench -- Duke, Stanford and Caltech are all so far away -- and a sense of relief, because Erik didn’t say the one college Charles was most dreading to hear. “Not Berkeley, then?” he asks as casually as he can, though it won’t fool Erik. Stanford and Caltech are both in the same state as Berkeley, of course, which would still mean Erik was within Elias’ relatively easy reach …

Erik does arch a brow, but at least he doesn’t comment on Charles’ obvious bias. “I think not,” he says, reaching to touch his fingertips to the envelope from Berkeley, not drawing it toward him. “The political environment there is too unpredictable. I don’t know what people would think of me. I know it’s a shallow reason, but the social aspect matters. Besides, even if I chose based off academic ranking alone, I’d still end up at Stanford, Harvard, or Princeton over Cal.”

“I think you’d be well-served by any of those schools,” Charles says, and manages a small smile, turning his head to look at the letters, proud of Erik for getting so many offers even as he wishes he could be less selfish. Feel less like he’s being left behind, no longer needed. “If you do want to keep the door open for politics, Harvard would be a very good choice. The name has such international prestige, more than the other two. And Boston is a very different kind of city from New York.”

“I don’t know,” Erik says. “Maybe.” 

He seems unconvinced, though, and after a second pushes his chair back from the table with a loud scraping noise, rising to his feet. 

“Let’s do this later,” he says. “I’m not going to decide in one sitting, anyway.”

“All right,” Charles says, and stays where he is, picking up the Harvard brochure and flicking through its thick, glossy pages, full of pictures of happy students -- nothing like the sleep-deprived caffeine-addicted cramfest that Charles is pretty sure is the reality. Still, the buildings look nice. Erik could be happy there, with room to grow into himself, out of the nest.

“Are you coming?” Erik says, gesturing at the door. “I was going to get ready for bed.”

There’s a large part of Charles that wants to sit here and brood over things, rubbing his feelings raw by looking at all these places Erik can go. It wouldn’t be constructive, though, or even cathartic, so he says, “Okay,” and gets up, following after Erik, who reaches a hand back to touch Charles’ arm, fingers lingering just briefly on Charles’ bicep before falling away.

Upstairs, Charles falls asleep facing towards Erik, close but not touching, the warmth of their bodies under the covers, drifting away to the feeling of Erik rolling onto his side, the mattress shifting.

He dreams.

He’s sitting at Erik’s feet in the den, his head leaning against Erik’s knee while Erik pets his hair; Charles sighs and turns further into the touch, and when he swallows he feels the pressure of his collar around his throat, not heavy but present, close, like the lightest of bondage tying him up, tying him to Erik’s control. Erik’s power toys with the D-ring on the front of it, flicking it upward, tugging on it, and Charles has never felt so secure, so _wanted_. He doesn’t have to worry any more.

“Good,” Erik says, and keeps stroking Charles’ hair, steady and warming Charles from the inside out, keeping him there against Erik’s knee, low and submissive. “That’s good.”

The dream pops, and Charles blinks slowly awake, his bladder prompting him from sleep; carefully he extracts himself from the clutches of the bed and goes to relieve himself, leaving the lights off, before shambling back and climbing back in beside Erik, settling down again in the warm spot. He’d hoped not to wake him but Erik’s eyes are slitted open, drooping with tiredness.

“Sorry,” Charles murmurs, and relaxes against the mattress to try and be still.

“You were projecting.”

“Mmm? Oh,” Charles says, and he feels himself flushing, a little embarrassed -- naturally this would be when Erik taps into Charles’ subconscious, rather than when he was dreaming about something entirely impersonal. “It was just a dream. Sorry if it woke you.”

Erik hums and shifts onto his stomach, arm fumbling forward to drape across Charles’ stomach, Erik’s hand still and heavy at Charles’ hip. “You don’t want that, do you?”

“Want what?”

“A collar.” Erik’s still half-asleep, his words a poorly-enunciated mumble.

The way Erik says it … Charles feels his warm flush cool, his embarrassment at being caught out dreaming about their relationship turning into something else, something potentially painful. He swallows, and says, carefully, “I don’t know… it’s not up to the submissive if the Dominant wants to collar them or not. It’s up to the Dom.”

“Don’t worry,” Erik tells him, eyes slipping shut again and his mind drawing deeper toward the murkiness of sleep. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

If Charles thought his blood had run cold before, then now he feels like he’s swallowed an iceberg. “What do you mean?” he asks in a whisper, his stomach clenching. “You wouldn’t do what to me?” He knows, though, before Erik even says,

“I wouldn’t hurt you. I wouldn’t collar you.”

It’s not as if it’s not obvious why. Erik has a bad enough history with submission itself, but his collar was the very symbol of the wrongs done against him, making it all the more pointed in his mind as an instrument of pain. And yet, the thought of never having that for himself makes Charles feel indescribably sad, his throat thick and tight. “Oh,” he says, trying to swallow around that lump. “It wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Mmm,” Erik murmurs, “It would hurt you….”

“It wouldn’t,” Charles says, but Erik is asleep, and Charles doesn’t want to wake him up just to have Erik turn around and say no again, more firmly this time, that he is never going to collar Charles, no matter what he says about their relationship being permanent.

That soon enough Erik is going to leave, and there’s every possibility that once he has, he won’t want to come back.

Charles doesn’t sleep well after that, and in the morning when he wakes up -- again -- before Erik has even started rising to the surface for the day, Charles doesn’t try to go back to sleep. Instead he lays there for a few minutes, just … watching Erik’s sleeping face, the very light dust of freckles on his cheeks, his long lashes brushing them, gingery in the creeping dawn around the edges of the curtains, the soft plump of his lower lip. It’s not a view he gets very often, Erik asleep and Charles himself awake to appreciate it. It’s a view he probably won’t get to see again if things keep going the way they have been, the slow dissolution of their connection while they both keep trying and failing to make it work.

Charles isn’t willing to let that happen. He’s risked too much, sacrificed too much of himself already, for things to fall apart that way.

He slips out of bed and pulls on his robe, carefully not waking Erik -- soothing his mind when it threatens to break free of sleep -- and pads downstairs to the kitchen, a plan in mind and a hope that he has all the things he needs to make it happen.

By the time Erik comes downstairs Charles is regretting a lot of his choices, but it’s too late to back down now, and so he simply decides to brazen it out when he feels Erik coming into the kitchen behind him, keeps whisking his bowl of batter trying to get the lumps out. “Good morning,” he says, looking over his shoulder and giving Erik a small smile.

Erik stares at him, mind a still-sleepy whirl of incredulity, appreciation, amusement all laced together and the corner of his mouth tugging helplessly upward. “Look at you,” Erik says, reaching for him to rest one warm hand on Charles’ hip, brushing a quick kiss to Charles’ floury cheek. “Have you been reading Submissives Quarterly, then?”

“No,” Charles says, flushing a little, though the approval feels good, like something he’s been missing, a chemical component slotting back into place. “I just thought I’d do something nice. Would you prefer American- or European-style pancakes?”

Erik lingers there, still touching Charles; his cock’s a little hard against Charles’ thigh, though there’s no immediate drive in Erik’s mind to do anything about it, simply turned on by the way Charles looks like this and the way skin craves contact this early in the morning. If Charles weren’t so set on making breakfast he’d think about diverting to satisfying that itch, reinforce Erik’s feelings, but that feels too … it’s too calculated, even if Charles would be happy to indulge, and so he doesn’t, just waits until Erik says, “Either one. American, with lots of butter.” 

That, at least, even Charles can do. “Okay,” he says, smiling. “I’m making eggs, too. And turkey bacon. Do you want anything else to go with it?”

“Coffee. But it looks like you’re ahead of the curve on that as well.” Erik’s power has already reached for the coffee kettle, pouring himself a cup. He steps away from Charles at last, going to retrieve it and lean against the counter as he sips at the brew, gaze still watching Charles over the rim of his mug. “What brought this on?”

Charles sets down his batter and reaches for one of the now-sizzling pans, cracking two eggs into it to start cooking. “You always cook for me,” he says, flicking some butter into the other pan to melt for the pancakes. “I was up anyway, so I thought I’d return the favor.” He doesn’t want this to be a reconciliation breakfast to Erik; this should be something nice, something to make him feel looked after, loved, to remind him how good things can be. “It probably won’t be as good as yours, though.”

“Oh, I don’t know. You certainly seem to be holding your own. Do you want me to set the table?”

“Don’t be silly, this is your treat,” Charles says, glancing at Erik with a quick smile. “Just take a seat, I’ll take care of it. I’d have brought it up to you if you’d had the courtesy to stay asleep a bit longer.”

Another small flare of affection in reaction to that, Erik’s mind all warm lights and soft edges right now, without its hidden undertows or razor blades of suspicion as he goes to settle down at the table with his coffee and reach for the morning’s paper, skipping past the Hellfire articles spread across the front few pages to read the funnies. Charles keeps cooking -- he leaves the eggs a little too long, and the pancakes take a bit of getting right, but the bacon is good, crispy and curling, and when he places the plate on the table in front of Erik it looks pretty good, all things considered, like a real breakfast cooked by a real spouse. Knife and fork and a glass of orange juice follow in short order, carefully placed for best presentation.

“There,” Charles says, fetching his own and taking his own chair across from Erik’s. 

“It looks amazing,” Erik says, completely genuine, shaking a bit of salt and pepper out over the eggs and reaching for his fork. He meets Charles’ gaze across the table. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Charles says, propping his chin up on the heel of his hand and just smiling at Erik, feeling hopeful, for once, that things are going to go his way.

*


	44. Forty-four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter

_Erik_

The dream is a memory. 

Shaw’s looking at Erik’s homework from the previous day, blue pen in hand, making corrections as Erik watches restlessly, dying to swing his legs off the edge of the bed but knowing better than to seem bored with Shaw’s presence. So instead he counts up the number of missed points as Shaw circles incorrect answers and jots down the solutions.

“You keep forgetting to carry the one,” Shaw says, pointing at the latest problem with the end of his pen. “If you don’t do that, you will never get the right answer. Do you understand how to carry a number?”

Erik’s focus condenses back down on the paper, leaning a little closer so he can look at what Shaw means. He didn’t have time to go back through and check his answers the way Shaw taught him because there was power practice after supper, then he had his French and Russian homework, then there was Essex, then there was shower and bedtime. He’s starting to wish he’d gotten up with a flashlight after everybody else went to bed.

“You take this,” Erik says, pointing at a number, “and you … put it up there?” He looks up at Shaw’s face, trying to guess if he’s right.

“That’s right,” Shaw says, and smiles at Erik, then lifts a hand to stroke it over Erik’s hair, gently, approving. “Just make sure to do it and you’ll get more answers right.”

Shaw’s happy with him, which feels good, like swallowing something warm. Erik would do anything for it to be like this all the time. He curls his toes inside his socks and asks, “What was my score?”

There’s a sudden scuff at the doorway and Victor Creed leans in, huge and filling the frame, his massive shoulders made to look even bigger by the thick tangle of his long gingery hair. “Just got in,” he says, looking between Erik and Shaw. “Usually take my turn with the kitten when I get in. Helps me relax.”

Erik’s stomach tightens, a shiver rolling under his skin -- unlike Shaw, Victor Creed is rarely nice to Erik, and Erik doesn’t want him to come in here and take over. Shaw frowns at Victor, though, his mouth pursing with displeasure. “Well, you will have to wait, Victor, as I’m busy teaching him to count instead of how to take your dick,” he says, voice utterly cold. “Or would you ask me to waste my time waiting around for you to be finished? Go away.”

Erik breathes in a tiny breath, surprised. Of course, he shouldn’t be. Shaw is Head Dom, he gets to boss everyone else around, but doesn’t he think he’ll make Victor Creed angry?

“Fine,” Victor growls, clearly displeased, but he prowls away, disappearing down the corridor.

“Now,” says Shaw. “Your score.”

Erik did well, not as good as he was expecting but not badly enough to be punished for it, which means he gets dinner tonight and the fading line of yellowish bruises on his forearm doesn’t get another added to its tail. Erik can barely appreciate it, though, because he can only think about Victor Creed and how badly he doesn’t want Shaw to leave, because Shaw leaving means Victor Creed coming back.

As Shaw folds up Erik’s homework and slips it into the inner pocket of his jacket, Erik finds himself lurching over to press his face into Shaw’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut and his hands still safe in his lap, taking tiny little gulps of the smell of Shaw’s cologne and cigarette smoke. There’s a long pause, then, silence between them and the weight of Shaw considering, before his hand rises again to rest on top of Erik’s head, heavy. 

“What’s brought this on?” he asks, stroking Erik’s hair. “I know you’ll do better tomorrow.”

“I don’t want you to leave,” Erik mumbles, and his throat feels thick like he’s going to start crying at any second. There’s no reason to cry, not really, but he feels like it all the same.

Shaw makes some wordless noise in his throat, and keeps petting Erik’s hair. “There now, sweet boy. I’m not going anywhere. We’re lying low at the moment, remember? There’s nothing to be afraid of. We’re all here together.”

Erik leans harder into him, pressing his knee and thigh against Shaw’s and his sternum against Shaw’s arm, finally giving in a little and scrambling both hands between them to cling at Shaw’s trapped hand, holding it tight. He doesn’t know what to say, because he can’t say he doesn’t want Victor Creed to come do sex to him, because he isn’t allowed to talk bad about Doms. So he just stays there, in the temporary safety of Shaw’s presence, trying to pretend it’s permanent.

Shaw indulges him for a while, his hand moving slowly, soothingly; eventually though he says, “All right, time to be a big boy. Sit up, Erik, you’re all right. Show me how brave you can be.”

Erik obeys, makes himself do it even though every fiber in his body feels like it’s steeling itself for execution. He doesn’t let Shaw’s hand go, though, gripping tighter around Shaw’s forefinger even as he keeps his gaze demurely lowered, chewing on the inside of his lower lip. “I don’t want to be a big boy,” he whispers. “I want to be bad.”

Shaw pauses, his mouth curling a little at the corner. “Oh? Is that so?” he says, and his hand slides down to the back of Erik’s neck to tug at his collar, teasingly, then not so teasing, using it to tug Erik down onto his back on the bed. This isn’t what Erik had expected, isn’t what he’d hoped for, but it’s still better than Creed so he doesn’t fight it. “Well, bad boys get what they deserve,” Shaw says, and with a smile he reaches for Erik’s pants to pull them down and flip him onto his stomach.

Erik stares at the expanse of the bed stretching out in front of him, the jumble of pillows at the headboard and the book he’s been reading laid open where Erik put it down for school. It’s on its stomach, too. He twists to look over his shoulder at Shaw, who is unbuckling his own belt. “Are you going to fuck me?” he asks quietly.

Shaw’s smile widens, and he runs a hand down Erik’s back, over the dip of his spine and then to cup his ass cheek, pulling it aside. “Yes,” he says, and spits onto Erik’s asshole. “You did say, my dear, that you wanted to be bad.”

Erik’s confused, and he thinks if he keeps asking questions Shaw will get angry because Erik is a stupid boy, so he just squirms when Shaw touches him and tucks his arms under his chest, hands curled toward one another and safe under his weight. Shaw makes a soft noise when he presses into Erik, one that contrasts with the sharpness that threatens to tear out of Erik’s throat. He can feel Shaw’s cock all the way up in his lungs as Shaw fucks him, body shifting and moving against Erik’s back, the sound of both their breath so loud in Erik’s ears while Erik hugs himself with both arms and just waits for it to be over with. 

Shaw has one hand braced on the bed and the other on Erik’s hip, keeping him in place, thumb digging into Erik’s buttock; he doesn’t say anything, just grunts a little from time to time, and when he comes it’s a hot wet spurt inside Erik’s hole, stinging his raw channel as it trickles deeper inside him. Erik imagines he can feel it seeping into his bloodstream and traveling all the way through his entire body, pumping through his heart and blanketing his brain. 

The bed stops moving, headboard ceasing its unrelenting tattoo against the wall. For a few moments Shaw is a heavy weight atop him, crushing Erik down against the mattress and swallowing him in the black heat beneath his body. Finally, though, Shaw draws back and his cock pulls out of Erik’s ass, metal zipper a bright line in Erik’s awareness as Shaw puts himself away.

“Do you feel like being a better boy now?” he asks, patting Erik’s ass.

Erik doesn’t move, clutching at his opposite arms still, as curled into a ball as he can be without moving his bottom half. It hurts, a tense throb that only seems to get worse as the seconds pass, but it’s not as bad as it could be, Erik knows. He doesn’t want to look at Shaw so he keeps his face tucked down against the bedspread as he says, “I was good.”

“Very good. A very good boy.”

Erik waits until he can hear the sound of Shaw’s footsteps leave, retreating down the hall, before he unfurls enough to try to grasp with clumsy hands at his jeans to pull them back on. His legs shake, like jello, ass leaking onto the duvet, but he gets the jeans on just as he hears Shaw’s voice from the living room, “He’s all yours.”

Heart pounding, Erik slips off the edge of the bed and darts quickly over to his closet, opening the door and ducking inside then pulling the door shut again behind him. He crouches there in the darkness, knees drawn up to his chest, watching with bated breath through the crack between the door and the wall. He can’t see much -- just a sliver of his bed -- but if he moves his head he can get a better glimpse of the room. His stuffed lamb on the floor near the bookshelf. The bedcovers all mussed up and not neat anymore. Erik’s book, still open near the pillows.

Victor’s footsteps are unmistakable on the creaking floorboards, heavier than anyone else in the house. “Little boy, come out before I come to find you.”

Erik bites his cheek and tips his head down lower, hiding his mouth beneath the hills of his knees and watches as Victor’s shadowy bulk moves around to check behind and then beneath his bed. There’s a rumble like distant thunder that Erik realizes after a moment is a _growl_.

“I do not like to have to look for you,” Victor says, and he turns towards -- towards the _closet,_ and of course it’s the only other place Erik could be, nowhere else to go. Victor walks over to it with slow deliberation and crouches down in front of it, putting his eye to the crack. “Are you going to come out, kitten?” he asks, staring balefully at Erik.

Erik’s stomach tightens again and he shakes his head, mouth dry and nails digging into his shins. He can see the moment Victor loses control of his anger, because his face crinkles up in a snarl and he _wrenches_ the door open, his hand grabbing hold of Erik’s ankle and then dragging him out of the closet on his back, dangling half in the air.

Erik screams, startled, and the sound of his own voice scares him into a sudden surge of fear that makes it all the worse, Erik crying and kicking at Creed with all he has, both hands trying to claw at the floor to pull himself back but failing, failing. “Stop! Let me go let me _go!_ ” One of Creed’s sharp nails cuts into Erik’s ankle and he screams again, struggling to get free. A part of him knows he’s making it worse, that he’s six and too old to throw a tantrum, but now that he’s started he’s dedicated to it. So he fights like he doesn’t care if Shaw lets Victor kill him after.

Creed just lifts him higher, and higher still, until Erik is entirely off the ground and almost eye-level with Creed. “Are you going to be a good boy or not?” Creed snarls, and throws Erik bodily onto the bed.

There’s no point in running, not with a wall behind him and all the rest of Hellfire between him and the front door. But that doesn’t mean Erik can’t fight, can’t do everything in his power to keep Creed away. There are some sharp metal jacks on the floor from where Erik was playing a game with himself this morning. They fly at Victor’s face and Erik has the sharp satisfaction of feeling them slice through skin and muscle and bone, hearing Victor’s pained roar, before he’s too busy yanking up the duvet from the bed and wrapping himself up in it as tight as he can, winding himself into a ball like an animal in its shell, unable to see Victor and so maybe -- maybe -- invisible.

There are hands, though, tearing at the duvet, and _claws_ , and ripping noises as Victor rends it apart, grabbing hold of Erik and dragging him towards the edge of the bed --

\-- Erik falls, tumbling sharply toward the ground that rises up to meet him. He screams, still tangled up in the blankets and kicking, clawing, biting at everything he can reach, fighting the hands that try to touch him. _”Stop!_ ” Erik yells, the word tearing out of his throat, raw and tattered, heedless of everything but survival. “No -- stop, you’re hurting me -- _stop!_ ”

“Erik!” The voice sounds freaked out, and then there’s a pulse of artificial calm bathing Erik, washing away the panic and stilling his body where he’s laying on the floor, trapped in cloth. “Erik,” Charles says again, leaning over the edge of the bed, his hair falling down around his face. He’s bleeding, a long red gouge on his cheek and a scratch over the bridge of his nose. When he reaches down to tug on the edge of the blanket his arm is scratched up, too, and -- is that a _bite_ mark?

Erik closes his eyes, breathing in the cool bedroom air. His face is burning hot, from shame or from the tears smeared over his cheeks, salty-tasting on his lips. Charles is still tugging at the blanket and after a long second Erik shifts enough to let Charles drag it off him, exposing the entirety of Erik’s body to the open room. 

“Sorry,” Erik rasps without looking. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re all right now,” Charles says, and finally climbs down off the bed to lay on the floor next to Erik and pull him into his embrace, his arms closing warmly around Erik’s body and drawing his face in to Charles’ shoulder. “That’s all done with now. It was a memory, it won’t happen any more. I’ll kill anyone who tries.”

Erik doesn’t believe him. He doesn’t say that out loud, though, needing the comfort more than he needs to be right. So instead he lets Charles pull him in, grasping onto Charles’ body and keeping him close. It’s storming outside, and every time the thunder rolls Erik jumps in Charles’ arms, his dazed mind expecting to hear Victor Creed’s footsteps approaching.

“They can never hurt you again,” Charles says, and reaches carefully for the edge of the blankets to tug them over the pair of them, wrapping them up warmly. “Shaw is in jail, where he’ll die knowing you’re happy and he’s not. You’re with me now, here, at home. And I love you so much.” He’s still projecting, calm and reassurance and warmth, the sensations washing over Erik’s mind.

Erik tries to sink into those feelings, but it’s hard when there’s a part of him that still wants to fight, adrenaline singing through his system even if Charles keeps it from consciously affecting his brain. He tries to focus on breathing instead, counting each inhale and exhale like Shaw is going to grade him on these, too.

“I wish this wasn’t my life,” Erik whispers, barely loud enough to be heard.

“I know,” Charles murmurs back, stroking his hand down Erik’s spine, then back up, over and over. “It isn’t fair. You didn’t and don’t deserve it. You were a baby.”

Erik doesn’t know what to say to that. He was only a baby when Hellfire wanted him to be. The rest of the time he was their colleague, or their weapon, or their lover. He reads books about normal children growing up and he can’t relate to them at all. He can’t understand having two parents, having a sibling, going outside to play in the sunshine. He can’t understand falling in young love and nervously exploring each other’s bodies in secret. He can’t understand what it is to be horrified by death.

“You were a baby,” Charles says again, more firmly. “No matter what they told you you were. They stole from you, Erik -- you have the right to be mad about that. Never feel ashamed of your feelings. They’re not on you, that’s all on Sebastian Shaw and his merry henchmen.”

Erik inhales the warm smell of Charles’ skin, drifts in an ocean on the waves of Charles’ hand smoothing up and down his spine. After a while he says, “Let’s get back in bed.”

“Okay.” Charles shifts under Erik’s weight, then slowly they sit up together, Charles’ arms still around Erik though slipping loose as the blankets fall down around their waists. Charles’ poor face is streaked with blood from the gouge, which is clotting now, darkening as the blood dries. 

“I’m sorry,” Erik says again when they’re settled on the bed, touching the tips of his fingers to Charles’ cheek just aside from the injury. “Let me get a washcloth to clean this up.”

For a moment it looks as if Charles is going to argue, but then he subsides, propping himself against the pillows and saying, “Okay. Thank you.” He probably knows that Erik needs to look after him now, to shift the focus from himself. “It’s not your fault. You were asleep.”

“Even so.”

Erik gets out of bed carefully, only realizing he’s moving gingerly to avoid the pain from Shaw’s cock once he’s in the bright light of the bathroom and remembers -- that didn’t happen. Or at least, not tonight. He wets a cloth under the faucet and hurries back to bed, climbing up next to Charles and settling there at Charles’ hip. 

“This might sting,” he warns, then dabs at the cut.

“Ow.” Charles hisses, flinching, but he doesn’t pull away, even though his eyes have narrowed, the corners of his mouth turning down. “We should … probably put some antiseptic on it, too.”

“Clean, first. Stay still.” Erik tries again, going slowly, just getting the dried blood wet again before he tries to clean it off Charles’ uninjured skin. It’s slow-going but eventually Erik gets there, exposing the thin dark line scraped down Charles’ cheek. It’s not as deep as Erik worried it would be -- it probably won’t scar, and it doesn’t need stitches, but it will look terrible for a week or two.

Charles has his teeth gritted, but he still manages to say, voice tight, “It’ll scare my patients into obedience, at least,” and to smile, a little, though it pulls on the injury and makes him hiss all over again.

“And here?” Erik asks, lifting Charles’ forearm, where the skin is still flushed from Erik’s bite and there’s a slow-blooming bruise, possibly from being hit.

Charles looks down at it, and lets out a long, slow breath before offering his wrist to Erik, letting his hand fall back, lax and submissive. “I’ll wear long sleeves,” he says, his eyes soft and tired. “It’ll be fine, Erik. I’ll heal.”

Erik nods, and after a long moment he leans over and brushes his lips against the exposed underside of Charles’ wrist, where his skin is still pale and unmarred. 

“I never want to hurt you,” he says, thinking of all the Doms who could never even promise that much to him. The Doms he worried he’d become when he found out his true dynamic. “Not even on accident.”

“I know,” Charles says, and his other hand lifts to stroke fingertips along Erik’s cheek, light and careful. “Even when sometimes I want you to. But that’s okay. I know you’d never hurt me. I trust you.” His hand pauses on Erik’s temple, drawing little circles there. “I love you so much. I’d wear your collar if I could. It’s not -- you just happen to be young. It’s not because you’re young. It’s as well as.”

It sounds sincere, right now, and Erik believes him in this moment. It doesn’t matter if it’s because it’s true, or because Erik wants it to be true. 

“One day I’ll be old,” Erik tells him, his hand finding Charles’ knee and slipping up his thigh then resting there, Charles’ muscle hard through the flannel. “I’ll be forty, with wrinkles.”

“I’ll be fifty-three,” Charles says, “and probably bald, based on all those family portraits. I’ll always be wrinklier than you.”

“Good. I have a thing for old bald men.”

Erik kisses him carefully, not wanting to upset the wound on Charles’ face. Charles still tastes faintly of toothpaste from before-bed and Erik sucks on his lower lip, his other hand abandoning the washcloth to curve around Charles’ waist. Charles leans into it, embracing Erik in return, and sighs, a sense of his tiredness and worry mixing with affection as he kisses Erik back, the reassurance of physical touch helping to settle Erik a little more.

After a while he shifts closer, Charles yielding even further back into the pillows, and Erik leans in only to realize that Charles is hard, the front of his boxers tented away from his body.

“Don’t worry about that,” Charles murmurs, his hips shifting restlessly now that he’s been caught out, and moves his hand to hide himself, as if it might make Erik forget. 

Erik might not have been expecting it, but he recovers quickly, pressing just a little harder into the kiss and then shifting, rising up to swing one leg over to the other side of Charles’ hips and straddle him. “Be good,” Erik orders him as he settles his weight down atop Charles’ lap and rolls his hips forward, against Charles’ hand still cupping his cock and feeling Charles start to harden against his ass.

“We don’t have to,” Charles murmurs, sinking back against the pillows and biting his lower lip as Erik rubs over him, his breath coming out around it in a shudder. His hand turns between them, though, and curls around Erik’s erection, letting the motion do most of the work. “I just want you to feel better. Is there anything you want in particular?”

Erik grits his teeth and rocks forward again, chasing that friction, chasing … oblivion. 

“Make me forget,” he breathes out. It isn’t an order, just … a request. Erik’s nails press into Charles’ nape, keeping him close. “Please. I want to forget everything.”

Charles looks torn, his expression crumpling a little, and he says, “Erik … I can’t do that. Your memories are what make you you. If you forget them … there wouldn’t be a you left.”

Erik lets out a soft breath and shuts his eyes, not able to look at Charles like this, one of his hands curling a fist in Charles’ hair. “I don’t care. I don’t want there to be.” He grinds down harder on Charles’ lap, leaning him further against the pillows and the headboard, his head tilting forward. “Please.”

“If I made you forget everything, you’d just be an empty shell,” Charles says, sounding almost choked up now, his hands completely still, and even his cock is softening under Erik’s weight. “I can’t, Erik. I can’t do that.”

“Then just for now,” Erik says -- pleads -- begs. 

He doesn’t expect Charles to understand. He knows he’s asking the impossible. But he can’t keep going on like this, waking up every morning content only to have the memories come rushing back in like a tide, always wondering how things might have been different, always wishing he could go back in time. He doesn’t open his eyes but he reaches for Charles’ face all the same, blindly feeling for him and skimming his thumb along Charles’ cheek. 

“Just for now,” he says again, his voice sounding taut to his ears. “Just for a little while.”

But Charles shakes his head, and though his voice comes out shaky, there’s steel underneath. “No, Erik. It won’t solve anything -- you’d still have to wake up sometime. It wouldn’t help, it would only hurt you. And I won’t do that. I love you.”

“If you love me you’ll make me forget.”

Charles looks stricken, and he says, “Erik, it won’t help. Forgetting it all won’t bring back your virginity, or your childhood.”

When Erik finally looks he finds Charles’ eyes are wet, can see the shadow of himself reflected in unshed tears. He stops the motion of his hips, pausing with Charles still trapped between his thighs and his thumb so close to pressing over the cut on Charles’ face. He tips forward and rests his brow there against Charles’ forehead, wonders if Charles could ever forgive him if Erik just … ordered him to do it anyway. What would it be like, he wonders, to see the world as if for the first time?

“No, Erik,” Charles says, and now he really sounds upset, almost frightened at the prospect. His hands fall lax, yielding. “Please don’t do that. Maybe I could -- what if I could make you forget about having had sex for a little while, so you could feel like a virgin again? Would that help?”

“It isn’t the same,” Erik insists, but even that would be better than nothing -- better, it seems, than the way things are now.

“Neither will give you what you really want,” Charles says, still looking up at Erik with worried eyes. “This is as far as I’m willing to go, and -- don’t try to make me, Erik. Just trust me that I know it wouldn’t end well, okay?”

Erik doesn’t know if he can believe him. But he closes his eyes for a moment and nods anyway, one hand still holding on at Charles’ waist, knowing now better than ever how Charles is the one thing anchoring him in this life.

“All right,” Erik says. 

Charles lets out a heavy breath, then says, finally, “Okay,” and his hands move away from Erik’s body, settling out to the sides. “You should get off me, then. Lie down, maybe.”

Erik obeys, feeling better already now that Charles has agreed at least to this, the dizziness in his mind obscured by the trance-like feeling of near-sleep. Like he might close his eyes and wake up tomorrow a different person.

He settles on his side of the bed, pulling the blankets up to his hips and then twists over onto his side, facing Charles. “Like this?”

“Just like that,” Charles says, turning onto his side and looking back at Erik. “What … I’m not going to … initiate anything. But what would you rather I do if you try to start something? With me?”

It isn’t something Erik had thought about. Then again, he hasn’t thought about any of this much at all. He doubts he’ll do anything -- without his memories of Shaw and the others, why would he? -- but for Charles’ peace of mind he says, “Give me what I want, I suppose.”

Charles doesn’t look convinced. “I don’t want you to feel like I’ve taken advantage later on,” he says, fingers plucking at the fabric of the duvet. “Hell, I don’t want to take advantage. Maybe you should go to your bedroom first, and we can do this there.”

The thought of spending the night alone in his old room, with the empty sheets, Charles far away and out of reach, makes Erik feel cold. “No,” he says, reaching out to grasp Charles’ wrist in one hand, holding a little too tight. “No, I want to stay.”

“Okay,” Charles says hurriedly, “that’s fine, you can stay here. Are you ready?”

Ready for what, Erik can’t even imagine. How can he know if he’s prepared to be a different person entirely? He can’t predict the unknown -- it’s terrifying, in its way, like standing on the edge of a cliff and staring down into darkness, but it has to be better than this.

“I’m ready.”

“Okay,” Charles says again, dubiously, and tugs his hand free, placing Erik’s back on his side of the bed. “Three. Two. One … ”

“Are you planning on letting me sleep in here all night?” Erik asks.

Charles shrugs, the motion displacing the blanket so that it slides down his shoulder a little, showing a flash of skin just below the cuff of his short sleeved sleep shirt. “Do you need to?” he asks, and his voice is strange, the tone not quite right. He closes his eyes, then, hiding them from Erik. “Go to sleep.”

Erik watches him, taking advantage of knowing Charles can’t see him watching. It’s possible Charles is more upset about Erik accidentally scratching him than he let on, even if he did let Erik trail him into Charles’ own room, and Charles’ own bed, leaving his own disordered one behind. Erik would be upset, if Charles were the one who practically disfigured him during a bad dream. Erik reaches out across the space between them and touches Charles’ thigh under the blankets, pressing just his fingertips into the muscle.

“If it helps, I think a scar would look quite swashbuckling.”

“It wouldn’t go with any of my old man clothes,” Charles says, without opening his eyes, though his lips curl, just a little.

Erik inches closer under the covers, trying to keep quiet his incredulity that so far Charles is letting him get away with it. Charles must know that Erik’s interested in him. Sexually. Or at least, that Erik finds him attractive, the same way he finds George Clooney attractive, where he knows it’s never going to happen but it’s nice to think about all the same. Charles hasn’t said anything about it, though, even if Erik knows better than to think that makes him ignorant. “Are you going to go back to sleep?”

One of Charles’ eyes opens just a crack, looking at Erik from under his lashes. “I am,” he says, and reaches down to squeeze Erik’s hand before tugging it gently away from his thigh, bringing it up to rest on the bed between them. “And so are you. Go to sleep.”

“Aren’t you going to lie down?”

“All right. Picky.” But Charles shifts down in the bed, and twists to rearrange the pillows behind himself, flattening them out so he can rest his head on them. He’s laying on his side still, facing Erik, his hands now folded together near his face. “Sleep, Erik,” he says, gently, and nudges Erik with his foot, toes brushing Erik’s calf.

Erik closes his eyes, but he finds he doesn’t want to sleep. Doesn’t want to go back to that nightmare, the murky memories of his life before Charles, Shaw’s twisted affection and Victor Creed’s violent beatings. He can’t stop clinging to the present as if that would be enough to keep him here, tethered down to reality. 

He can hear Charles’ breathing, a little steadier now, and it takes a few aborted attempts for Erik to talk himself into shuffling closer again beneath the covers, moving until he’s tucked in close to Charles with his arm draped over Charles’ waist, safer in the halo of Charles’ heat and his familiar scent.

Charles pauses, but then shifts, moving one arm over Erik in return and cuddling him in against himself, letting out a soft sigh. Charles is smaller than Erik now. Cuddling isn’t quite as comforting as it was when Erik was younger, but then Erik feels differently about Charles now than he did when he was younger, too. 

He drifts like this for a while, some meaningless amount of time that passes in a grey haze before Erik becomes aware again of his continuing wakefulness and shifts, twisting and squirming around in Charles’ arms to rearrange himself with his back to Charles’ chest. Charles must still be awake because he goes with it easily, his hand moving twice on Erik’s stomach once Erik’s situated before going still.

It takes Erik a minute to realize that the growing hardness against his ass is not Charles’ hipbone.

“Go to sleep, Erik,” Charles says again, his voice very, very firm.

Erik blinks wide-eyed at the dark room, disbelief and triumph at violent war in his chest for one tense moment before he says, out loud and incredulous, “ _Really?_ ”

Charles’ hand withdraws from where it’s been draped over Erik’s body, and he rolls away onto his back, leaving Erik cold where they were snug before, away from Charles’ body warmth. “I’m human,” Charles says. “You were wriggling your ass into my crotch. It happens.” He sounds defensive, and Erik twists back over onto his other side, the motion automatically putting him pressed up alongside Charles again with his head on Charles’ same pillow, breath shifting Charles’ hair when he exhales.

“Does it?” he says, and he has that feeling in his stomach, the feeling that says he’s about to do something incredibly dangerous, and that he doesn’t care enough to stop himself. “You must be incredibly … sensitive. Or maybe the stimulus is just so overwhelming you couldn’t help yourself.” Erik smirks, watching the myriad of expressions that all flit over Charles’ face. “Which do you think it is?”

“I think you’re trouble,” Charles says, but he doesn’t sound angry. His face is exasperated, and a little fond, almost resigned, as he looks back at Erik and lifts one hand to touch his face gently. “I think you don’t know enough to know what you want. You’re just pushing all the buttons to see what happens. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but you should think about whether you really want to pursue this.”

“Maybe.” Erik doesn’t know what he’d been planning on doing next, but whatever it was, Charles’ reaction has left him thrown and unbalanced, struggling to maintain his composure. Charles’ fingers drift along his cheek. “What do you think I want?”

A little smile, this time, almost, just the tiniest curve, though there’s something sweet and sad about it, too; for a moment Erik thinks Charles won’t answer, that he’s going to roll over and go back to sleep, but then finally Charles seems to capitulate, something in him giving way, and he says, “I think you want to push the boundaries,” his thumb brushing Erik’s cheekbone, his eyes examining Erik’s expression, as if he’s looking for something. “I should have known you wouldn’t want to wait to find someone else you trust enough to try this with.”

“To try ….”

“If you can’t say it out loud,” Charles says, his hand lifting away from Erik’s face, “then I’m sorry, but you’re not ready to do it.”

Erik stares at him, dumbfounded. 

It’s several too-long seconds before his mind finishes processing this new piece of information. 

“You mean,” Erik says, his tongue not quite cooperating, “have _sex?_ ”

Charles laughs like he can’t help it, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“That is what this is for,” he says, gesturing down toward his own lap, where Erik had felt his hardness before. “You seem surprised, Erik. Isn’t that what we were talking around?”

“I really,” Erik says, “didn’t think you would actually ….” Finish the sentence, Lehnsherr. “You’ve never been a rulebreaker,” he says instead, finally finding some glimmer of his usual self and clinging to it, trying to drape himself in something resembling composure. He draws his lips into a small smile. And, a second later, he moves his hand to smooth it across Charles’ stomach, not quite daring to go lower but simply … testing, feeling the way Charles’ belly contracts at his touch.

Charles -- Charles _lets_ him, doesn’t push Erik away or tell him off the way Erik half-expects him to, just stays there and allows it -- remarkable. Unexpected.

“Would you like me to put an stop to this?” Charles asks, sounding sincere, nothing in his face to suggest one way or the other what he’d prefer. “It might be for the best if I did. You’re right that it would mean breaking a lot of rules -- this is entirely your choice, Erik, I’m not going to push.”

Erik almost -- almost -- brings himself to reach down and touch Charles there, to palm his cock through his pajamas, but in the end he doesn’t have the courage. He skims the tips of his fingers under the waistband of Charles’ bottoms instead, just far enough to feel the prickle of Charles’ pubic hair, and says, “It’s well-established that I’m a delinquent.” 

He thinks about reminding Charles that this sort of thing … well, it’s all well and good, Erik wanting it, but if anyone found out Charles would still go to jail for a very long time. Only Erik expects Charles is quite aware, probably more keenly aware than Erik himself, must have thought about this carefully -- and, Erik realizes with a thrill of arousal, must have thought about it long before tonight.

“I won’t tell,” is what Erik says instead.

“Not even Frank?” Charles asks, and there’s something strange about the way he asks the question, something weighted.

“No. Why would I?”

Charles shrugs, still not pushing Erik away, even as Erik’s fingertips dare a little lower, half his hand now under Charles’ pyjama bottoms. “You tell him most things. I thought I should ask.”

“It’s none of his business,” Erik says, firmly, and he shifts his gaze down to Charles’ lap, to where his erection is visibly pressing up against the flannel fabric. He’s fully hard now, Erik thinks. He can’t quite tell. He could touch him and find out, but somehow that feels like going too far when Charles hasn’t given explicit permission yet. “Are you all the way hard?” he asks, deciding he’s a Dom, he can ask whatever stupid questions he wants.

Charles lets out a little breath like a sigh, then turns to look down at himself, and reaches to pluck up the waistband of his pyjamas and look inside, the view hidden from Erik but all the more erotic for it, Charles looking at his own cock to make a judgement. “Yes,” Charles says, and lowers his waistband, looking at Erik again and smiling tentatively. “What about you, Erik? Are you aroused, thinking about having sex with me?”

“Obviously,” Erik says, and twists his fingers in Charles’ pubic hair, tugging at it a little, experimentally. Then, he hopes with an air of patient expectation -- “Well?”

And Charles smiles, and reaches up to pull Erik’s head down, and kisses him on the mouth.

Charles’ lips are soft and a little chapped, pressing against Erik’s firmly before he takes Erik’s lower lip between them and tugs on it, his tongue running along it; Erik shivers, a little, and hopes Charles doesn’t notice. His hand abandons the area below Charles’ waistband, sliding out to stroke up underneath his t-shirt instead, feeling out the taut muscle of his chest and his softer belly.

Erik almost can’t quite believe this is happening, dizzily certain he must have fallen asleep after all, must be dreaming. There’s no other reason why Charles would ever let him do this. And yet … yet that’s Charles’ skin, warm beneath his palm, and Charles’ breaths making Charles’ chest rise and fall.

Charles rolls back onto his side, closer to Erik, then nudges him over onto his back, still kissing him, his lips parted now, the tip of his tongue encouraging Erik to do the same. His hand is on Erik’s side, running up and down, from his chest down to his thigh and back up; on the next pass it pauses, and Charles rubs his thumb over Erik’s nipple, through his shirt.

He should do something Dominant, probably, Erik thinks, even as he squirms a little below Charles’ weight, unbelievably turned on by the pressure of Charles’ body atop his, atop his cock. What, though, he has no idea, and he can’t think of anything while Charles is kissing him like this. Instead he just bites at Charles’ lower lip and hooks a leg up over Charles’ hip, using the leverage to pull Charles’ hips down hard against his.

“You shouldn’t come like this, your first time,” Charles mutters, though he’s rocking against Erik anyway, rubbing himself against him. “Here, I have a better idea.” He reaches down to tug Erik’s leg away, freeing himself, and then -- and then --

\-- Charles shuffles backwards down the bed, and presses a kiss to Erik’s belly, before taking hold of the waistband of Erik’s boxers and looking up at him for permission. “May I?”

Erik nods, swallowing and pushing himself up onto his elbows to watch as Charles draws the fabric down and frees Erik’s erection, thick and turgid with arousal. Charles looks pleased when he sees it, and he says, glancing up at Erik again, “You have a beautiful cock, Erik. Big, too.” 

Erik grins, just a tiny bit, even though he tries to wipe the expression away as soon as he notices. Already one of his hands has curled into the sheets, gripping tight. Charles bends his head and presses a kiss to Erik’s cock just under the head, and the sensation is so strange, the light pressure and the slight moisture from where Charles had licked his lips before, not spectacular but somehow _meaningful,_ and Erik feels his groin tighten with sudden arousal as he watches, spellbound, while Charles takes his cock in one hand and lifts it, directs it, until he can wrap his lips around the thick head and start to suck.

The sensation is -- impossible to describe, the heat and wet suction, but far more alluring is the way Charles looks at him while he does it, like Charles would rather be doing this than anything else in the world. Erik’s chest is tight, making it difficult to breathe as he watches Charles and wills himself not to rock his hips up toward Charles’ mouth.

Charles smiles around his mouthful and bobs his head over Erik’s cock, sliding it in and out of that warm space like a mimicry of fucking; his free hand strokes Erik’s groin, fingers rubbing over the sensitive place where his thigh joins his hip, over and over. _What do you want?_ Charles asks silently, his eyes flicking up to meet Erik’s again. _It’s up to you how far you want to go. You’re in charge._

Erik swallows, and twists the bedsheets in his grasp. He doesn’t want to drown out the slick noises of Charles’ mouth on his cock so he just thinks his response. _Everything. I want to do everything._ He hesitates for a moment before adding, _I want it to be you._

_Want what to be me, darling?_

Finally, Erik dares to reach down with one hand and touch the tips of his fingers to Charles’ temple, skimming them down past Charles’ hollowed-out cheek toward his jaw, his heart pounding. Touching him like this feels illicit. 

_This,_ he says. _All of it. I trust you, and I’m glad it’s you._

Charles sends a warm push of pleasure and affection to Erik’s mind and then he ducks his head lower, taking more of Erik inside and he -- he must swallow around it, Erik can guess what that feeling is, but it’s so _good_ , heat flooding Erik’s body and his groin drawing tight -- 

_I’m going --_ he tries to warn Charles, but Charles doesn’t pull away, or he doesn’t pull away in time, and Erik gasps as he comes, gripping tight with the hand he didn’t realize had ended up in Charles’ hair as his hips buck up, pleasure coursing through him in pulsing waves.

The suction doesn’t stop throughout, it just keeps going, drawing more of it out of him, and while Erik squirms and moans Charles _licks_ at him, until it’s too sensitive and Erik pushes him off with a shaking hand, tugging on Charles’ hair until his cock slips free to slap wetly against his own leg.

“How do you feel?” Charles asks, pressing a kiss to Erik’s thigh and then shifting further up the bed to lie next to him again, flushed and still hard.

Erik, dazed, doesn’t even know how to answer that question. He struggles to catch his breath, one hand thrown out to rest palm-up on the bed between them, the backs of his fingers grazing Charles’ stomach. After a long moment he manages to twist his head to look at Charles properly and wets his lips, his whole body feeling strung-out and exhausted, a part of him still shaking down at his core. 

“That was,” Erik starts, but words fail him.

“I’ll take that as a positive review,” Charles says, and when Erik meets his gaze his eyes are soft.

Erik shifts onto his side to face Charles properly. Now, after he’s had his cock in Charles’ mouth and come down his throat, he feels much less self-conscious about this -- his body, or sex, or being with Charles. He rests a hand on Charles’ hip, smoothing it slowly up toward his waist and watching as Charles’ t-shirt rucks up beneath his palm. His pajama bottoms are still tented out, and Erik says, “Do you want me to … return the favor?”

“It’s up to you,” Charles says, though, staying where he is and letting Erik touch him. The rising hem of his t-shirt exposes a firm stomach and, above that, a broad, stocky chest, his nipples pebbled with arousal. “I meant it when I asked you what _you_ wanted. You get to set the pace here. If this is enough for you for now, that’s fine too. Sex is often rather strange, the first time.”

If Erik sucks Charles off, though, that means they can’t have real sex. Well, Erik revises quickly, oral sex is _real_ sex, but Erik wants to have penetrative sex. He wants to feel like he’s not a virgin anymore -- and more than that, he wants to feel … close to Charles. He wants to lace them together in every way he can, with their bodies as much as their minds, and if Charles has been thinking about doing this for a while then he must want that, too.

“You know what I want,” is what Erik says, because he doubts very much Charles wasn’t listening to his thoughts.

Charles’ hand comes to rest in Erik’s hair, petting him again. “Of course, if that’s what you want,” he says, fingers ruffling Erik’s damp locks. “I should probably top, really -- I’ll warn you, though, it’ll feel very strange, the first time. Probably the first few times. And it might hurt a little. You’re not going to come from being fucked.” His expression is calm, affectionate, but Erik sees it when Charles’ cock twitches, the fabric of his pajamas moving.

“That’s not why I want to do it,” Erik says. He isn’t quite sure how he feels about it being _him_ getting fucked, but it doesn’t really matter -- Erik wants to try everything, that included. And if that’s what Charles wants, then Erik wants it, too. He skims his hand down Charles’ body, past his belly, and this time he doesn’t pause before letting it go lower. Even through the flannel, Charles’ cock feels warm against the palm of his hand. Erik presses down, slightly, curling his fingers to feel out the shape of it, mouth gone dry. 

“Mmm, that’s nice,” Charles says, his voice a little strange, and tugs Erik down to kiss him, his arms curling around Erik’s body to pull him close.

Charles tastes salty and a bit bitter, and Erik realizes after a few seconds that he’s tasting _himself_ , that’s the taste of his own come. He slips his tongue into Charles’ mouth, fascinated, and squeezes his hand lightly around Charles’ cock, a thrill jumping down his spine when that elicits a soft moan against his mouth. Charles’ legs spread wider, making room, and he sucks on Erik’s tongue the way he had Erik’s cock, says, _We should take off our clothes for this._

 _Yes,_ Erik says immediately, and he only moves his hand from Charles’ lap to take hold of Charles’ t-shirt instead, pushing it up and pulling it off over Charles’ head when Charles leans up enough to let him. 

Charles emerges tousled and laughing a little, and reaches for Erik’s in turn, says as he pulls it over Erik’s face, blinding him for a moment, “It’s nice to see such enthusiasm in a young man.” When Erik is free Charles’ hands go to his own waist, and he lifts his hips from the bed to slide his pajama bottoms down his thighs, exposing his thick, dark-flushed cock and the strong pale muscle of his thighs, kicking the fabric the rest of the way off.

Erik knows he’s staring, but he recovers quickly, reaching for Charles with both hands to kiss him again, tugging at Charles’ lower lip with his teeth and vowing to himself that he won’t overthink things. He wants this to be perfect, or at least as perfect as it can be. When he draws away Charles’ lips look wet, bitten, and Erik flicks his tongue out at them and smiles. 

A part of him is still anxious and apprehensive, though he isn’t sure what he’s worried about -- it’s just _there_ , adrenaline prickling beneath his skin. Charles stays pliant in Erik’s arms, touching him back but not pushing any further. “It’s okay to be nervous,” he says. “It is scary when you don’t know what to expect. But if you change your mind at any point, that’s okay too. Just say the word.”

Erik takes in a sharp, shallow breath, his hand tightening at Charles’ shoulder, but what he says is: “You don’t have to coddle me. I want this.” He holds Charles’ gaze, willing him to believe it, and just for good measure he puts Dominance into the words. “I won’t change my mind.”

“All right.” Charles smiles at him, then, and leans up to kiss Erik once more before drawing back. “Then I think you should take off your boxers and lie down on your stomach. It’ll be more comfortable for you that way the first time.”

The bedroom air is chilly when Erik gets his underwear off, tossing them toward the foot of the bed and rolling onto his stomach as Charles instructed. He feels open and exposed like this, his ass on display, but he determinedly doesn’t think about that and focuses instead on the soft feeling of the pillow beneath his head and the comforting metal of the silver ring on Charles’ third finger as Charles runs his hands down Erik’s back, then over Erik’s buttocks, taking a handful of each and squeezing.

“Don’t be shy,” Charles says, and then Erik feels breath warm on his skin, then the wet press of a kiss, right at the top of his cleft. “You’re beautiful, Erik. All over,” and he kisses Erik’s ass again, a little lower, lips just dipping into the curve of Erik’s crack.

Erik squirms as Charles keeps going, slowly getting lower -- surely he’s not, isn’t going to, Erik thinks, a little breathless, right before Charles’ thumbs pull Erik’s cheeks apart and his mouth presses over Erik’s hole, kissing him _there_. It’s startling, even though Erik could have predicted it, a jolt of energy shooting up his spine and Erik’s hands grabbing sudden fists of the pillows. Charles’ tongue licks at him and Erik feels like dying, simultaneously humiliated and aroused, his cock starting to take interest again and swell against the bed beneath him. Erik presses his face against his own arm, hiding the flush in his cheeks as Charles keeps going, tongue circling his hole and occasionally dipping inside.

Charles breaks off for a moment, and there’s a slide of the nightstand drawer, open then shut, before Charles comes back and lays back down between Erik’s legs and starts all over, rimming Erik’s entrance and this time pressing his tongue deeper inside, fucking him a little with it, the tip fluttering inside him where Erik is untouched and pristine, Charles’ hands holding him open and digging into the swell of Erik’s cheeks. Erik makes an embarrassing little noise and his toes curl, thighs tense and his heart racing. He finds himself pushing his ass back toward Charles’ face, forcing Charles’ tongue in deeper even as his neck arches to tip his head further down, blocking out the rest of the room with his arms up and his hands laced behind his neck.

One of Charles’ hands shifts, and then his thumb rubs at Erik’s perineum, the soft little space behind his balls suddenly and unexpectedly pouring warmth through Erik’s belly and groin while Charles strokes him and wriggles his tongue inside Erik’s ass and hums against his skin, a vibration that pushes Erik over the edge again and he comes all over the bedsheets, hips rutting down against the mattress and smearing it onto his belly. His mind is white and wiped-out, giddy with the surge of pleasure and Erik gasps for breath, his whole body trembling as Charles pulls his mouth away and lets him rest, kissing the back of Erik’s shoulder with a wordless murmur, more comfort than sound.

“I’m going to put my finger inside you now,” he says, from behind Erik, with the sound of a cap popping, and Erik is still too drunk and hypersensitive to say anything in response -- he just nods against the pillow, then finally twists around to look at Charles over his shoulder. Charles is squeezing some lubricant over his fingers, rubbing them together, and then he leans forward over Erik and says, “You’re beautiful,” before Erik feels a slight pressure at his hole and then -- those are Charles’ _fingers_ , going into his ass, two of them alongside one another sliding into him where he’s still wet with spit and stretching Erik’s hole wider than Charles’ tongue did.

Erik shudders, his stomach clenching. Charles makes a warm noise and says, “Relax, you’re all right,” his free hand stroking the small of Erik’s back. His fingers start to move, pushing in and out of Erik’s hole, fucking him gently. It feels bizarre, not at all like Erik had expected, and he can’t tell if he likes it or not. It’s just _strange_ , but it’s Charles -- familiar, trustworthy Charles, who loves him, who thinks he’s beautiful. And so Erik fights with his body’s instinct to make himself relax like Charles said, pressing both hands flat against the bed to keep from digging his nails into his palms.

“It’s easy once you get the hang of it,” Charles says, and keeps moving his fingers slowly, carefully, caressing Erik inside. He’s watching them, his eyes lowered, blinking only occasionally and looking almost mesmerized by the sight of his hand at Erik’s ass. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” Erik says, his voice surprisingly steady. He shifts, trying to spread his legs a little more to make it easier -- and that does help, even if his ass is still quivering around Charles’ fingers, oddly as if to try to pull them _in_. Erik exhales, slowly, and with it breathes out the tension in his body, sinking himself against the bed and trying to think of this as something natural. Something his body can just know how to do, if he lets it.

“Good,” Charles says, and his hand slows, coming to a stop with his fingers buried in deep. “I’m going to put my cock inside you next. Is that still okay, or do you want to wait a while first?”

Erik’s heart tumbles in his chest, and this time it feels more like excitement than apprehension. “No,” he says. “I want it.” He can see how hard Charles is from here, the tip of his cock wet-looking from pre-come, the head and shaft rigid and flushed. He wets his lips. “I’m ready.” 

“All right,” Charles says, and pulls his fingers out of Erik with a wet noise, picking up a little square -- a condom packet. “I’m clean, I’ve been tested, but I’ll use this if you’d prefer. Up to you.”

Erik doesn’t want a barrier between them. He wants Charles’ naked skin. He wants this to be as good for Charles as it possibly can be. “We don’t need it,” he says, shaking his head.

Charles smiles at him and tosses it aside, lifting up the lube instead. “Okay,” he says, and pours some lube onto his cock, then spreads it over himself, making his whole cock glisten in the lamplight. “Here we are, then.” And he arranges himself behind Erik, nudging Erik’s thighs a little wider, then -- then --

There’s a blunt nudge at Erik’s hole, something thick and firm, and then Charles’ cock is pushing into him, forcing Erik to spread open for it and sliding inside, stretching Erik’s channel and filling him, hard and deep; it’s nothing at all like Charles’ fingers, or his tongue, much bigger and going in further, and Charles groans quietly as he pushes into Erik’s ass, his hands braced on the bed on either side of Erik’s body and his _penis_ is _in Erik’s anus_.

It doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as Erik had expected. It aches, mildly, but the pressure inside him is -- is more strange than bad, as dizzying as thinking about the mechanics of it, that a part of Charles is inside Erik now, and he tries to imagine how it might feel on Charles’ dick. Whether his body feels good as Charles bottoms out and as Erik clenches his hole around him, Charles’ breath hot on the back of Erik’s neck. 

“Well?” he asks, the word coming out thin and thready.

“You’re tight,” Charles says, a little breathless, and kisses Erik’s nape, his hips settling into place. “You feel good, Erik. It’s lovely.” He shares a snapshot of the sensation, of rippling walls clenching around his cock, hot and wet and squeezing, the sight of Erik’s golden, lean body under him, full of him. “Are you okay?”

“Mmm. Yes.” Erik tips his brow down against the pillow again, clasping his hands together and pushing his ass up against Charles’ hips. It’s not like Charles’ cock can go any deeper, but Erik’s body chases after it all the same, rocking up like a part of him knows what to do.

Charles kisses him again, and his hips pull back, his cock dragging halfway out of Erik; then he pushes back inside, a steady slide, filling Erik again. He starts a rhythm like that, fucking Erik slowly but steadily, rubbing in and out of Erik’s tight channel, pushing deep into Erik’s body and covering him over with his own, Charles’ nipples brushing Erik’s back, his sharp breaths loud in Erik’s ear. Charles was right, in that it doesn’t feel _good_ , not really, but mostly because Erik isn’t used to it, it seems. He can imagine how it might feel better, if he weren’t so obsessed with thinking about how he feels inside and a little worried something might tear, his hole spasming around Charles’ shaft. Erik rocks back again, arching up against Charles and trying to match Charles’ rhythm instinctively.

“Is that good?” he asks, and keeps doing it, clenching his hole on one particularly deep thrust.

“Yes,” Charles groans, and thrusts a bit faster, his hips working against Erik’s ass. “God … I’m going to … ”

Erik can guess the moment Charles comes, his thrusts hard enough they jostle Erik’s body up the bed, Charles grunting against Erik’s skin, his nose brushing Erik’s shoulder and his cock pounding arrhythmically three, four times, before Charles finally slows and Erik is left light-headed and a bit giddy with satisfaction, one hand reaching back to tangle in Charles’ hair, keeping him close.

“Mmm,” Charles sighs, nuzzling the back of Erik’s neck, his hips jerking once more, spasmodically, like he’s pushing his come deeper inside. “I love you. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Erik breathes out, shifting one last time, wanting to really feel Charles’ cock in him while he still can, the slight pain of his hole stretched around Charles’ softening shaft. He feels unsteady inside, like he’s just run a long race, but it doesn’t feel bad. Just … different. 

Charles nuzzles him again, and finally moves, pulling out and sitting back behind Erik, then getting off the bed entirely, his hand coming to rest on Erik’s calf. “I’ll get a cloth to clean you up. Just a moment.” He smiles at Erik, then pads naked off to the bathroom, disappearing inside, where Erik can hear the sound of the tap running.

Erik stays where he is, limp and boneless, and waits. He feels warm inside, and a little uncomfortable due to the dried come on his stomach and the ache in his ass, but for the most part he feels … good. Relieved, to have it over with. A little sad, too, in a way he can’t put his finger on but that he attributes to a strange sort of nostalgia, and gratitude, to Charles.

The footsteps come back, and then there’s a wet washcloth running over Erik’s hole, wiping him of lube, before Charles murmurs, “Turn over for me, darling, let me get your belly.”

Erik complies, looking up at Charles as the warm cloth scrubs the dried come from his stomach. The spot he’s lying in isn’t particularly wet, not anymore, though he knows it will be again soon once Charles’ come starts leaking out of his ass. Erik reaches up with one hand to touch Charles’ beloved face, his thumb grazing over Charles’ lower lip; Charles falters when it does, but only briefly, before he moves to set the cloth aside.

“Do you regret it?” Erik asks.

“No,” Charles says, and smiles at him sadly, leaning down to press a kiss to Erik’s forehead. “Only that you have to wake up now.”

There’s nothing to mark the change, no fanfare or sudden surge of information flooding his mind. It’s just that in one moment, he doesn’t remember, and in the next, he does. The memories slide back into place, linking his life together like rotten lace, the lightness gone from Erik’s chest and replaced by the same sick weight that’s always been there, as long as Erik can recall, but that he hadn’t quite noticed before. His hand slides from Charles’ face, dropping back to the bed like a stone.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, and can’t quite meet Erik’s eyes.

Erik doesn’t know what to say to that. Maybe there’s nothing to say. For a little while he was normal, now he isn’t. He’s just him again.

“You won’t make it permanent?” Erik asks softly.

Charles shakes his head, his hand curling in his lap. “No, Erik. Pretending it didn’t happen won’t make it so. And just imagine how confused you would be whenever it came up -- at the trial, online, in conversation. It wouldn’t work.” Charles had looked so happy, during, had been so -- so kind, and thoughtful. He’d taken his time to make sure Erik was happy and comfortable, too, had made it -- it had been -- 

It had been the way it was supposed to be. With someone who cared about him, whom Erik trusted. Not his false father, by trickery and force, when Erik was so young he can’t even remember it happening but that, even at his earliest memories, he already knew was something to fear.

Something keeps catching in Erik’s mind, though, like a key in a rusty lock, an uneasiness he can’t quite dismiss.

He pushes himself up and reaches for his boxers, pulling them back on. The ache in his ass doesn’t feel novel and exciting anymore, just mundane. Too familiar. Next to him Charles is still looking at his hands, fisted in his lap, and that doesn’t change even when Erik gazes expectantly at him. 

“It wasn’t supposed to be like that either, though, was it?” Erik says at last.

Charles sighs, and finally says, “No, Erik. Most people don’t have their first time with their legal guardian. For most people they fumble it out together with someone equally as inexperienced.” He looks up at last, and reaches out to lay two fingers on Erik’s knee, light and almost insubstantial. “There isn’t anything I can do that will make things perfect for you, Erik. I don’t have that power.”

Erik doesn’t move for a long moment, but then, finally, he rests his hand atop Charles’ fingers in wordless acknowledgment. 

“I’m going to sleep in my old room tonight,” Erik says eventually, glancing back at Charles, the lamplight casting the cut on his face into sharp relief. “It’s not about you. We’re okay. It’s just ….” A small breath. “I need to process this.”

Charles makes a wordless, agreeing sort of sound, then nods, and leans in to press a kiss to Erik’s cheek. “It’s all right. Let me know if there’s anything I can do, and if you get lonely you can always come back in.”

Erik’s bedroom is dark and unused-feeling, the bed still made from the last morning before Peter left. The covers are cold when he gets under them, the clock on his bedside table blinking at him that it’s 3:32 AM. He lies there, wishing he could fall asleep but unmotivated to try, watching the numbers to :33, :34, :35. He never appreciated it before, the magnitude of what Shaw and the others stole from him. His entire life was constructed off sex and what sex was meant to represent in terms of power, how it could be used like a weapon or a shield. 

Erik pulls the duvet up over his head and, in the blackness where no one can see, he smooths his hands down his bare stomach and his naked thighs, imagining being someone else touching him. Imagines being six years old like he was in the memory-dream and someone _wanting_ to touch him like this, aroused by the softness of his stomach or the thin, sensitive skin at his inner thigh as they push his legs up, apart. 

He can’t even think about it without his stomach revolting, bile seeping up the back of his throat. He could never look at a child like that. He couldn’t even do it for the cause, and yet somehow Shaw managed to, and managed to recruit others to do so as well.

Would it be different, if he were older? Twelve? Old enough to be experienced, to try to be seductive when they touched him, when they fucked him. The thought of touching someone that age is nauseating all the same, because twelve is a _child_ , is abhorrently young. At seventeen, Erik’s not even that much older, not compared to -- say -- the difference in age between himself and Charles. 

Erik’s hands go still on his skin. 

Thirteen years. If Erik fucked someone thirteen years younger than himself, that child would be four years old.

Abruptly, violently, Erik’s throat convulses and he gags, arching up from the bed, about to run to the bathroom before it subsides, his stomach still queasy as he slowly relaxes back down against the pillows, fumbling with the duvet to yank it back and gasp for fresh air. The ceiling sways overhead, bright lights flashing in his vision and he presses the heel of his hand to his damp brow, willing his pulse to slow.

He isn’t four, he tells himself. It isn’t the same. He’s seventeen, old enough to make his own decisions.

Even so, it’s a long time before he’s able to fall asleep.

*

_Charles_

Last night was rough, after Erik left to sleep in his own room, but that’s nothing compared to how Charles feels when he realizes that Erik is already gone when he wakes up the next morning, groggy from the leftovers of a sleeping pill and feeling muzzy-headed, his mouth tasting like a skunk crawled in there to do its business. He sits up sharply in bed, the blankets falling away from his body, and feels --

\-- he remembers what Erik was thinking last night, after, about the difference in their ages and what that really means, about how they are together. How disgusting it would be for Erik to do the same, and how, by inference, disgusting Charles must be. Charles wants to throw up.

No, wait, he is about to throw up. He lurches from the bed and manages to stumble into the bathroom before he does, leaning gasping over the toilet bowl as last night’s dinner makes its reappearance, acid in his mouth and burning his throat. It’s disgusting, humiliating, and Charles is just glad that Erik isn’t here to see this because that’s all they need, more things for Erik to tally up on his list of why Charles isn’t good for him any more, maybe never was.

Once he’s finally done -- after a couple of false alarms -- Charles manages to get up to brush his teeth and gargle some mouthwash, then stares at himself in the mirror, at the scratch on his nose and the gouge across his cheek, while he stretches his mind outwards to find Erik.

Erik is at Raven’s house, and for a long second Charles’ breath catches in his throat, horrified -- before he realizes that Erik’s just sitting at Raven’s kitchen table, eating granola and not saying much. Raven wonders what’s going on, has asked already and been rebuffed, and is considering another attempt. But Erik isn’t there to give them away. He’s just … there, pretending to himself for a while that this is where he lives, that he’ll leave here to go and be with Charles because he loves him and that there’s nothing else at all in the world -- no guardianship, no age difference, none of Erik’s own past haunting their steps.

It’s … probably for the best, and good that Erik has somewhere to go, Charles thinks, closing his eyes. Yes. It’s … good.

He pulls away from Erik’s mind without making himself known, and climbs into the shower instead to clean himself up so that when Erik does come home -- and he will, he’ll come home later, Charles refuses to believe otherwise -- he’ll look normal, and adult, and in control. Not like the hot mess he’s been acting like lately, needy and lost.

Erik doesn’t come home for hours. It’s past four before Charles gets a text from him saying he’s on his way back, and another hour after that before he feels Erik and Raven approaching the building, side-by-side, her hands in her pockets as she squints up at the building from the street and wonders what Charles has done.

Charles tracks them up the elevator, Erik’s quiet and resigned thoughts mostly focusing on how he can make things normal again, if he even can. _I’ll never not be fucked up,_ Erik thinks to himself, and Charles wants to reach out, to say, _but you can be better_ , to comfort him in any of a hundred ways -- but he’s not sure it’ll be welcome.

He stays in the den instead of coming to meet them at the door, though he turns off the television -- Erik will only worry if he catches Charles watching reality shows. “Hi,” he calls, picking up his laptop and placing it on his thighs. “What’s the weather like out there?”

“Still cold,” Erik says, his voice carrying into the den from the gallery. Charles tracks him as Erik strips off his scarf and light jacket, toeing off his shoes, then feels it when he comes to join Charles in the living room, trailed by Charles’ sister.

“Shit, Charles, what happened to your _face_?” Raven exclaims the moment she sees him, her eyes wide; she hurries over to where he’s sat in his armchair and drops down onto the arm, taking hold of his chin and turning his face so she can get a better look. “Oh my God, did someone _attack_ you?”

Erik’s guilt is contagious, and Charles winces, then shrugs, before saying, as quietly as he can, “Erik had a nightmare last night. It took a nasty turn when I tried to wake him up.”

“We put Neosporin on it,” Erik says.

“I should hope so!” Raven glances over at Erik, her expression bland, but inside Charles can hear her thinking, _Jesus Christ. Was Charles in the bed with him? He’d better not have been,_ and then, _Charles, if you’re listening, you’d better not have been._

Charles decides not to answer that -- plausible deniability -- and finally tugs Raven’s hand down from his chin, aiming a tentative smile at her, rather weak and feeble but present, nonetheless. “It’ll heal, Raven. I’m fine, really. Would you like a drink?”

“No, thanks,” she says, still watching Charles’ face, her lips a little pursed. “You don’t look like you’ve been sleeping, either, Charles. You’ve got big circles under your eyes. Aren’t you getting enough rest?”

“I’m fine, Raven,” Charles says, and he gets to his feet, smiling at her, then Erik, careful and slight. “I’m going to get myself a drink, then. Erik, would you like anything?”

“No,” Erik says. He sits down on the sofa without really looking at Charles, like he can’t look him in the eye anymore, and Charles makes himself not react, just turns and goes into the kitchen to put the kettle on even though he would prefer a soda right now, simply because it will take longer to be ready.

He can hear Raven murmuring to Erik out in the den, “Is everything really okay? He didn’t … push you for anything, did he?” Just the question hurts, like being stabbed between the ribs, the knife sliding deeply into Charles’ chest.

“I told you, Raven. Everything’s fine.” He hears it in Erik’s head rather than out loud, Erik speaking too softly to be heard from here, and Charles tracks Raven as she sits down on the sofa next to him, knees angled to brush his, the curl of remorse Erik feels for doing something to allow Raven to doubt again.

“I know you did,” she says, “but would you really tell me if it wasn’t?”

Erik laughs and admits, “Probably not.” Charles feels it when Erik draws pretense around him like a cloak, obscuring his insecurity in favor of trying to seem at-ease and relaxed, his body settling back into the sofa. “But would I even admit that if there were something going on? You see -- we could do this all day.”

“Uh huh,” Raven says, and she sounds exasperated but she lets it go, sighing. “All right. Have it your way.”

Charles almost jumps out of his skin when the kettle clicks off, the water boiled, and for the next minute he’s engaged in making his tea, concentrating on that instead of the conversation in the other room; once it’s done, though, he has to go back in there, and he does so slowly, cupping his mug between his hands and being careful not to spill.

“Are you staying for dinner?” he asks Raven, taking his seat again.

She gives him a long, considering look, then finally says, “No, I’d best go home. But it’s good to see you, Charles. Put some more Neosporin on that cut.” She looks to her side, at Erik. “Maybe you should take one of Charles’ sleeping pills, might help with the nightmares.”

“They really don’t make a difference,” says Erik, who’s been taking something far stronger than Charles’ pills every night since he was found. “Thanks, Raven. I’ll walk you to the door.”

“I’ll see you soon, love,” Charles says, and gets up to press a kiss to Raven’s cheek that she returns, still dissatisfied with the answers she’s received, before she lets Erik lead her out of the den, and out of the apartment.

That obstacle surmounted, Charles lets himself slump a little into his armchair, eyes closed, drawing the mug up to his mouth to take a sip of the warm liquid; he hears Erik coming back but doesn’t open his eyes, doesn’t want to see what his expression might be. “Are you okay?” he asks instead, takes another sip.

“Yes,” Erik says. Charles listens to him moving around, the soft noises of his sock feet on the floor, and then Erik’s cool hand is at the back of his neck, gently stroking down from his hair. “Have you had dinner?”

Charles leans a little into Erik’s hand, and sighs, the touch all-too-welcome when he’s spent the day wondering if Erik will ever want to be touched again. “Not yet.” He doesn’t volunteer that he didn’t eat lunch or breakfast today, either, too nauseated to consider it. “I’m not hungry, though. You can go ahead without me, if you are.”

“It’s a bit early, still,” Erik says, his thumb slipping under the collar of Charles’ shirt. “I need to get my homework finished. But later on I’ll make something. All right?”

“Okay,” Charles says quietly, then, after a moment where he teeters on the edge between opening his mouth and clamping it shut he says, “I’m sorry, Erik. I didn’t -- intend for that to be what happened. I wasn’t planning to have sex with you when I suggested it.”

Erik’s hand stills at his nape, just the fingertips still touching Charles’ bare skin. It’s several long seconds, so long Charles wonders if Erik plans to speak at all, before Erik shifts down to press a kiss to the part of Charles’ hair, his arm slipping lower to curl around Charles’ chest. “You did what you thought was best,” he murmurs against Charles’ scalp. “That wasn’t your fault.”

It’s sweet of Erik to say so, to think so, even a little, but Charles knows better, and he can’t let himself get off so lightly. It wouldn’t be honest.

“I hurt you more that way, I think,” Charles says, raising his hand to curl it around Erik’s forearm, holding him there. “I’m sorry. I should have left well alone, talked you down instead. I took advantage.”

Erik’s grasp tightens slightly and he moves his head, coming down to rest his chin on Charles’ shoulder. “But even when you take advantage, it’s because you still genuinely believe you’re doing the right thing. That’s who you are, Charles. But you can’t be perfect all the time, and sometimes you’re going to make the wrong choice. It’s normal.”

Charles wants to ask if it helped at all, if any of it was good or worthwhile, but he doesn’t want to know if the answer is ‘no’. So instead he just leans his head against Erik’s and lets out a shaky breath, takes another one in. “I should be the one comforting you. This is the wrong way ‘round.”

“Obviously you’re upset, so it’s not as if you escaped unscathed,” Erik comments dryly, his hand moving slowly up and down Charles’ bicep. 

Impossible boy. “I don’t think I get to be comforted when I’m upset because I did something bad to you,” Charles says, with a snort at his own expense. “I’m an idiot. I should have known it would make things worse.”

“Oh yes, you’re a terrible person. Are we pretending now that you didn’t give me an experience I’m grateful to have, that no one else _could_ have given me?”

Charles twists in his seat, dislodging Erik’s chin, but he has to look at him, has to understand. “You were upset that it happened,” he says, like laying out a defense for a courtroom. “I didn’t … I got the impression you wished you hadn’t had it to compare your real life to. Was I wrong?” His heart is beating faster in his chest, hope and self-loathing both powering the treadmill.

Erik straightens slightly, not enough to draw his hands away from Charles’ chest but enough that he’s taller, again, looking down at Charles from a height. “I was upset because I wished that _were_ my life. I’m upset because, for a long time, I didn’t realize how bad things were for me -- and now I do realize it, and I have to learn how to live with that all at once, not spread out over seventeen years. I’m upset because I’m --” Erik takes in a sharp breath. “I’m getting _better,_ Charles. And that’s hard.”

“I love you very much,” Charles says, squeezing Erik’s arm, tipping his head back to look at his face, so familiar and so hurt, lately, so uncertain. “I would never do anything I thought would hurt you. I hate it when I do.”

“I know.” But he’s still conflicted. Charles can feel it tangled up inside him, the knots only getting worse the harder Erik tries to untie them. Erik leans down to kiss him on the lips anyway, though, and the only comfort is that Charles knows no matter what else he might think that Erik truly does love him, in a fierce and deep way that is purely Erik.

Charles kisses Erik back, but keeps it chaste, soft. When he draws back he says, “You should get your homework done, then. While you’re awake enough to do it. You’ll probably crash later.”

Erik nods, still close, his hand lingering on Charles’ chest for a long moment before he finally moves away, disappearing upstairs to work in his room and leaving Charles alone in the den to turn his shows back on -- though it’s not long until he falls asleep in his chair, exhaustion taking over and blotting out the things he wishes he could forget, at least for now.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: flashback/memory of child rape


	45. Forty-five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter

_Charles_

It doesn’t really get better, though, even though they both wish it could be. It’s like the night when Erik begged Charles to let him be a virgin again, then Charles gave him what he thought he wanted, has only brought things to a head, brought closer to the surface all the things that were wrong in the first place.

Charles tries to pretend things are okay, the way he has before, because what can he say? He can’t make it not have happened, can’t go back and make himself make a different choice, turn Erik down gently when he realized Charles was aroused and let Erik be instead of making things worse. And yet he knows he ought to talk to Erik about it, try to hammer out a way forward instead of burying his head in the sand the way he always does these days. Erik is … he tries hard, too, to be normal. But he’s not. He’s always thinking, in the back of his mind, always wondering … what’s wrong with Charles, what is he thinking, why isn’t he better.

Charles can’t disagree with that. He wonders, too. He used, he’s sure, to be better than this -- to be the sort of person who would talk this out, fix it, take care of Erik in the way Erik needs rather than the way that’s expedient, not let his own feelings interfere. Charles just can’t shake the knowledge that he used to be a better person, and that over the past few years he degraded into someone the old him would never have let anywhere near Erik.

Perhaps he shouldn’t let himself anywhere near Erik now, he thinks sometimes, and then waits for Erik to make that choice for him instead.

They’re both pretending this is just a casual, comfortable outing when they reach the gallery where Raven is holding her event -- if you can call it a gallery, when it’s really just an empty old building waiting to be condemned, though the flyer reassures him that it’s perfectly safe. It’s full of guests tonight, which bodes well for the future of Raven’s pop-up performance art show. Charles is a little surprised how busy it is, actually, but maybe he’s just being snobbish. He simply hadn’t thought there would be so many people interested in mutant performance art willing to come out on a Friday night to see it based on a flash-mob invite.

Erik, of course, had said immediately that they should go as soon as he’d seen it on Charles’ phone, and Charles was relieved enough by the positivity that he said yes right away. It feels like a victory that Erik wants to do anything together at all.

Charles looks around curiously as they enter the building, taking in the exposed brick and crumbling mortar with a certain amount of trepidation. It has a certain aesthetic, of course, and with a gathered crowd it’s warm and lively, people murmuring to one another and the noise multiplying in the hollow ceilings until it’s a buzz of indistinguishable voices, bodies brushing past, Erik’s arm touching Charles’ though they couldn’t hold hands if they wanted to, not here. The first room they’ve come into is really more of a wide hallway, nothing to see but people shuffling through up ahead.

“I wonder where we’re supposed to go,” Erik says from beside him, looking around with unfeigned interest.

“There are performers in some of the rooms,” Charles replies, having already scanned the building to find Raven; she’s in one of the deeper rooms, somewhere upstairs and to his right. “I think you just wander and take it all in. Like environmental theatre.”

“Mmm,” Erik says, and turns his attention towards the nearest door, his fingers snagging Charles’ sleeve to tug him along behind.

There are a pair of mutants in this first room, twins who look as if they’re made out of living wood; they’ve set up some sort of lighting with shifting green leaf shapes moving across the walls, and they’re swaying together and apart in a slow, ponderous dance, like trees in the wind. One of them starts budding, and bursts into bloom before their eyes.

“What a lovely mutation,” he says to Erik, who hums out agreement and wanders closer, his mind alight with appreciation and excitement. 

It’s good to see him like this, purely focused on something interesting without old worries and fears competing for his attention. It makes him look beautiful -- or, more beautiful than he always does, as if the light inside him reflects out onto his surface, the lines of his face and body more perfect for it. Charles follows, his hands folded behind his back, watching Erik as much as the performers. Like this, Erik is unignorable, and Charles is reminded of how he got into this in the first place, the way it felt as if Erik were the center of all gravity and there was nothing Charles could do but fall toward him, helpless but happy for it. 

“We should go away this summer,” Charles says suddenly, before he’s even thought about it, the idea of himself and Erik somewhere far away, anonymous and unwatched for once, sun and sea and nobody to worry about. “Somewhere nobody will recognize us, out of the spotlight. Where we can just be … unscrutinized.” It feels warm inside him, the very image of it, a spot of hope -- maybe away from New York they can get back to where they were last year, when they were happy. “Maybe Thailand, or the Philippines.”

Erik’s thoughts, falter, the clarity of a moment before dropping beneath a cloud. It’s clear he doesn’t like the idea -- in fact, he should be angry, Charles thinks, should feel irritated or furious, although Charles can’t quite put his finger on why that is. But Erik’s none of those things. There should be some transition, some middle ground between Erik’s mildness of a moment before and the way he’s unfeeling as a stone as he says, “You want to go somewhere no one will care if you’re fucking a teenager.”

It’s like being hit with a grenade, like being blown apart and never having seen it coming. Like swallowing a bomb. God -- Charles just stares for a long few seconds, taken utterly aback before he finally manages a reply.

“What? No,” Charles says, his eyes wide and his skin utterly cold as he flicks his attention around the people closest to them, making sure nobody heard that. Thank God none of them did, but he dampens the other guests’ perceptions of him and Erik anyway, to be sure, as he says, “No, why would you -- I just meant somewhere we could relax for once!”

Erik turns to look at him, the angles of his face unchanged and perfectly expressionless. It’s somehow more horrifying than if he’d been visibly upset, the total indifference of it, the way he just -- he just thinks this, about Charles, like it’s a _fundamental part of what he thinks of Charles_ , no longer even worthy of emotion. “Don’t you think it’s good that we can’t relax?” Erik says, slowly, evenly, as if reciting rote fact. “We shouldn’t pretend we aren’t who we are, and that we aren’t doing what we’re doing. We shouldn’t convince ourselves it’s normal, because it isn’t.”

He moves past Charles, heading out of the room and back into the main hall of the gallery, looking down the corridor toward the next rooms with his brochure in hand. Charles is left paralyzed, crushed underfoot, for several long moments before he breaks from his frozen posture and hurries after Erik, catching him by the elbow before he can enter the next room. “Do you really think that about me?” he asks in a sharp whisper, his heart throbbing in the pit of his stomach. “Is that what you really -- Erik, why are we together, then? If you think it’s that wrong, that sick?”

Erik doesn’t answer that question -- or can’t. His mind feels like granite now, Charles’ touch slipping off cold stone, and he doesn’t know how or when that happened, how it could be that he looked away just for a moment and then found this waiting upon his return. 

“I won’t play happy house about it like I did with Shaw. At least this time we all _know_ what this is.” 

What he means is, Charles thinks, at least Erik is in control this time. He knows how bad it is and he doesn’t have to play along with it. He doesn’t even see that things could be better, if they -- if they just tried, or if Erik tried with someone else, if Charles can’t make him happy.

“What do you want me to do?” Charles asks, an awful, hopeless anger rising in his chest -- at himself, at Erik, at the situation, that Erik would choose now of all times and here of all places to finally bring this out into the open. “If we’re just going to make each other miserable, what’s the point? You can’t want that, Erik, to feel like this all the damn time.”

Erik makes a face. “Of course I don’t. But for the time being, at least, this is where we are. You’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with yourself. Please give me the courtesy of the same.”

Charles can’t help it, he flinches, and then makes himself look away, into the room, where a mutant whose skin is covered in strange nodules is making puffs of different-coloured smoke appear from their tips while smoking a more conventional pipe, apparently absorbed in reading the newspaper; the puffs happen in time with music playing on a scratchy old gramophone.

The thing is … Charles isn’t convinced that Erik _will_ come to terms with it. Now that he really understands what they are doing, surely it’s now inevitable that Erik will realize he can have something better, healthier, than repeating the same old pattern over and over again, no matter that Charles loves him.

Erik heads into the room for a closer look, and after a moment Charles decides to go into the next room along, stepping away from the doorway and walking quietly down the corridor until he can join the next crowd. He refuses to follow at Erik’s heel like a faithful hound -- he has enough pride left for that, at least.

Still, it’s hard to enjoy the performances when he’s still bruised and stinging from Erik’s response to being asked if he wants to go on vacation. Charles can’t quite -- no, that’s not true, he does understand where that came from. It’s been festering ever since Erik went to see Elias in California, and now the sore has burst open to show the infection inside. Not that -- not that Erik is wrong, but -- they were okay, before that. They knew what they were and how they stood and they were happy, and now they’re not. And it might be just as fucked up now as it was back then, but now Erik hates it, hates them, where before he didn’t care. That, at least, Charles can put entirely at Elias’ door.

And tomorrow, of course, Erik is going back out there for another dose.

He settles in Raven’s room, taking a seat at the side where he can see her -- she registers his presence, and when she glances over at him she notes the look on his face with a mental twitch of concern, but has to concentrate on her shifting, a slow-motion rippling between personas as she stares at a silent film playing projected on the wall, becoming the people she sees but also others, like she’s changing personality with every shot on the screen, as she empathizes with the characters -- or sometimes noticeably doesn’t. 

The press of a hand on his shoulder, and Erik steps up alongside him, his hip nearly -- but not quite -- brushing Charles’ arm. “I like hers best,” Erik murmurs without looking at Charles.

“You’re biased,” Charles says, equally quietly, his voice subdued. He doesn’t want to talk right now, not when he’s still trying to decide what he can do about any of it. “But she is brilliant.”

They stand in silence for the rest of the show, Erik carefully trying not to think about their conversation earlier and Charles wondering if he’ll be going home with his lover … or his ex-lover.

It’s like waiting for the glass to break once you’ve already dropped it -- just bracing yourself for the smash and the shrapnel.

At the end of the show when the movie runs out Raven stands to riotous applause from the remaining onlookers, bowing with a wide grin on her face even as she shifts back into her true self. There are a few people waiting to talk to her, and so it’s perhaps another quarter of an hour before she makes her way over to them, her expression shifting into one of concern.

“What’s up?” she asks, looking between them. “You guys look like you each ate half a slug.”

“One of the other performances was very evocative,” Erik answers smoothly before Charles can think of an excuse.

“Of what?” Raven asks, her hands going to her hips. Her lips purse, brows drawing together, and Charles can _hear_ her actively not thinking of the other day, of finding Charles wounded and Erik upset and moody, can feel her trying not to come to the obvious conclusion and failing miserably. “Seriously, what’s going on? Are you fighting?”

Charles gets to his feet and reaches out to touch Raven’s arm, trying to be soothing and putting a calm expression on his face, though he doesn’t doubt she sees through it. “We had a disagreement about Erik’s college options earlier, that’s all,” he says, “but you were amazing, Raven, really. The way you controlled your changes to time it with the film was incredibly powerful.”

Raven might be unconvinced, but she can’t argue with them here, not when she doesn’t know exactly what’s going on. Beside Charles, he senses Erik steeling himself for further interrogation that never comes, because Raven decides -- with a flash of self-loathing -- that she doesn’t want to know, and gives way with a, “Thank you, Charles,” and a kiss to his cheek, her hand slipping into his and giving it a quick squeeze. “I’m meeting the others for a drink now, do you two want to come?”

“Probably best not,” Charles says, though the idea of a drink sounds very good right now. “See you for lunch tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Raven says, and looks at Erik, frank and with both brows lifted. “You pick the school you want, okay? Charles is a snob about anywhere that doesn’t have its own gargoyles, but you do you.”

“I intend to,” Erik says with a sharp smile, and Raven says, “Atta boy,” and goes, joining one of the other artists who’s been lingering in the hallway outside waiting for her.

Charles takes a slow breath, settling himself. Finally, he says, “Come on. Let’s go home and talk.”

The ride home in the cab is … quiet, awkward, neither of them wanting to break the silence and start the discussion too soon. Charles stares out the window for most of it, trying to predict how it might go, what he can say, what Erik will say -- impossible, really. Or at least impossible to resolve. There’s nothing he can say to defuse this, nothing anyone could, because they both know Erik has finally understood what Charles tried to tell him when they first started this, and they both agree. It’s like being stabbed with his own knife, one he gave to Erik in the first place that Erik swore he’d never use, even though Charles had given him permission -- a sharp pain in the gut that Charles can’t ignore, his stomach clenching up with nausea as the city lights pass him by outside.

When they finally reach their building even the journey up in the elevator is painful, and the apartment door shutting behind them, shutting them in, sounds like a death knell. Charles stands in the gallery pulling off his gloves, trying to delay the inevitable. It’s pointless, though -- time won’t heal this wound, it’ll only make it fester, and so finally he says, softly, “Let me go put the kettle on first. Then we can sit down.”

Erik nods and lets him go, and as Charles heads into the kitchen he tracks Erik’s movements through the house, Erik draping his coat over the hook in the closet, pacing through the den and eventually settling uneasily into one of the armchairs. Charles takes out two mugs and makes up two chamomile teas -- more in hope than in honest expectation that it will help -- before taking them back out with him to set one in front of Erik, then sitting down at the near end of the sofa, cupping his mug between his hands.

“So,” he says wearily, unsure of how to start.

“You’re upset,” Erik states. The obvious, of course, but Charles can tell that Erik isn’t sure what to say, either. Being blunt is the easiest way forward, and Erik is just sitting there watching him, gaze shadowed from across the room; when Charles tries to touch Erik’s emotions he slides through them like oil in water, sliding over the top of it without ever truly touching.

Charles takes a sip of his tea, then straightens, deciding that if Erik is going to be blunt, so will he. “You thought I wanted to go away so that I could molest you somewhere nobody would care,” he says, his fingers tightening on his mug, nausea rising up inside him again. “If that’s what you think of me, Erik, then I -- I don’t even know what to say. You know how hard I’ve struggled with your age, and that we’d discussed it when we took up with each other again, and so to throw it in my face like that … ”

One of Erik’s long fingers taps at the curve of his cup, but he doesn’t drink. “We have never been on the same page about this, Charles. When I told you I didn’t care about my age you weren’t happy with me then, either.”

“That’s not the same thing at all, Erik,” Charles says. “I suggested that it might be nice to go away somewhere we don’t have to be so paranoid, and you accused me of wanting to enjoy some unsupervised pedophilia.”

Erik shrugs and leans back in his chair, crossing his legs at the knee. Charles hates how cold Erik feels when he thinks about this, as if he’s somehow managed to divorce this from his feelings about Charles himself, the love and affection sitting separate from Erik’s anger and the sick sense of realization still leaking through it, a dark stain. “I’m not a mind reader. That’s your gift.”

He’s not _listening_ , and it’s so -- it’s infuriating and heartbreaking at the same time to have Erik so -- so _casual_ about it, about what he’s implying, what he’s _saying_ about Charles -- Charles feels ill and hot and disgusted all at once, with himself and the situation, and he can’t -- he doesn’t want to sit here and just talk at Erik all evening if Erik’s not willing to listen.

“If that’s the first thing that came to mind when you were interpreting my suggestion,” he says, setting his tea down on the coffee table with a quiet clink of china, “then we have a -- a problem, Erik. We talked about the issues around us getting together when we first discussed it last summer, and you said then that you understood it wasn’t about your age for me. You’ve always been the one who insisted to me I wasn’t a pervert, that you trust me that it’s about you, and who you are, not whether or not you’re legal. So what’s changed?”

Erik’s gaze skates away from his, briefly, focusing down on the rim of his tea cup as his fingers fiddle with its handle, silent for a long moment. “I know it isn’t _about_ my age. But it isn’t independent of it either, Charles. It wasn’t about my age for Shaw either. And I’m not saying you’re the same -- only that no matter what I said to you, you should have known better. You agree, Charles,” he looks up at him again, meeting his gaze from across the room -- it’s like ice water, but under the skin, making every part of Charles’ body cringe. “You haven’t cared lately, but you used to know this wasn’t right.”

God. Of all the things Erik could say, that might be the worst.

“That’s not true,” Charles manages, though he feels like his throat is closing up on him; there’s a pounding noise in his head that he thinks is his pulse, or maybe just the sound of doom coming for him. “Erik -- I’ve _always_ cared, I’m the one who always has done, so how can you think I don’t?” 

Just the way Erik says it is awful, matter-of-fact and blunt as anything, and Charles has to move, he has to get up --

“Sit down, Charles,” Erik orders him before Charles can even fully stand up, the pressure of Command forcing him back into his seat like a hand at the back of his neck. Charles bridles but has no choice, breathless and fighting against the order. “This conversation isn’t finished.”

“How dare you force me like this,” Charles says, trying to sound angry but shaking a little with the need to move, to be on his feet. “Let me go, Erik!”

“For what purpose? So you can go upstairs and ruminate on it until you’ve victimized yourself even more than you have right now?” Erik rises from his chair even while Charles cannot, setting down his undrunk tea and crossing the short space between them to lean over Charles where he sits at the sofa, bracing his arms against the back cushions. Their faces are too close, Erik’s eyes grey and inhuman and fixed on Charles’.

“Was it only okay as long as I didn’t doubt you?” Erik says softly, evenly. “Was that the excuse you made to yourself -- that I didn’t know any better?”

“Of course not,” Charles snaps, horrified. He aches inside. “You know how hard it was for me -- I _never_ hid from you the fact that our ages are an issue, I told you over and over again! And just when we were finding some measure of balance, you started to -- _doubt_ me, as you put it.” 

He’s starting to get angry now despite himself, the frustration of a trapped animal twisting his upset into something even less helpful. Charles stares up at Erik and asks, “Was it only okay as long as I was perfect, didn’t have issues or need your support? And now that you see I was human all along, I’m too weak for you? I see it in your mind, Erik, sometimes you’re disgusted by me for loving you the way I do. Why don’t you just kill me the way you’re planning to kill Shaw for the same crime and have done with it?”

“Because _I still love you_ ,” Erik hisses out, the sudden fury in his voice like snapping electricity, his grip tightening on the cushions and his knuckles white. “Because you might have betrayed your job as my parent and my physician, you might have ruined every chance I had for ever having a normal life -- but I _love_ you, and I can’t stop loving you. God damn it.”

He pushes away, shoulders shaking with an intake of breath as he turns his back to Charles, facing the opposite wall. Charles --

\-- breaks.

Charles wants to die, right now. If he could just expire through sheer willpower he would do it, would just -- stop, so he wouldn’t have to feel like this, like Erik not only tore his heart out but ripped Charles’ chest clean open, exposed all his ugliness to the world and left him splayed and helpless and damned. He can’t even say anything, because to hear Erik say that -- to hear him _think_ that -- at least before Charles could tell himself that Erik knew why their relationship was wrong and didn’t care, that he was informed and chose Charles anyway and that it was enough, but now -- now, Charles hates himself more than Erik ever could, and he’s distantly grateful Erik ordered him back into his seat so he can’t go and do something stupid.

He must be projecting, leaking his thoughts, feelings, out into the room and into Erik because Erik turns around, then, and says, “Stop it.” Erik’s eyes are bright, too -- glassy -- although his cheeks are dry. “Stop thinking like that. This is the bed you made, and we’re both lying in it now. I won’t have you martyring yourself for the cause of your own conscience.”

Martyring -- betraying -- is there anything Erik doesn’t think badly of Charles for? 

Charles curls in on himself, his hands coming up to cover his face as he sets his forehead against his knees, unable to open his mouth to say anything for fear it would come out as a sob; he pulls his arms in against his sides to block out the light and just -- he can’t. He can’t do this any more. Erik hates him and Charles has ruined _everything_ , he ruined Erik even though he tried so hard not to -- Erik is right, about all of it. Charles is -- he should -- he should just stop. He should just stop.

For a while Erik lets him stay like that, the only sound that of Charles’ heavy, hitching breaths and the damp heat of them against his own cheeks, his world boxed in tight around him. He’d think Erik left if he couldn’t feel Erik’s mind still there, the proximity of it nearly painful now. 

Then, at last, he feels Erik’s hands on his shoulders and hears the creak of the floorboard as Erik kneels down on the floor in front of him. 

“Look at me,” Erik tells him.

Charles wants to wrap his arms around Erik’s neck and embrace him, to do as he’s asked and be good, he really does. But he can’t, he _can’t_ look at Erik right now, not and see all of those things he said written across his face, to know how -- how unwelcome he, Charles, is, that Erik loves him only because he has no choice. “Please don’t make me,” he says instead to his knees, his throat hot and burning.

“I won’t make you.” Erik’s hands move, now, smoothing toward Charles’ upper arms and then back again, a steady motion that should be soothing even though Charles doesn’t _have_ to look to know Erik’s still angry. He can feel it in him, pulsing in Erik’s core like a rotten thing. 

“You think I’m a pervert,” Charles says, twisting away from Erik’s hands -- how can Erik even stomach touching him, when this is what he’s been sitting on all this time? “You think I’m disgusting and that I betrayed you and you’re right. You’re right. I should … ” He’s not sure how he meant to end that sentence, but he suspects speaking it aloud would only have made Erik more angry, anyway.

Erik exhales, and Charles catches him battling between his desire to make Charles feel better and his determination that he ought to just let Charles mire in it for a while, that Charles ought to, that Charles deserves it.

“I don’t think you’re a pervert. Or disgusting, for that matter.” Erik’s hands move down to Charles’ legs instead, as if out of respect, grasping around the backs of his ankles. His grip tightens, just slightly, before he says, “But that doesn’t undo the fact you should never have slept with me. Not after the first time. You knew I was sick, you knew I couldn’t…. I don’t even know why you did it -- Christ, Charles,” that blade is back to his voice, tight and sharp. “Surely you didn’t think you could _fuck_ it out of me.”

 _You do know why,_ Charles says, silently now, easier than speaking aloud. _I’m just as fucked up than you are, Erik, except it’s my job to know better. You should hate me. It’s okay. I want you to -- to be better, and this is part of that._ He tries to swallow but it hurts, the lump in his throat too thick. _We can -- there’s not long now until you’re legally an adult. Then you can -- I’ll set up a trust fund. It’ll -- you don’t have to worry about money. I’ll take care of it._ He doesn’t dare say ‘of you’.

“I don’t want your money, Charles.” Erik’s hands finally drop away, leaving Charles’ skin feeling cold in their absence. “And I won’t hate you just because you think I should. I’m angry with you. That’s different.”

Except Erik does hate him, a little bit. Even if he won’t admit it. There’s a kernel of it inside him, and Charles knows he’s watering it by giving in to self-loathing, but he can’t seem to stop.

 _I’m not a good person,_ he says when he can finally decide what he wants to say, and after a long fight with himself Charles lifts his head from his knees just a little, keeping his chin and eyes down so he doesn’t have to look at Erik. He continues in a voice that creaks, “I’m a very weak, selfish person, who pretends very well. I should -- I have so much, but I don’t achieve anything with it.” He wipes at his wet face with the backs of his hands, at his running nose, and wishes Erik would just let him go, so he could stop being seen like this. He used to have pride.

“What you should do,” Erik says, “is stop feeling sorry for yourself. That doesn’t solve anything. What’s done is done, and at least it doesn’t seem you’re likely to forget that. But I still have to decide how _I_ feel about it. I never had that chance, because up until now I never really understood it.”

Up until now, Charles thinks, Erik hadn’t really understood that Charles -- that Charles is only better than Hellfire because they set the bar so low that anyone could top it. That Charles --

\-- Charles should have said no to Moira when he got to the station, should have got the hell out and never interfered with Erik’s life at all, because for all the good he’s done he’s also ruined Erik. Even Erik, he’s made worse by association. No matter what Erik says, or thinks, Charles knows that Erik would be better off without him, because Charles can never fix this, now that Erik knows what Charles has done. Has failed to do.

It would be better if Charles just -- he can’t leave, not while Erik is anywhere nearby, Erik would never let him, too dependent on him still, but maybe if Charles stopped existing, so that Erik wouldn’t have to try and work his way around the elephant in the room just to keep from destroying his own life again. Charles would be -- would be gone, and Erik would inherit everything, or, well, half of everything, the half that isn’t to go to Raven, and he could be happy. With Frank, maybe. Lord knows Frank has done Erik more good lately than Charles ever has.

It wouldn’t even be stupid, not really. It would be -- it would be _altruistic_ , at this point.

Erik, who has no idea what Charles is thinking, no way of knowing without Charles’ own gift, leans in and kisses his forehead right at Charles’ hairline, lips lingering warm a moment longer than necessary. “I need to think about this. On my own, understand?” He pulls back and straightens back to his feet, leaving Charles knowing, inside himself, that he’s already decided what needs doing. Now he just -- he just has to pick up the courage to follow through.

“We should go to bed,” he says, barely above a hoarse whisper, half-straightening, eyes on his own knees. “You have an early start tomorrow.” The thought of it is sharp and painful -- tomorrow Erik leaves early in the morning, going back to Elias, who made him think all of these things in the first place, who set Erik on this path.

“It will be good for us to have a few days apart,” Erik says obliviously, reaching for Charles’ hands and tugging them to pull Charles up, though Charles’ muscles are weak and soft and he has to work hard to get his legs properly under himself. He still -- he can’t look at Erik. He hates that Erik can see his face now, all red and swollen and puffy.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” he says, and he means everything, all at once, all the things he’s done with best intentions that have led them here, to this. How he’s going to keep from spending Erik’s entire trip brooding over this, poring over it again and again, Charles has no idea, but he’s a little frightened at the thought of being left alone with all of this in his head. And he knows, too, how selfish it is that he’s only thinking of how he feels about it instead of trying to be there for Erik -- that, too, is another black mark on his list of sins. “You’re -- probably right. We can both -- take some time to think. I really am sorry.”

Erik reaches for him, tugging him in until Charles is pressed against Erik’s chest and wrapped in Erik’s embrace, Erik’s heart beating loud against Charles’ temple. His body is hot like a furnace, but his hand is cold when it grazes the nape of his neck. “I know,” Erik says.

He watches while Charles brushes his teeth, while he changes into his pajamas and gets into bed, and when Charles lays down, stiff and awkward and wishing for oblivion, Erik sits on the edge of the bed and says, “Don’t hurt yourself while I’m away, and don’t turn yourself in, either. Understand?”

It’s -- Charles is surprised, and dismayed, that Erik has thought to order him so, but then perhaps he shouldn’t be surprised. Erik knows him better than anyone, after all, even if he doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone and let Charles sort things out for them both. Still, it means Charles has no choice but to say, “I understand.”

Erik sleeps in his old room that night, but Charles doesn’t sleep at all. He pretends to be asleep when Erik comes in in the morning, staying still while Erik bends down to kiss his forehead, and he listens to the sound of Erik’s footsteps retreating, of the stairs creaking, and then, distantly, the front door closing.

And then he stays in bed for the rest of the day, except for when he has to use the toilet, or throw up.

*

_Erik_

Erik feels the moment he leaves Charles’ telepathic range, like the sense of a small bubble bursting in his peripheral awareness. A part of him expects to feel clarity rush in to fill the void, like distance itself is all that’s needed to give him a sense of purpose and certainty, but it’s no better than it was. If anything he just feels … sad, like he’s snipped the last tie holding him to Charles and they’re floating apart in the vast expanse of the ocean now, each wave carrying them further away.

Erik thought leaving New York meant he’d suddenly open his eyes and see Charles was no better than Shaw, learn to hate him and leave him, but he has to admit it would have been easier. Instead there’s this tangled mess of resentment and longing and betrayal and love, each thread tied to another and impossible to tease apart. 

If this is what recovery is, Erik thinks bitterly as he sips watered-down coffee at his layover in Chicago, he’s not convinced he wasn’t better off sick.

Charles should have known better. That much is unmistakable. He should have known better, and perhaps he did, but he chose to ignore it. Erik isn’t blind to his own complicitness in all this … he pushed Charles after he found out, he initiated it, but then again, he never would have if he hadn’t been made to feel as if his only choices were to give this to Charles or to lose him forever. 

Thinking of Charles as a bad person feels like an intellectual exercise: easy to do when he divorces his emotions entirely from the matter, but as soon as he remembers who Charles _is_ , how much he needs him, he can’t keep his grip.

He can’t just think about himself, of course -- he knows how he feels, but what’s worse is imagining how Charles must feel, remembering the way he looked when Erik left him, as if something had been extinguished inside him. Erik ordered him not to hurt himself, of course, but now he can’t stop wondering if that will hold. If Charles feels badly enough that he’d still want to. If he’d find a loophole in Erik’s words.

Erik calls Charles from the airport when he lands. It goes to voicemail. He calls again from the back seat of Peter’s car, and this time leaves a message, telling Charles to call him as soon as he wakes up. He’s not sure how well Command translates across telephones, if it translates at all, which may be the reason he doesn’t hear from Charles -- no response, not even to his carefully-composed texts asking if Charles has eaten dinner yet. Eaten at all.

By the time it’s evening in California and Erik lies awake in the guest room of Braden-Newell’s extravagant home, he’s starting to worry going on this trip was a mistake. He knew Charles wasn’t well when he left him in New York, but Charles has been unwell before, and in all frankness Erik thought -- well, he thought being away from Erik for a while might do Charles some good. 

Worrying about Charles makes Erik feel sick, himself. It’s only a small comfort, knowing Charles can’t do anything to hurt himself -- hurt them -- given Erik’s order. He keeps wondering if he left some loophole, excusing himself from lunch to call Charles from the bathroom, sneaking every opportunity to try to get in touch with him. 

Some part of him, though, feels like he ought to leave well enough alone: if Erik needs time to himself, then Charles certainly does. And it hardly counts as Erik having time to himself if he spends all of it thinking about Charles, trying to get in touch with Charles, orbiting around him as surely as if he were still within the reach of Charles’ telepathic influence. 

He tries to blot all of it from his mind, to live in the moment and just appreciate the things Elias shows him around the city, let Elias try to talk him into writing a memoir for the thousandth time always to insist, in the end, that he isn’t nearly good enough a writer to pull it off. It’s when Elias isn’t there that shade starts to creep in again, anxiety humming in the back of his mind and pulling all his other emotions taut as well. 

Early in the morning, the house is open and empty-feeling, no answering call to the echo of Erik’s footsteps on the floorboards or the rattle of pots and pans in the kitchen as he makes himself breakfast. It’s not unusual for Elias to be hard at work even at this hour, of course -- Erik knows that from winter -- so he makes two grilled cheese sandwiches, tucked into paper towels that he carries up the stairs to Elias’ home office.

Only, when he pushes open that door, Elias isn’t here, either. The office is similar in style to the rest of the house -- expensive-looking and academic, lined with bookshelves that seem made to display the wealth of Elias’ important books and awards upon them and show them off to the viewer. The desk is antique, the nails old metal, and very tidy, only a few pages scattered at one end to mess it up. The center of the desk is occupied by a laptop stand -- currently empty -- a monitor, a keyboard, and a pile of printed pages that look to be some sort of manuscript.

Taking a bite of one of the sandwiches, Erik settles in at Elias’ leather chair, rolling closer to the desk to take a look. The cover page reads:

  
_Burning Up:_  
The Philosophy of the Hellfire Club’s Elite Officers

Elias Braden-Newell, Ph.D.  
Foreword by Harriet Finkley, Ph.D.

Erik’s brow quirks up; he sets the sandwiches aside on their paper towels and flips over the page, skimming the acknowledgments section and the foreword, which was written by a woman who is apparently the world’s foremost expert on terrorism and extremist ideology. The following sections include a short introduction to the six officers in addition to a brief list of other ‘notable characters,’ which includes Erik himself as well as Creed and some others who were captured prior to the Brooklyn raid. Presumably the selection was heavily biased toward people who were willing or able to meet with Elias and talk to him about their experiences.

There’s too much material to just sit and read it all in one sitting -- there must be over four hundred pages here -- so Erik flips through, glancing at chapter titles, pausing on the ones that seem most interesting (Erik, obviously, doesn’t care about _Metaphysical Approaches to Navitabsorption and its Ideological Repercussions_ ).

> _Azazel Rasputin was most often the enforcer of the group, despite being less physically imposing than some of the fringe members; Shaw’s strict policy of inflicting no unavoidable harm on other mutants, however, often led to Rasputin relying on unorthodox methods of making a point to those who disagreed with Shaw or were considering betrayal. On one notable occasion Rasputin is reported to have teleported each member of a splinter group within the Hellfire Club to the top of a different spire of St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, unable to get down but just close enough to shout to one another -- with the instruction to ‘talk it out and decide who is going to tell me what I need to know first, and who is going to be sent somewhere far worse than this.’_

I told him that story, Erik thinks amusedly, reaching for another bite of his sandwich and flipping to a new page. Azazel used to like to boast about this kind of thing, and Erik, naturally, was required to tolerate it -- not that it ever seemed that much of an imposition, when Azazel’s stories were so amusing and Erik still craved the validation of having an officer just want to talk to him, nothing more, finding Erik’s reactions and opinions valuable in and of themselves.

A few chapters on Erik finds a large, full-page diagram of the hierarchy of Hellfire’s officers and known members of the second circle. At least, he thinks as he peruses the names, the web-like lines connecting each person to their commanding officer, tracing everyone all the way back up to Shaw, Elias has an appreciation for the complexity of their relationships. Emma is placed directly below Shaw, acknowledging her right-hand status, while only being slightly above the other officers, suggesting that while she was in practice Shaw’s second in command, in title she was equivalent to the rest of them. Erik’s own name is at the bottom, of course, but there is only one line coming out of his box, like an officer -- instead of the three or four belonging to the others lower in the hierarchy -- and it connects directly to Shaw. 

Interestingly, it’s mirrored on the next page, which claims to represent not the subjective hierarchies, but reports of whose lives should be preserved first in the instance of catastrophic crisis. Here, Erik is listed second: after Shaw, before Emma. The tiny Greek letters next to his name, "psi, (later omega),” in addition to his listed DS score (“-1S/7D”), betray why.

He finds some glossy photos a few pages further in, and these -- these make Erik stop to take his time, poring over them with strange fascination.

Here’s Emma as a girl, in her private school uniform, still pale as sugar with cool blue eyes; next to her there’s a mugshot of Azazel, clearly taken in some police station or other, though how they caught him is anyone’s guess. Elias has even dug up one of _Jason Wyngarde_ , in clothes Erik can’t even guess at a decade for, the photo itself aged-looking and brown-spotted though Wyngarde himself looks young, just the same as his illusions often painted him when Erik knew him.

Over the page, when Erik can bring himself to turn it, there are pictures from the news, of them destroying things. People. Some of them are taken from far away, their figures barely distinguishable; others at horrifying close-up, either through zoom lenses or photographers in unfortunate proximity to their subjects. Here’s the St Petersburg fire, Essex’s face inhuman-looking in the light from the flames -- and the destruction of the Flatiron Building, the photographer near enough to capture Shaw’s hand resting on Erik’s shoulder and Erik’s expression dark with concentration, reaching toward the building as it crumples, the satisfied smile on Shaw’s lips.

He’s never seen these photos. Erik’s fingers brush the slick page, over the lines of his own face. It feels like looking at a dream from the waking world: surreal and far away.

Erik turns away eventually, only after looking at the photos of their mug-shots again, drawing out his phone after a time to snap photos of the earlier ones to look at more closely later.

The next section is biographies of the Hellfire officers -- one for each of them, though some of them are sparse on details of their personal lives before Hellfire. Shaw’s is especially barren, barely anything at all there, which isn’t surprising. Erik has long suspected Shaw is a lot older than he lets on.

He flicks through them, then with surprise sees a picture of himself on the next page -- his mugshot from when the CIA took him into custody, thirteen with dark circles under his eyes from sleep deprivation, pale against the bland background, his name typed above the photo in copperplate. This is a biography of _Erik_.

> _Erik Lehnsherr cannot be properly called an officer of the Hellfire Club, as while he was in a central position in the hierarchy, as has been well-publicized in the Hellfire Trial, Lehnsherr was in truth the lowest in status within the group, occupying a submissive role towards all of the other officers with no single person in complete control of his upbringing. Instead he was an only child raised by strange parents, doing as he was told -- regardless of the consequences to others -- and being rewarded for his efforts with candy and books fetched by Rasputin for his good work in performing acts he could not understand._

Well. None of that is factually incorrect, but somehow reading it sets Erik’s teeth on edge, sandpaper irritation rubbing away in his chest. Of course he obeyed, and of course Hellfire used conditioning techniques to manage his behavior. But it was hardly that he didn’t understand what he did. On the contrary, Shaw made sure he learned well, far more thoroughly than the layperson would be told by the news. It was not that he didn’t _understand_ his own crimes, it was that he _didn’t care_. How could he? Caring was punished as harshly as disobedience.

> _Missing child records suggest Lehnsherr was kidnapped by the Hellfire Club at eighteen months old. Given this, it is impossible he developed any sense of the gravity of Hellfire’s acts with his formative years so entirely shaped by Hellfire philosophy. It is almost more useful to think of him as a Hellfire weapon than as Hellfire himself._

Erik tries to set his annoyance aside to finish the book but it’s impossible to let go of, itching just beneath his skin and frustrating even the blandest of paragraphs. Eventually Erik shuts the manuscript and pushes back Braden-Newell’s chair, grabbing his phone off the desk and retreating back into his room, where he finds himself spending hours staring at the photos he took of the officers, memorizing every detail, until at last he feels the approaching metal of Braden-Newell’s car and has to bring himself downstairs to pretend he knows nothing. Fortunately, as Braden-Newell captured so very well, Erik’s good at pretending to know nothing.

He plays the part so perfectly all through dinner, smiling at Braden-Newell’s jokes, making one or two of his own, using his power to help carve the roast and never once forgetting a line. He starts to resent the way he sits there silently as Braden-Newell lectures on about college and how perfect Erik would be at Cal, keeping quiet the snide voice in the back of his head that keeps wondering how Braden-Newell could possibly respect him as a scholar when he thinks Erik’s no better than a dog, fetching and sitting and _good boy._ He hates the even tone of his own voice, betraying nothing. He hates that he got too damn good at this, at Hellfire and now with Charles, where he’s spent the past four and a half years pretending: pretending he didn’t know Charles wanted him, pretending to be a perfect Dom, pretending more recently that he didn’t know why this was wrong. Pretending not to notice the part of him that cringed away from thinking about it.

He can’t blame Charles not for noticing, the same as he can’t blame Braden-Newell for his obliviousness to Erik’s quiet, seething anger, buried as it is under layers and layers of good training. Charles was pretending too, of course. He knew this was wrong a long time before Erik did, and pretended not to, because doing anything else hurt too much to stand.

Not that Erik’s given him any other choice, now…. If pretending were sutures holding the wound shut, Erik’s ripped them out and left it raw and bleeding again, vulnerable to infection. Who knows what Charles is thinking about right now, all the way on the other side of the country. If he’s plotting to do anything about it. 

Erik doesn’t dare call Raven to check on him -- turning himself in to Raven is one of the loopholes Erik identified, since it doesn’t quite count as ‘turning himself in’, not literally, and if she showed up on his front doorstep Charles would certainly realize that.

He only calls her when he checks Charles’ google calendar and sees he was supposed to have lunch with her on Saturday. Raven picks up after the fourth ring.

“Erik, hi,” she says, and she sounds worried, too, far more brisk than usual. “What’s going on? Charles stood me up earlier today and he’s not answering his cell or the doorbell -- is he with you in California?”

“Oh,” Erik says, and tries to sound casual about it, knowing there’s little chance of her catching him in a lie if she can’t see his face. “Yes, he decided to come along. I didn’t realize he forgot to tell you.”

Erik sees Braden-Newell watching him from inside, the shut glass door between him and Erik out on the patio, pacing. Erik looks away and pretends not to have noticed.

“Sounds like him,” Raven says in a disapproving voice, and sighs, clearly irritated. “Is he there? I’ll tell him off myself.”

“No, he and Elias are off arguing about something. He’d bite my head off if I interrupted. I was calling to see if you wanted to meet for coffee when I get back to New York -- maybe Wednesday?”

After all, Erik has to have an excuse to call her, now that he’s confirmed what he suspected. The knot in his stomach is large and heavy, sinking fast.

Raven sounds suspicious, though, when she says, “... Sure. Anything in particular you wanted to talk about?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. -- I have to go, it looks like this might get physical. I’ll talk to you later, Raven.”

“Okay,” she says, with a hum of discontent. “Later, Erik.”

When Erik comes back inside, sliding the glass door shut behind him, Braden-Newell looks up from the book that’s open on his knee, reptilian eyes flickering as the filmy third eyelids blink over them. “Is everything all right, Erik?” he asks, though his tone is far too bland for true concern. “That sounded rather fraught.”

Erik taps his cell phone twice between his fingers, then sends it to the back pocket of his trousers with his power, lingering there in the middle of the living room floor, uncertain -- it’s only the afternoon his second day here, day two out of what was meant to be seven. But Erik can’t think about anything but Charles, and if Charles is all right, if Charles still hates himself, hates Erik, what Charles might do to rid himself of so much hate.

Thinking about it makes him nauseated, the back of his throat prickling with the uneasy swell of bile.

“Charles isn’t well,” Erik says at last, as coolly as he can. “I need to go back to New York. I apologize for the short notice.”

Braden-Newell’s brow rises, his whole body pausing as if for a breath before he says, “Erik, Charles is an adult and surely more than capable of taking care of himself. Having you hovering over every sniff and cough can hardly make any difference, especially since no doubt he would feel terrible about you coming so far back.”

“It’s a little more serious than a cold,” Erik says. He feels something firm inside him as he speaks, certainty that this is the right choice. He meant what he said to Charles the other day, the good as well as the bad. If Charles -- if anything happened to Charles, Erik would never forgive himself.

But Braden-Newell just sighs, and he closes his book, setting it aside and folding his hands in his lap. “Is he having one of his episodes again?” he asks, and he’s so blasé about it that it takes Erik a moment to even realize that Braden-Newell _knows_ about Charles’ depression. That he knows, but doesn’t seem to _care_. “There’s no helping him with that, Erik, you’re best off to leave him to it. He always refused to try medication and I doubt he’s changed. Frankly I think he enjoys the attention. He’s probably throwing a hissy fit that you’re here, seeing me, and trying to draw you home so I’ll keep my claws out of you.” He raises one hand, blunt black nails scratching at the air. “It’s pathetic, really.”

This time, at least, Erik isn’t shocked to hear such words coming out of Braden-Newell’s mouth -- which makes it easier for the anger to surge up in his chest in its stead, burning and furious, all the metal in the room suddenly singing for attention in Erik’s senses.

“How dare you speak about Charles like that to me?” Erik snaps. 

His voice comes out cold as his wristwatch feels against his skin, the stainless steel like ice to the touch. He’s dimly aware of standing straighter, shoulders back like he intends to Dom Braden-Newell down into submission if he has to, never mind how inappropriate that would be given their relative positions. 

“Whatever you might think of him as your student, he is my _parent._ I will not tolerate disrespect toward him -- and certainly not to my face. Apologize immediately.”

It isn’t an order, perhaps fortunately, though Erik dearly wishes it could be. Braden-Newell looks at him for a long moment, longer than could possibly be anything other than deliberate, and says, “Of course, Erik, of course. I apologize. It’s not Charles’ fault, after all. I blame the family -- they had him far too long for him to come out as he should have done. Had I found him at the age he found you I could have done wonders with him. But now … Erik, I really do think you should stay and let him work through his tantrum on his own. He’s over thirty years old. He doesn’t need babying.”

Erik stops himself from hurling something heavy and metal at Braden-Newell’s head through sheer force of willpower. 

“You know nothing about Charles’ family,” Erik says before he can stop himself, the words welling up in him like a tide. “You know nothing about Charles. You call him a child, but I’m seventeen years old and I can’t imagine anyone my age speaking about someone else the way you are right now.” And Braden-Newell claims to study the human mind, Erik thinks venomously, past the point of shades of grey. Erik thinks psychiatry is next to Satanism, and even he knows better.

“Erik,” Braden-Newell says, without so much as shifting to get up, utterly unconcerned despite Erik’s obvious anger, “calm down and be reasonable. We spoke about this the last time you were here and you didn’t react in anywhere near the same way -- in fact, I rather think you agreed with me. What’s changed?” He gestures towards the seat opposite his own, indicating for Erik to sit down. “Clearly something has happened.”

“Last time,” Erik tells him, though he is calmer now, steadier than he was, “I gave you the benefit of the doubt because Charles was no better where you’re concerned. Last time, we were discussing Charles’ shortcomings, but we weren’t discussing anything out of his _control._ Depression is out of his control. I am telling you I’m concerned my guardian is a risk to his own safety, and you react like this. It’s inappropriate.”

“You said nothing of the sort,” Braden-Newell says, frowning at him. “I surmised from what you said that Charles was having one of his episodes of self-pity, not that he’s likely to harm himself. You neither confirmed nor denied that was the case, only worked yourself up into a fit that I dared question him. Of course you may leave if you wish to; you’re no prisoner here. But I had thought you smarter than this, Erik, less liable to let yourself be manipulated by a man you yourself admit can’t stand me. I’m sure Charles is perfectly fine and laughing to himself at managing to call you home to heel so soon after your arrival.”

 _Unbelievable._

It would be easy to fall into any one of those traps -- defend himself against the gaslighting and quibble over the semantics of what he said and meant. Argue his own intelligence, claim immunity to manipulation even as he gives into Braden-Newell’s own. React to the final jab against Charles, as if either of the first two weren’t enough.

Erik feels as if he’s looking at Braden-Newell for the first time, and that hard pit in his stomach tells him he’s known someone just like this before, grew up bending to these same pressures with the same pretense that it was in his own best interest. Only no matter what Braden-Newell might think, Erik isn’t just a Hellfire’s weapon to be twisted and used for another’s purposes.

Erik refuses to give Braden-Newell the satisfaction of taking the bait.

“Perhaps so,” Erik says, as congenially as he can manage right now, consciously relaxing his posture to clasp his hands behind his back as if in surrender. “When I get home this evening, I’ll have to let you know if you’re right. I’m sure I’ll end up looking very childish.”

At that, Braden-Newell’s mouth purses tightly, clearly displeased, but all he says is, “Let me call Peter to come and fetch you back to the airport. Do you need help purchasing an earlier ticket?”

“No, thank you -- I can manage it.” Erik draws his phone back out of his pocket, standing there in front of Braden-Newell as he sends Charles one last text, telling him he’s coming home. He doesn’t expect Charles to read it. It only takes a few more minutes for him to use the airline’s app to purchase a new flight, one leaving in four hours. It’s disgustingly expensive, but Charles is disgustingly rich and Erik uses his credit card. “There,” he says at last. “Tell Peter I’ll need the car in an hour.”

“Very well.” Braden-Newell gets up from his chair and leaves the room in a cloud of his annoyance, but he makes the call, clearly, because Peter shows up forty-five minutes later with a worried expression as he asks, “Is Charles okay?”

“We’ll see,” Erik tells him, displeased that Braden-Newell decided to share that information around but seeing no point in starting that argument up again. Peter helps him carry his luggage out to the car, and Erik lingers a moment longer on the doorstep, facing Braden-Newell as he says, “Thank you again for your hospitality. I wish I didn’t have to leave so abruptly.”

“Do let me know how you get on,” Braden-Newell says, all cool and collected again in front of Peter, and holds out his hand for Erik to shake. Erik takes it, Braden-Newell’s scales warm in the sunlight, and then turns to follow Peter to the car.

The whole flight home he can’t concentrate on his book, bought on impulse from the airport bookshop and meant to be one of those pulpy reads you devour in hours. He ends up with his head tilted against the cold round windowpane and thinking about -- about Charles, of course, because Charles has consumed his waking thoughts as much as he has Erik’s unconscious ones, creeping into Erik’s every uneasy dream the previous night. The metal of the plane surrounding him is no comfort. 

Braden-Newell, unintentionally, has managed to throw all of Erik’s feelings for Charles into sharp relief and when this is his choice, between having Charles with all his sins and flaws or not having him at all, Erik knows exactly what he’d choose. He won’t pretend to himself or to Charles that Charles didn’t do something criminal. He won’t even pretend there aren’t other lives he could have led, ones where he’d go to college wherever he wanted, love someone who was rough around the edges but still somehow just-right, grow up and grow old and love Charles, but always only as the beloved parent who saved his life.

Maybe he’d be happier in that life. Maybe he could have had that, if he’d never found out about Charles’ feelings, never felt like he had to choose between being Charles’ lover and never seeing Charles again, if Charles didn’t fold away his guilt time after time and come right back into Erik’s arms. But maybe not. He and Charles can be happy together, as well -- Erik knows that because he’s lived it. So they can have that again, they must be able to, if they fight for it -- if they go into it with _both_ their eyes wide open this time. 

Now that he’s had that, Erik can’t give it up.

He gets home in the late evening, long after the city’s inhabitants have mostly gone to sleep, Times Square still bright and vibrant but the Upper East Side draped in the navy twilight of slumber as Erik gets out of the yellow cab and into his building. He pushes out with his thoughts, trying to see if Charles is paying attention and will catch them. There’s no response, though, and as the elevator ascends Erik feels sicker and sicker, his heart throbbing in his gut. 

What will he find, when he goes inside? If he opens their bedroom door will he find Charles’ --

He can’t even finish the thought.

Erik leaves his luggage downstairs as soon as he gets inside, taking the steps three at a time as he races up to the second floor. He pauses, out of breath, on the landing outside the bedroom with one hand pressed against the doorframe, swearing to every God he doesn’t believe in that he’ll never sin again if he can just … if, _please_ , let Charles have listened. Don’t let this be the one time Erik’s orders fail him.

Eventually, only when he’s certain he’ll be sick if he stays out here any longer, Erik pushes open the door. 

Charles isn’t there.

Erik’s mind goes white, fear searing out all other emotions. It’s -- it’s two in the morning, if Charles isn’t here, then he --

Erik checks the closet first, but it’s empty, the light overhead revealing nothing but the dark shadows of hanging clothes. His heart races as he approaches the bathroom, possibilities spinning through his mind and lighting it up like fireworks. Maybe he should call someone, he thinks hollowly. He doesn’t need to see this. He shouldn’t -- he should let someone else --

He opens the door anyway.

At first, he thinks the bathroom is empty, too, the fluorescent lights gleaming off the white marble countertops and the basin of the bathtub. It’s not until he steps inside that he sees Charles’ body curled up in the bottom of the shower. 

He’s wearing his pajamas, but they’re soaking wet, the cotton clinging to his limbs and his face hidden from view, nothing visible but the dark tangle of sodden hair. 

“Charles?” Erik says. His voice sounds strange.

He pulls open the shower door and gets down on his knees on the still-wet floor, water cold through his trousers, and reaches for Charles’ limp pale wrist. He’s never been more terrified, or more relieved, when he feels the throb of a pulse meet his fingertips.

“ _Jesus Christ,_ ” Erik whispers in a sudden, heavy exhale of breath, and his whole body sags as the tension leaves it all at once, Erik catching himself with one hand against the slick wall before he can lose his balance.

Charles makes a grumbling sort of noise in his throat, then shifts, his head turning so he can blink balefully up at Erik over him, the whites of his eyes bloodshot and sore-looking. “Hey,” he mumbles, tugging his wrist free. “It’s not Saturday.”

“You didn’t answer my calls,” Erik says. It comes out forced and strident. “You didn’t go to lunch with Raven. I texted you over thirty times and you never answered. I thought you were _dead_ , Charles!”

“Oh,” Charles says, and his mouth twists, his expression crumpling in on itself with a sense of self-loathing echoing against the tiles as he pushes himself slowly upright to sit in the corner of the shower, his knees pulled up to his chest and his head sagging forward over them. “I’m sorry,” he says, and covers his eyes with one hand, breath heaving. “I was -- I was good, you said and I didn’t -- I didn’t do anything bad. I’m okay. I’m sorry.” He’s clearly crying, though he tries to hide it, and something in Erik snaps.

“You’re okay,” he says, and he reaches for Charles with both arms, leaning forward on his knees to wrap Charles up in a tight embrace, fingertips digging into his flesh. Charles’ skin is freezing against Erik’s nose as he presses his face against the crook of Charles’ neck, breathing in the wet scent of him and lifting a hand to cup the back of his head. When the words come out of him Erik _believes_ them, down to the marrow, even if he knows they’re borne out of fear. “I love you so much. I’m never going to leave you. I promise. I love you, and we’ll be better.”

Charles sobs, leaning all of his weight against Erik now like something’s given way, and he says, “You shouldn’t,” shaking all over, though his hands clutch at Erik’s shirt, his fingers curled so tightly Erik can feel the fabric straining even as Charles pushes closer, limp and sodden. “You should hate me, I ruined it. I ruin everything. I tried to leave, but I couldn’t. I’m so sorry.”

Something cold drops into Erik’s stomach. “What do you mean, you tried to leave?” he says -- and he grasps Charles’ shoulders, forcing him to lean back just enough that he can look at him. Charles’ face is red and swollen, slimy with tears and snot. Erik loves him so much his heart aches. 

“It would have been better,” Charles says exhaustedly, closing his eyes, his lashes clumping against his cheeks. “You’re not happy, but you won’t end it. So I -- I was going to go. And then you’d be free to be happy, because I’m the problem. I’ve always been the problem.”

“You aren’t the problem,” Erik insists, and he kisses Charles’ temple, where his pulse beats hot and hard up against his lips. “Charles, I know it’s been hard these past few months, but that doesn’t mean I want you to leave. I forgive you,” he tells him, and he puts as much force behind it as he knows how, willing Charles to believe him, to see how dearly he means it. “I forgive you, Charles. I know what you did, and it wasn’t okay, but I _forgive_ you and I want to be with you. I just need time.” He presses a hand to Charles’ fever-hot cheek and tips his head forward so their brows meet. “Please tell me we can be together,” he whispers, and, exhausted, he closes his eyes.

“I love you so much,” Charles says, his voice hitching around the words. “I love you so much I could die, and I was going to -- to be gone or be better by Saturday. I was … you came home too early. I was going to be gone or be better. That’s why I had a shower.” 

Erik opens his eyes again, only to kiss Charles on the cheek, tasting salt on his lips. “You don’t have to pretend to be better for me. It’s not something you can just turn on and off, I know that.” He strokes his hand back through Charles’ hair once, twice. “Tomorrow, you and I are going to sit down and we’ll find someone for you to talk to. Someone you don’t have any professional connections with. And you’ll be all right. Just promise me you won’t leave without telling me. I won’t order you not to leave at all -- that’s your decision -- but please, at least _tell_ me.”

“... All right,” Charles says, but it’s more exhaustion than real agreement, his face drawn and greyish, still, dark circles under his eyes. “But therapy -- I can’t tell anyone the problem without going to jail, Erik. How can anyone help with that? They can’t medicate me, the telepathy messes with the drugs. I will … I’ll be better. I’ll try. I can doctor myself.” He shivers and looks down at himself, plucking at his wet pajamas. 

“I’ll be eighteen in less than two months,” Erik says after a moment, turning over the options in his head. “After which, it isn’t a crime that’s currently hurting anyone, and it’s not that you’re planning on hurting someone in the future either. That’s what you told me when I started seeing you. Confidentiality applies to crimes committed in the past.”

Charles nods, and reaches slowly for the hem of his t-shirt, then starts dragging it up and off over his head, his chest underneath pale and almost blue with the chill. Erik can’t help but wonder how long Charles has been in the shower cubicle for. “I should go to sleep,” he says when he emerges from the shirt, dropping it to the tiles with a wet splat. “We can talk about it in the morning when I’m better.”

Charles won’t be better in the morning of course, they both know better than that, but it’s what Charles has to believe and so Erik nods and says, “All right,” and then, “come on,” as he takes both Charles’ hands and pulls them to their feet. His limbs are numb and creak as he stands, as if he aged fifty years overnight. He rubs his hands up and down Charles’ goosefleshed arms once they’re upright, trying to get some heat back into his body. “Take your pants off. I’ll find you some new pajamas.”

“Okay,” Charles says, and pushes down the waistband of his pants, letting them fall around his ankles and stepping out of them to stand damp and pale and nude in the harsh light, his skin wrinkled from the moisture. He looks up at Erik, then away, shame pulsing around him, along with exhaustion. “I’m sorry. I know I’m being selfish. I should look after you.”

“Don’t apologize for this. Let’s go into the bedroom.” Erik puts Dominance into it, just a little, threading it through the syllables and between the words. Charles follows when Erik takes his hand and leads him out and across the bathroom, into the bedroom -- still dark, until Erik flicks on the bedside lamp. “Here we go,” Erik says, rifling through Charles’ dresser until he finds a warm pair of flannel bottoms and another clean t-shirt, passing them to Charles. “Get changed and get in bed. I’ll be right back.”

He makes it an order this time. Charles needs the submission, and Erik needs to be sure he isn’t standing in the middle of the room vacant-eyed as he goes back down the hall to his old bedroom and changes into his own pajamas, kicking the shoes and dirty clothes into his closet without worrying about the hamper. He brings his phone back with him when he returns to the master suite, where Charles is already curled up under the covers on his side of the bed, duvet nearly pulled up to obscure his face.

Erik gets in beside him, plugging his phone in at the socket and setting the alarm for ten -- they’ll both need to sleep in, but Erik wants to be up in time to ensure he can make Charles a proper lunch. Charles doesn’t move, his eyes staying shut, though Erik knows he’s not asleep.

“Good night,” Erik whispers to the back of Charles’ neck once he’s laid down behind him, their bodies pressed together and his arm slung over Charles’ waist. “I’ll be here in the morning.”

He waits for a long time, like that, for Charles to fall asleep, but it’s only after he hears the soft snore of Charles’ breaths and feels the wash of his telepathy over the fringes of his own mind that Erik finally lets himself slip under the waters of his own dreams.

*

_Charles_

When he first wakes up it takes Charles a while to realize he’s in bed, that he’s dry and relatively comfortable, his face wedged into a pillow and blankets drawn up around his shoulders, curled on his side with faint sunlight curling in around the edges of the curtains. He’s groggy, his mind slow and unresponsive. It’s like someone’s put him into slow-motion, thoughts passing glacially, even compared to his usual morning malaise.

Oh, he thinks after a while, registering the lack of a weight around his middle. He’s alone again. Maybe … maybe he imagined Erik coming home, then. Or … no, when he thinks about it he can feel Erik downstairs in the kitchen making lunch, moving pots and pans and humming to himself as he works. Erik came home early, because he was worried about Charles. Because Charles isn’t well.

Charles rolls onto his back and covers his face with his arm, the memory suddenly coming sharp and crisp -- Erik finding him in the shower, Erik angry with him for not replying to texts, upset at the state Charles was in. Erik forgiving him for his crimes, for being such a shitty parent and guardian, because Erik had to, didn’t he? He had to forgive Charles, because he was worried that if he didn’t Charles might hurt himself, or leave, and Charles messed up even that, didn’t he? He couldn’t even leave without Erik getting back first and getting caught up in Charles’ shit again before Charles could extricate him.

It’s awful to know that Erik’s whole life post-Hellfire has been driven by Charles’ selfishness, his weakness, shaped by it until he can’t even be angry with Charles for what he’s done without being tethered to Charles’ own self-loathing and forced to let it go. Charles feels tears prick at the corners of his eyes all over again, just knowing what he’s done. How he’s shackled Erik, tied him down to a new prison just the same as the last one.

He wants to get up, he really does. He wants to get out of bed and go and have a shower -- a real one, undressed and with soap -- and go downstairs and show Erik that he’s fine, that everything is okay and Erik doesn’t have to worry any more. Erik can go back to California. Except that no matter how hard he tries to motivate himself to follow through, Charles can’t seem to make himself actually _do it_.

After what seems like hours he hears Erik on the stairs, feels his mind approach. Erik nudges the bedroom door open with his shoulder and enters, bearing a wooden tray piled with dishes of food.

“Oh,” he says, “you’re awake.”

“Yes,” Charles says without removing his arm from his face, too embarrassed to look with his physical eyes. God, he’s a mess. “Good morning.”

“We aren’t staying in bed all day,” Erik tells him as his weight dips the edge of the mattress, followed by a second shifting pressure, presumably as he sets down the tray. His hand comes to rest on Charles’ stomach, the touch distant through the layers of blankets between them.

“No,” Charles says, and tries to make a self-deprecating smile. “Perhaps later I can go and squat in the shower like a homeless person. What excitement.”

Erik elects to ignore that and says, “Eat your food.” The tray moves from the mattress to Charles’ lap, and Erik tugs Charles’ wrist away from his face, forcing Charles to blink his eyes against the bright sunlight and look up at Erik, whose expression is unreadable. Charles shuffles a little further up against the pillows so he’s less prostrate, and looks down at the tray.

Erik’s made him Belgian waffles topped with sliced berries and starfruit, drizzled with honey, the side plate crammed full of bratwurst and sunny fried eggs freckled with cracked pepper, and it all looks lovely, as always. Charles doesn’t deserve him.

“I love you very much,” he says quietly, reaching for the fork and letting it hover over his plate, wondering where to start. “I’m really sorry about all of this. You shouldn’t have to deal with it. It’s not fair.”

“Fairness doesn’t really come into it,” Erik says. Charles’ fork independently tugs his hand down to spear one of the eggs, spilling molten yolk out across the plate. “It wasn’t fair when you had to chase after me all over town to make sure I wasn’t getting myself arrested when I was thirteen, either, but you did it.”

That was different, Charles wants to say, but he doesn’t want to argue about it, so he tilts the edge of the fork down to cut through the egg until he has a bite-sized piece he can lift to his mouth. It was one thing for Charles, the parent, to go after Erik, his child. Quite another for Erik to have to baby Charles this way.

“I can’t imagine Elias was pleased about you leaving so soon,” he says once he’s swallowed, reaching for the glass of juice.

“No.” Erik’s lips press out into a thin, bitter smile. “He was determined to talk me out of it, in fact. Words were exchanged.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, even though he’s not, not really; inside he can’t help but feel a bit gleeful at the memory he can see in Erik’s mind, Elias showing his true colors. “I know you like him. That must have been … unpleasant.”

“I don’t like feeling manipulated.”

“I know,” Charles says, and he bites the inside of his cheek before reaching for a berry. “I want you to know … you don’t have to forgive me because I’m … not well right now. That wasn’t on purpose.” Best to get it out in the open, maybe, and say it aloud instead of letting it fester. Instead of letting Erik start to wonder, and Charles start to worry about when it will come to the surface. “I really don’t want you to -- well, to feel obliged to.”

“I don’t feel obliged. I won’t pretend your illness didn’t contribute, but only inasmuch as it made me think about how important you are to me. How important it is for me to be in this relationship with you.” 

Erik’s lips curve up slightly, and after a moment he leans down to brush his mouth against Charles’ temple, his hand squeezing Charles’ knee. Charles turns into it, his eyes closing for a moment, and he just lets himself … breathe there, feel what Erik is saying and try to let it sink in, to replace all the badness of the past few days.

“I am sorry you had to cut your trip short,” Charles says, and tries as hard as he can to really mean it. “I know you were looking forward to it. I hope -- well, no, I don’t hope you patch things up with Elias. But I would like it if I was able to hope that for you. He’s a useful man to know, if you want to go into politics. The man knows everyone with any fingers in the mutant rights pie.”

Erik hums out a meaningless noise and leans back, power prodding Charles’ fork back toward the food. “Enough about him. Finish your breakfast and then get dressed. We’re going to spend the day at the library, not rattling around in our cages. Go on.”

“All right,” Charles says, the orders making it easier to follow through and do things through his fatigue. He eats the rest of his food under Erik’s watchful eye, even though he feels full about halfway through, and finally gets up to go and dress, looking at his clothes for a long moment before finally settling on some of his most comfortable clothes, an old pair of jeans and a button-down shirt he’s had long enough for it to wear soft.

He’s pulling on socks, still in his closet, when his cell rings out in the bedroom. Charles startles, half in a daze just following orders, and glances back towards the open door, but Erik sends the phone floating through a second later. 

“I’ll be downstairs when you’re done,” Erik calls after it, the floorboards creaking as he presumably gets off the bed and heads out into the hall and down the stairs.

Charles takes the phone from where it’s hanging and frowns at the screen; it’s not a number he recognizes, but he answers anyway, holding it up to his ear and saying, “Charles Xavier.”

“Dr Xavier, this is Elliott Harkness with Buzzfeed News. We’re publishing an online article about the scandal, and wonder if you would like to issue a comment on the matter.”

Charles -- pauses, his stomach clenching up with confusion and a sudden, awful fear. He feels his hand shaking as he says, as normally as he can, “What scandal? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re referring to.”

Downstairs, Erik’s mind hums along, oblivious, focused on washing up dishes.

“Oh ….” The reporter pauses, obviously feeling uncomfortable. “I think -- well, there’s no right way to put this. The allegations that you are -- that, at some point, you … allegedly … raped Erik Lehnsherr.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: suicidal ideation


	46. Forty-six

_Charles_  
“ -- that, at some point, you … allegedly … raped Erik Lehnsherr.”

Oh. OH. Oh, no -- no, no, this can’t be happening. “What?” Charles croaks out, his throat seizing up of its own accord, his hands shaking so hard now that he’s honestly worried he might drop the phone. “What -- why would you say that?” 

His heart is pounding so hard it must be about to explode, and he knows he’s projecting his fear because he can feel the other people in the building are suddenly frightened as well, people all around him reacting. Erik -- Erik is downstairs, breathless, grasping the edge of the sink with white-knuckled hands, panicking and desperately trying to remember if he took his medication today -- 

On the other end of the line, the reporter continues determinedly, “Some photos have emerged on the internet. 4chan, Reddit, TMZ. Nothing explicit, but it doesn’t look good, either. Have you been sexually involved with Mr Lehnsherr?”

“No comment,” Charles chokes out, then hangs up and throws the phone out of the closet and into the bedroom like it might bite him. His whole body feels like he might die at any moment, like -- this is like when he hears loud bangs, it must be a panic attack, he thinks, even as he forces his brain back into his own head, sinking to the floor and wrapping his arms around his skull to try and press it inwards and contain it. He can’t do this to other people, he has to -- oh God, oh God. There are pictures -- there are -- Erik _promised_ \-- 

“Charles?” Erik shouts from downstairs -- Charles hears him, feels him racing across the apartment and up the steps. He bursts into the room a moment later, breathing loud and fast. “Charles, what happened -- are you doing this? Is --” He falls silent when he steps into the closet and sees Charles there. Erik’s eyes are wide with the whites showing.

Oh God. Oh God.

“Someone -- a reporter,” Charles chokes out, though he’s all but hyperventilating, the words feeling strange in his mouth. “They say -- pictures online, I raped you, it’s -- you promised it was safe, Erik! You -- someone got the pictures and they -- ” 

The phone starts to ring again in the other room, threatening and buzzing against the carpet; Charles flinches, trying to keep his mind inside his own head despite the panic. Erik ignores the ringing, pulling his own phone out from his back pocket and flipping through the internet, presumably chasing down the story. His entire body’s tense. 

“Christ,” Erik says at last. His fingers go still -- then for some reason _relief_ sets in, how can he be _relieved?_ Charles wonders, fingers digging into his own scalp, bruising.

Erik catches one edge of the doorframe as if to keep himself steady and looks up, meeting Charles’ gaze, still pale and wide-eyed but not like he was before, the abject horror slowly leaking away. “It’s -- they don’t have anything, Charles,” he says, “it’s all speculative. We can make this go away. I promise. Look --” He carries his phone by hand over to Charles this time, crouching down on the floor next to him and showing him the screen. There are -- those are the photos Erik took of them, and they’re _in bed together_ , those are Charles’ _pillows_ , neither of them is wearing a shirt -- 

“We’re naked!” Charles pushes the phone away, stomach roiling. “In this one we’re _kissing_ , for _fuck’s_ sake -- how is that nothing?”

“No,” Erik says sharply, practically cutting him off. “Listen to me, Charles. We are not naked in those photos. We went for a run together. It was warm, we took our shirts off. We only ended up on your bed because we were exhausted, and giddy, and no one would think twice about any of this if I didn’t have a history. It’s _nothing._ Do you understand?”

Erik’s hand, the one holding the phone, shakes.

“Nobody will believe it,” Charles says. He reaches at last for Erik, first his shoulder, then pulling him in so they can hold tight to each other, wrapping his arms around Erik’s chest and leaning his head against Erik’s, his breath shaking in and out. “Erik, I -- I’m going to jail. I’m -- this is it. Everything is ruined.” He closes his eyes tightly, trying not to cry. His tear ducts are burning. “I’m so sorry.”

“Stop it,” Erik says. All the same, he doesn’t let go of Charles where he’s grasped onto him, fingers digging into Charles’ flesh. “You aren’t going to jail. It’s all circumstantial -- they have a picture of us smiling in bed, and a picture of us kissing. And it’s like they say: I’m European, so even that means nothing.” 

Erik kisses the side of Charles’ neck, the line of his shoulder. His breath is hot against Charles’ bare skin, and Charles closes his eyes, wants to believe him so badly. But he can’t, even when Erik continues,

“They don’t have any of the other photos, the worse ones. These are the only two that were on my phone; someone must have hacked it. The others are on my laptop and my encryption on that file is impenetrable, just -- don’t fucking _say anything to anyone._ ”

To say it’s all circumstantial -- it’s naive at best, Charles knows all too well that this … it’s not going to just go away. He’s starting to feel numb now, probably in shock, and he just shakes his head and says, “Erik, they all know now. The -- the police are probably deciding how to arrest me without me going berserk and hurting people, that’s the only reason they’re not here right now. I’m a dangerous mutant. I’m -- I’m a dangerous mutant criminal. And you’re dangerous too.”

He lays his head on Erik’s shoulder and wishes, violently, not to be here, now. That he could turn back time and get away before any of this happened. Erik strokes his spine, the rhythm steady, hypnotic. Charles clenches his eyes shut and says, “They’re going to make me wear the suppressor and then I won’t have a choice.”

“No, they won’t.” 

Erik grasps Charles’ shoulders and pushes him away, at last, putting a foot of distance between them and forcing Charles to look at Erik’s face even though he knows his own is flushed and messy, so soon again after last night. 

“We need to be smart about this, Charles. This isn’t the time for crying and catastrophizing. Think. When was the last time you washed the bedsheets?”

God, when was it? “Before you went away,” Charles says, trying to think, shaken by Erik’s fierceness. “The day before. Before we went to Raven’s show.”

“You’ve showered since then? Last night doesn’t count.”

Charles has to think about that, too. “No,” he says, finally, ashamed. “I should -- do that now.”

“You think?” Erik says dryly. And then: “Be thorough. _Thorough_ , Charles. I think you know what I mean.”

“I’ll get the enema kit,” Charles says. He gets unsteadily to his feet to go and do it, wishing he could just use acid and have done with it.

It’s unpleasant, and while he’s doing it Charles can’t help but worry that the police will arrive in the middle, find him … flushing the evidence. Just the thought is awful, especially when he can’t quite convince himself that he shouldn’t tell the truth when he’s asked, give himself up. After all … everything he’s being accused of is true.

When he’s done he leaves the bathroom to find Erik out in the bedroom cleaning, checking every item to make sure it’s Charles’. As soon as he sees him Erik straightens and says, “Go through the trash. Any used tissues, any condoms, leave them soaking in bleach for ten minutes before you throw them out. That’ll take care of any DNA. Then scrub under your nails and clip them down. I’ll be back.”

He does grasp Charles’ shoulder, at least, as he passes him on his way into the bathroom, a tiny glimpse of affection to offset the cold orderly way Erik goes about covering up their crimes. It’s disturbingly reminiscent of the time Erik cleaned up after killing that other mutant, and though Charles obeys, picking through the trashcan in the bedroom -- only two tissues, since Erik’s been away for a few days -- and then the one in the bathroom, carefully averting his attention from where Erik is doing his own enema, trying to give him some privacy -- even though he obeys, he still can’t quite bring himself to be certain that he should lie.

After all -- after all, Charles is guilty. Of all of it.

He switches his phone off after seeing three missed calls from Raven and a whole slew from unknown numbers, not wanting to hear it ring any more; when he’s done with Erik’s orders Charles remembers the box of toys under the bed and goes to fetch those to bleach them, too. They probably won’t be usable afterwards, and it’s suspicious enough for them to be so thoroughly cleaned, but at least they won’t provide any true evidence.

“Good,” Erik says briskly when he emerges at last, stealing the nail clippers with his power to start snipping away at his own nails over the sink -- although they’re short already, not much he can do. “Make sure your phone’s clean. I’m leaving those photos on mine -- it would look strange otherwise -- but you should be certain there’s nothing incriminating on yours. You haven’t been off googling statutory rape penalties, have you?”

“No,” Charles says. Of course, now that Erik’s brought it up he wishes he could, just to see -- to see what is likely to happen next. He swallows hard, tasting bile. “God, I just -- I guess I should call my lawyer.” Just the thought of it is enough to make Charles feel sick all over again, having to explain this to somebody else.

Erik nods, setting the nail clippers down on the counter. “I think that would be wise. I can take care of the rest of this up here.” He gestures at the bucket of bleach.

“Okay,” Charles says, and then leans over to press a kiss to the corner of Erik’s mouth, brief but heartfelt, because what on Earth would he do without him? Erik curls an arm around the small of Charles’ back and keeps him close for a moment, their brows tilted together, before he lets Charles go to call Geoff Carson.

It’s not a long conversation. Geoff has already seen the news -- has Google alerts set on all of his clients -- and all he says is, “It doesn’t look good, sir, but I’ll do my best. If I might suggest _not_ taking photographs of crimes in future, that would make my job considerably easier. In any case, say nothing to anyone and I will contact the local police authority directly to set the scene. As there is no chance of your not hearing from them, I think it best to pre-empt it on our terms. I’ll call when I have news.”

“All right,” Charles says, there being nothing else _to_ say, and listens to the dial tone for a long few seconds before finally hanging up.

“Well?” 

Erik‘s returned downstairs, bearing the empty bucket in one hand; he hovers there in the entrance to the den, and Charles doesn’t have to be a mindreader to see the apprehension written all over his body, drawing the lines of it taut and tense.

“I’m to sit tight while Geoff calls the police to get ahead of it,” Charles says, walking over to his armchair on quivering legs and falling into it, bracing his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, trying not to go back to the way he was earlier -- frozen and ineffective. This shocky, almost-normal self, at least, is doing things. But then he realizes something else, something he hadn’t even thought of yet, and his eyes widen, his breath speeding up to almost painful levels. “Oh. God. I’m -- I’m ruined. This is the end of my practice. I’ll never see another patient.”

“Not if you’re acquitted.” Erik sets the bleach bucket down and strides over to stand behind Charles at his chair, hands grasping Charles’ shoulders and squeezing them, massaging his fingers deep into the tense tissue as if he could unwind Charles through touch alone. “Not if they don’t charge you, and certainly not if you’re found innocent. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves just yet.”

“But who would want to send their kids to me with even the suspicion of it?” Charles asks, looking up at Erik and feeling despair drag him even lower, like a stone underwater. “The mutant center, too -- there’s no way they’ll let me come back, no matter what happens. They couldn’t risk it.”

Erik doesn’t have an answer for that; he just keeps rubbing Charles’ shoulders, and as much as Charles wants to relax -- he just can’t. Not with this hanging over him and the full knowledge that it’s all his own doing.

He was right, he thinks bleakly to himself, keeping it from Erik -- he knows already what Erik would say. He’s ruined everything good, and condemned them both to the worst kind of public scrutiny. He’s dragged Erik back down into the shit right after he finally crawled out of it and started getting a better reputation and public image, and now Erik is just -- he’s going to be ‘that kid’ again, the one who was sexually abused by two sets of guardians. Charles wishes he could douse himself in the bleach instead of half the things they own, just -- cleanse away everything in a chemical baptism.

When Charles feels Raven coming up in the elevator it feels like a just punishment, having to face her righteous fury -- she’s a barely-contained atom bomb, rising through the building with her eyes up towards him thinking --

\-- Charles flinches when he sees what she’s thinking.

“Raven’s coming,” he says quietly, since Erik needs to be ready for her, too.

Erik’s hands go still. 

“You don’t have to deal with this right now,” Erik says after a long pause. “You can go upstairs and I’ll tell her you’re not available. This is too much for anyone to deal with right now.”

It’s cowardly, but Charles takes the out. “Okay,” he says, getting back to his feet and heading for the stairs. His stomach is clenching, his throat tight, and he’s afraid he’s going to say something stupid if he doesn’t get out of the way.

He barely makes it upstairs before there’s a pounding on the door. Raven is loud enough she’s audible from where Charles is standing on the first floor landing, her angry voice shouting, “Open the fuck up, Charles! I know you’re in there!”

 _It’s all right,_ Erik thinks at him, perhaps as much for his own benefit as Charles’; Charles feels him steeling himself, no better around angry Dominants than Charles himself is. 

“He isn’t here,” Charles hears Erik’s voice say from downstairs after he’s opened the door, the tenor of it echoing from the gallery and up the stairs. 

“Oh, don’t even try that shit with me, Erik, you’re not exactly on my Christmas list right now either,” Raven snaps. A shuffle of feet as she pushes inside the apartment, her mind like a missile. “Where is he?”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you.” Erik’s voice is sharp and cutting -- Charles imagines him grasping her by the arm and trying to push her back out of the apartment, though he doesn’t look to see if he’s right. “Go away, Raven. Come back tomorrow.”

“As-fucking-if, Erik. Is he upstairs? Right,” and then Charles stumbles back down the corridor into his bedroom so he doesn’t look like he’s been listening in as Raven starts coming up the stairs two at a time, her feet loud even on the carpet, while behind her somewhere Erik is protesting. “Charles!” Raven shouts, and he sits down on the end of his bed just before she shoves the door open and comes in, her teeth bared and furious, her hands in fists at her sides. “Charles, what the hell? You promised me it was done with, that you were going to be better now, and now _this_?”

Erik, hot on her heels, appears in the doorway a second later, his lips a thin line and eyes narrowed. “You don’t have to answer her, Charles. Raven, go back downstairs or I will _make you_.”

Charles feels both like running away and like falling to the carpet, his body torn between the two and shaking with it; he chokes, swiping a hand over his face, and says, “Raven, I -- ”

“What, Charles?” she demands, stepping in closer. “What could you possibly have to say for yourself? I trusted you! I didn’t tell anyone, and now I find out it’s been going on again -- what the fuck really happened to your face?”

Charles had entirely forgotten about the cut on his cheek from Erik’s nightmare last week; his palm claps over it, hiding it, and he says, “It’s -- Erik had a nightmare -- ”

Raven takes a sharp breath in. “Did he hurt you? Or -- what were you doing to him?”

Erik snaps. “ _Out_ , Raven. Now.”

“Don’t you try and order me around, Erik Lehnsherr, just so you can wriggle out of this!” Raven glares at him, jabbing her finger at him. “So what, you’re protecting him now? Not that long ago you were confessing to me that Charles took advantage of you, abused you, and now you’re trying to _defend _him?”__

__Charles tries not to show how deeply that burns him, but he’s sure he’s not successful, feels the sick sensation of Raven’s pleasure at his discomfort wash over him._ _

__“This isn’t any of your business,” Erik says, stepping to put his body between Charles and Raven, like he thinks Raven might actually attack Charles, if pushed._ _

__“You’re a minor, Erik, that makes it my business,” Raven says. “Who was it who looked after you last time? And kept it a secret even though I knew I shouldn’t? Jesus Christ, Erik, I didn’t even tell Hank! It’s plenty of my damn business!”_ _

__“I’m _sorry,_ ” Charles says finally, his voice more choke than anything else. “Raven, there’s nothing you can do or say to me that’s worse than what I’m saying to myself. Please just -- please stop.”_ _

__He senses the way Erik’s mind cringes at the sound of Charles’ voice, Erik more upset about how this is affecting Charles than anything else, like he’s pushed all other concerns aside in favor of trying to keep Charles safe -- as if that were his job. As if there were any such thing._ _

__“Let’s go,” Erik says, finally, reaching out for Raven’s upper arm and pushing her back out into the hall, glancing briefly over his shoulder -- he meets Charles’ eyes, and Charles hates the way he looks so young, large eyes and clear skin, guilt twisting hard in Charles’ stomach._ _

__“I’m not done with this,” Raven says, but quieter now that she’s talking directly to Erik, as she lets him take her out into the hall. “I can’t believe you’re just -- fine with this, Erik, I know you’re not. How long has this been going on for? Did it ever really stop?”_ _

__Erik reaches for the doorknob as soon as Raven’s outside the room; his gaze meets Charles’ for the briefest moment, Erik looking as pale as Charles feels, before he pulls the door shut behind them._ _

__Erik’s keeps his voice low when he replies, enough Charles can’t make out the words audibly so he has to listen telepathically, instead. “Since July. We really did stop, for a few months. I know you won’t believe it, but Charles did try.”_ _

__“Oh, a few months? That makes it all better,” Raven says, indignant all over again. “Erik, whether or not he tried doesn’t change the fact he did it again. I don’t care what you say to my face, you know it’s fucked up and you shouldn’t be in a position to have to defend him for molesting you!”_ _

__Erik’s exhale is inaudible, too, but with Charles laced into his mind he feels the pressure in Erik’s chest when he breathes out, the exhaustion heavy in Erik’s limbs, sees Raven’s face through Erik’s eyes: set and hard, her eyes narrowed with suppressed pain._ _

__Barely more than a whisper, Erik says, “I know you’re upset right now, but this needs to be a conversation we have another time. I came home early from California because Charles was at risk of hurting himself -- and you aren’t helping that.”_ _

__“ _What?_ Why? This shit only broke this morning!”_ _

__A long minute in which Erik doesn’t speak, silence pulsing in Charles’ mind, then at last: “I told him he had ruined my life. I told him everything you would have wanted me to say about all of this. So you can understand why it’s not necessary for you to thrust the knife in deeper.”_ _

__As if there’s any deeper for it to go. Charles is pretty sure he has a hole straight through him now large enough to put a fist through one side and out the other._ _

__Raven’s quiet only for a few seconds before she says, “Go back to my place, Erik. It’ll be better if you’re not here when the cops come, then you have somewhere pre-made to stay and they can’t send you elsewhere. I’ll stay with Charles.”_ _

__Just the thought of it is enough to make Charles feel even more ill, having Raven sitting there staring at him and thinking about him like he’s a criminal, even if she restrains herself from saying it. And Erik leaving again is -- God, probably exactly what Charles deserves._ _

__“No,” Erik says, making Charles sag with relief. “I’m staying with him for now. I’ll pack a bag, and if they arrest him I’ll come to yours -- I’ll have to anyway, until I’m eighteen. But I’m not leaving him before that point. You’re welcome to stay and wait with us, but only if you can keep from making matters worse.”_ _

__Charles can tell when Raven looks at the closed door again, and finally she sighs and says, “Fine. I’ll be downstairs.” Charles hears her footsteps retreating, feels her ire growing a little further away -- though nowhere near far enough to dampen his awareness of it._ _

__The door opens again a few seconds later, presumably after Erik’s made perfectly sure Raven is settled far away. He doesn’t close the door entirely behind him, but even still Erik crosses the room to sit down on the bed next to Charles, sliding an arm around his waist to curl the fabric of Charles’ shirt into his fist._ _

__“Are you all right?” Erik murmurs, tilting his head to try and make Charles look at him properly._ _

__“No.” Charles turns into Erik’s embrace, his heart feeling like a rock in his chest, like it’s weighing him down to the center of the earth and he might keep sinking forever. He wonders -- he can’t help thinking that everyone would be better off if he just didn’t exist any more. Then Erik would be free, and Raven would be free, and there wouldn’t have to be a court case. It would just end with him._ _

__“Look at me,” Erik says, and Charles lifts his head to meet Erik’s gaze. Erik strokes his fingers back through Charles’ hair, his thumb grazing Charles’ cheek. After a moment he kisses him, eyes shut and his lips a warm press against Charles’ own, warm and familiar, and it should feel safe, does, a little, except for the part of Charles that is so afraid of being caught at it that he has to make himself kiss back, something that usually comes naturally to him._ _

__When it breaks he asks the one question they haven’t really asked yet. “How did the pictures get out there?”_ _

__Erik looks away, down at his knees as he shifts his weight to draw his cell phone out from his back pocket and unlock the front screen, which is frozen on a photo Erik took last year of him and Charles at Coney Island, the lights of the rides brilliant and blinding behind them and Charles’ hair blowing in his face, both of them smiling._ _

__“Someone must have hacked my phone,” Erik says as he flips through to the photos app, scrolling along the pictures. None of them are from the set Erik took when they were in bed together. “I only had those two images on here, figured they were safe enough with Apple’s new encryption system and the fingerprint identification to unlock the phone. Maybe swineherd.”_ _

__He doesn’t sound convinced, though, and when he doesn’t find what he’s looking for on the photos Erik checks his text messages, scrolling past messages bearing Charles’ name, Frank’s, Madelyne’s, Raven’s, presumably looking for messages sent to unknown numbers._ _

__Charles doesn’t really think it matters any more, but it would be good to know who it was, to know who to avoid ever seeing again. “Elias didn’t have access to your phone, did he?” he asks dully. “You did piss him off yesterday, coming back here.”_ _

__“No,” Erik says, but he checks the text messages under the heading ‘Braden-Newell’ all the same. There are no images except the photo Erik sent Braden-Newell day before yesterday from the airport, of the flight departures, showing his plane was scheduled to leave on-time._ _

__He reads through his messages to Frank and Madelyne, too, as Charles sits there and watches, but then Erik shuts the phone off and says, “There’s no point doing this now. I can do a comprehensive check later on when I’ve got my phone hooked up to my computer and can run software on it from my hard drive. It’ll take a while. Assuming no one subpoenas it first, of course.”_ _

__“It’s okay.” Charles looks back down at his hands. “It makes no difference now anyway. It was just a thought.”_ _

__Geoff calls about twenty minutes later to let Charles know the police are on their way, and so Charles just … waits, figuring there’s no point trying to be prepared. It’s not like he needs to take anything with him. Erik urges him downstairs, though, tugging him along and finding him a jacket from the closet, a bottle of water to hold in hand “in case they try unusual interrogative tactics,” Erik says, which is nondescriptively alarming._ _

__“Jesus Christ, Erik, this isn’t the Gestapo,” Raven says, leaning against the door of the kitchen with arms folded, her mouth tight and mulish, mind torn between concern and a sense of guilty justice. She feels bad for feeling Charles needs to be punished, which is nice, since at least it means she still cares. “Plus, real talk, Charles is too rich for them to dare do anything that’s not totally above board.”_ _

__“It’s fine,” Charles tells the table. “I deserve it, anyway. Whatever happens, happens.”_ _

__Erik calculatedly chooses to ignore that; Charles hears the decision in his mind as clearly as if it were spoken aloud. “They’ll put you in a suppressor. Despite that, _don’t_ outright confess. Don’t say anything to anyone without your lawyer present.” They’re both orders, settling firmly into Charles’ hindbrain without his say-so and making his scalp tingle with something that would usually be pleasure. “They’ll probably have a telepath read your mind, but as you know, they can’t legally do anything with that information and it’s just to scare you into cooperating. ‘I am exercising my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.’ ‘I want my lawyer.’ You are a broken record. Understand?”_ _

__“Okay,” Charles says, no point in arguing now, as the doors open in the lobby on the ground floor of the building to let the cops come in. Raven had called down before to let the concierge know. “They’re on their way up.”_ _

__“Do you need to use the bathroom before you leave?”_ _

__“Might as well,” Charles says, and goes back upstairs. By the time he comes down, Geoff is there with two detectives, his very expensive suit making the police look like children playing dress-up._ _

__“I’m not going to make a fuss.” Charles walks over to them with only a moment of hesitation -- there’s no point in dawdling, after all. It’ll only lose him what scant brownie points he might yet hold. “What do you need from me?”_ _

__The detective on the left glances at her partner, then at Charles, relieved that he’s making this simple. “We’ll need you to put on this suppressor.” She holds up a plain black plastic case, the size of a hat box. “Have you worn one before?”_ _

__“Yes.” Charles swallows, hard. “Could -- could Erik put it on me, please? His -- his mutation is with metal, it makes it less unpleasant.”_ _

__It doesn’t go over well. He feels the suspicion and faint revulsion in both their minds, even as the male detective says, “We can’t allow that. Rules.”_ _

__He should have guessed that, probably. “Okay,” Charles says quietly, and bows his head so they can put it on him. The needle sliding under the skin of his temple makes the nausea swell up inside him, and through the disorientation of the world falling silent, his will softening, the female detective says, “I’m going to place you under arrest now, sir. Please listen to your rights. Charles Xavier, you are under arrest for the sexual abuse of a child. You have the right to remain silent; anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney; if you cannot afford one, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand each of these rights as I have explained them to you?”_ _

__Charles nods, then takes the jacket Erik wordlessly hands to him, pushes his arms into the sleeves slowly and shrugs it on. “Yes, I understand.”_ _

__She nods. “Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?”_ _

__“No, thank you.” If it weren’t for Erik’s order Charles isn’t sure what else he would have said to that -- the order, at least, gives him a framework to follow. “I need to speak to Mr Carson before I’ll be willing to talk to an officer.”_ _

__“You can do that down at the station,” the male detective says._ _

__“Can I come with him?” Erik asks, surprising everyone present except Charles, who was expecting that very question._ _

__The woman pauses. “You’ll be questioned separately, later on,” she says, “but if you’d be willing to consent to having a rape kit run then we can arrange a cab to take you to the hospital.”_ _

__“No, I don’t consent.”_ _

__“All right,” she says, and reaches for Charles’ elbow, taking hold of him lightly but firmly. “Then I’m informed you’ll be staying with your aunt?”_ _

__Erik pauses, then nods. “Raven. Yes.”_ _

__“That’s me.” Raven steps forward to take Erik’s elbow, and Charles is intensely grateful to her, right now, for being here when this is happening, no matter what she thinks of him, that she’s here for Erik when he needs her. “He’ll be staying at my apartment with my husband and me.”_ _

__“Come on, let’s go,” the man says. He gestures towards the door. “Dr Xavier, I’m not going to cuff you because you’re complying so far, but if you try to run I will restrain you with necessary force. Do you understand?”_ _

__“Yes,” Charles says, swallowing hard. He feels like he’s in some kind of awful dream, everything surreal and the sort of thing he’s never really truly imagined could happen to him. “I won’t run.”_ _

__“Good,” the man says. On his cue, the woman takes Charles’ arm to lead him out to the elevator, leaving Erik and Raven behind. Charles can’t even feel them there with the suppressor on, and it feels like as soon as that door shuts, hiding Erik’s stricken face -- seen over Charles’ shoulder when he twists to look back -- they cease to exist, along with Charles’ prior life._ _

____

*

They arrive at the station and the press already knows he’s there. Cameras flash the moment the car pulls up, faces, shouting -- Charles cringes back into the seat, horrified, and beside him Geoff says, “Wonderful. Someone must have alerted them.”

“What -- do I have to go out there?” Charles asks. His body won’t cooperate when he tries to straighten, unable to move for fear of falling, of being _seen_. This -- this is the death of his reputation, seen going into a police station, arrested for rape. Everything inside him is clenched up tight and squeezing together.

“Act confident,” Geoff advises, reaching over to adjust Charles’ collar, straightening out some invisible flaw. “Act like this whole thing’s ridiculous and you’re just worlds above it all. Appearance is reality.”

Charles swallows and closes his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, before remembering -- he pats at his jacket pocket and yes, thank God, those are his sunglasses in there. He takes them out and puts them on, grateful to be able to cover his eyes. His mouth he can control, if he doesn’t have to worry about the expression in his eyes.

“Okay,” he says, and makes himself relax all over. “I’m ready.”

“Not as if we were waiting on you,” the male detective says. He gets out of the car to come and open Charles’ door, and as soon as he does the number of flashes doubles, the sound of screaming and yelling increasing in volume almost exponentially -- Charles doesn’t quite flinch, instead makes himself get out of the car and keep a benign, serious expression, not frowning, not smiling, while he waits for Geoff. There are other cops holding back the crowded journalists, but Charles can hear what they’re shouting now, even if they aren’t swarming over him:

“Dr Xavier! Did you rape Erik? Dr Xavier!”

“Dr Xavier!”

“Charles, how was he in bed?”

“Dr Xavier, care to comment that you slept with your ward?”

It’s like walking through a thicket of thorns, scratching and pricking him all over as he pushes his way through; it’s hard, but Charles focuses on the building ahead of him and doesn’t look. Doesn’t react. He pretends not to hear any of them, and it’s working on the outside, at least until he sees the way the police officer holding the station door open looks at him.

Charles feels like the worst kind of vermin to ever walk the Earth, like something people want to step on then wipe away the greasy smear left on their shoe, throw the used napkin in the incinerator. He wants to evaporate, if it’ll mean they stop looking at him like that.

“Come on,” the female detective says. She points at a doorway at the far end of the hall. “We’ve got to go to booking.”

They fingerprint him, first. Black ink is pressed onto his fingers and then onto a card, his fingers grubby-feeling and dirty-looking; Charles states his name, his address, and that he has had his rights read and he understands them. They take his photograph stood up against a wall with a height chart painted onto it, holding a freshly-made sign with his name and arrest number on it. Charles is officially arrested, now, in the system and exposed under the bright fluorescent lighting of the station that leaves him looking pale and greenish in the interview room they give him to speak to Geoff alone. He can tell because one of the walls is a two-way mirror, and it shows him his reflection -- the pale purple circles under his eyes, blue veins speckling the thin skin, his lips chapped and dry. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in weeks, has been living in a desert left to dry out and weather away.

“Is there anyone in the other room?” he asks, still staring at his reflection, wondering if someone is on the other side, staring back. “I can’t -- I can’t tell, like this.” He gestures at the suppressor band, tight and gleaming around his brow.

“Not right now,” Geoff tells him. “I get you alone for ten minutes first. And what I need from you, Mr Xavier, is for you to tell me everything that happened. Anything you say here is confidential, but I need to know what we’re up against and what they’re gonna find when they go looking.”

Charles can’t help but feel paranoid that maybe Geoff is wrong, that someone is there -- how would he know, like this? And yet he has to trust him, has no other choice. “I … they don’t record in here, either?”

“Like I told you. It’s confidential, but only for now, only until they come walking back in here. Ten minutes. Tick tock.”

Now or never. Confess or lie, keep it inside where it can’t get out and do him any harm … except that it can, Erik’s photos already proved that. Charles can’t make himself turn, doesn’t want to see Geoff’s face when he says, very quietly, awkwardly, “Erik and I are sexually involved. He’s … been acting as my Dom. With my consent, and his.”

His heart beats hard and fast in his chest, but at the same time his lungs are stuttering, failing to keep going, everything inside him in total disarray.

But when Charles finally looks up, seeking the reflection of horror in the mirror, Geoff looks totally unfazed, doesn’t even make a note of it on his pad of paper. “Explain what you mean by that.”

God, how to even -- how can he even just -- _describe_ it, like it’s nothing? Charles forces himself to inhale. “We’ve been … involved … on and off for about a year and a half,” he says, his hands curling at his sides, nails digging into his palms. “Erik … he can put me into subspace. Nobody else has ever … no, that’s irrelevant, I guess. Sorry.”

Charles breathes in, breathes out, bites the inside of his cheek, hard, to keep from doing worse. “It’s -- we -- what do you need to know?”

“Go back,” Geoff says, scribbling something down, his penmanship illegible. “You say he can put you in subspace? Lehnsherr’s 7D, isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Charles says. It’s a relief, in a way, to have a concrete question he can answer. “And yes. My telepathy … it … complicates submission. I don’t really … Dominance doesn’t usually work on me. Erik is -- he’s strong enough it works.” Charles finally turns around to face Geoff and comes to sit anxiously across from him at the table, perched on the very edge of the chair, his hands fussing in his lap. “I know it’s not an excuse.”

Geoff hums wordlessly, still writing, writing, writing, until at last he looks up and says, “Well, we may have something there. I can get you off, no jail time, no probation, no registration -- hell, no charges -- if we can say Lehnsherr made you do it. Did he?”

Charles freezes, his whole body jerking still, his eyes wide. “What?” he says, stupidly. He stares at Geoff, his heart racing now for an entirely different reason. “What -- no, Erik didn’t -- he didn’t force me, you can’t -- I won’t say that!” Even if ... even if it was out of his direct control, if Erik’s order had precipitated it the first time, it wasn’t the way Geoff is suggesting it was. “No.”

Geoff lifts an eyebrow. “It wouldn’t be that great a logical leap. Plenty of people probably already suspect that’s what happened, and just need a nudge to embrace the narrative as fact. He never pushed you? Not even a little? It wouldn’t necessarily be his fault, given his history; everyone would sympathize. We’d rather have Lehnsherr be your sympathetic rapist than your sympathetic victim.”

“I’m not going to throw Erik under the bus when it was my job not to let this happen.” This, at least, he won’t budge on. “It’s my responsibility and my fault, Geoff. No-one else’s, especially not Erik’s.”

“All right,” Geoff says, although he looks disappointed as he scratches through the line on his notebook. “Then tell me exactly how this started, what it entails, what they’ll find if they search your home and both your computers. Everything you can think of.”

So Charles explains, halting and humiliated, how he had realized he was attracted to Erik and hidden it, until Erik finally caught on; their fight, culminating in the first time (though he glosses over, as best he can, the way Erik had used Dominance to overcome Charles’ objections to what he really wanted to do), and how things had gone from there: the long break, then the slow downward slide into falling back into bed together again. It’s strange, but the worst part is telling Geoff about the photographs and knowing how stupid he was to let Erik take them, let alone keep them. The ones that have been released so far are bad enough, but if Erik didn’t wipe his laptop folder well enough then the police will find explicit photographs of Erik’s cock penetrating Charles’ ass, of the two of them mid-coitus and entangled, no doubts at all as to what is happening.

By the end of it Charles is red-faced and even more ashamed than he already was, just recounting it all -- his stomach squirms, like it wants to vomit up even more terrible details for Geoff to paw through and make a case with, a suit of Charles’ humiliation for him to wear to trial.

“That’s plenty to be getting on with,” Geoff waves for him to stop after a while with the hand that isn’t still occupied jotting down notes of what Charles has said. “I’ll talk to the DA and find out what we’re looking at here in terms of charges and try to get you indicted sooner rather than later so you can post bail and get back home. Think you can hang tight here for a day or two?”

“Won’t the police want to question me?” Charles asks, staring at his own hands and seriously considering putting his head down on the table and refusing to say anything to anyone until they let him go to his cell and be alone. “What should I say?”

“Hey now, I’m not leaving just yet.” Geoff reaches over and claps Charles twice on the shoulder, like a Dom would another Dom, casual and reassuring. “I’ll be with you when they question you, which should be any minute.” His hand is still on Charles’ shoulder, squeezing, not too tight. “But after that, they can detain you here at the station over the weekend while we wait for the indictment. That’s all.”

It’s a relief, and Charles sags a little, his eyes screwing shut as he fights it back -- he knows Geoff must be disgusted by him, is just hiding it well, but at least -- at least he’ll still be here with him. “Okay.” He makes himself open his eyes, sit upright, be strong. “Okay. Thank you. I can -- I’ll manage the weekend.”

“Good. Is there anything else you want to tell me or ask me before we bring them in?”

Charles can’t think of anything, so he shakes his head. “No, thank you. Is there anything you think I should know?”

“We’re going to try to get this thrown out on lack of evidence, so just sit tight and give minimal responses. Don’t lie, that’ll come back to bite you, but don’t confess either.” Geoff’s hand falls away from Charles’ shoulder as he gets up from the table, straightening out his excellent suit and heading toward the door. “You want me to have them bring you anything?”

A cyanide pill. “Some water, perhaps?” Even as he sits up straight to face his accusers Charles can hear his mother’s voice is in his head saying that _Xaviers are never cowed. Put on a public face and stop being so weak,_ and though she’s wrong -- as she so often was -- right now he’ll take any advice he can get.

Geoff nods, and then opens the door and goes out into the corridor; he says something to someone out there, someone guarding the room, making sure Charles doesn’t try to run.

It’s a few minutes, then, sat alone in that over-bright, grubby room, at a table which has metal loops on it to attach cuffs to. There are probably people filing into the little room behind that mirror, watching the back of Charles’ head, the back of his neck as the hairs there prickle and stand on end. They’ll make him move to the other side of the table, Charles knows, once they get back. They’ll want the observers to be able to see his face.

At last, the door opens again and the detectives filter into the room, trailed by Geoff bearing a plastic Dixie cup of water which he sets down on -- Charles was right -- the opposite side of the table, gesturing for Charles to move seats.

The female detective -- Charles realizes, now, he still doesn’t know either of their names, can’t look to find out, either, not without his telepathy -- sets a small metal device down on the table, a recorder, and presses a button. 

“March 21, 2020, interview with Charles Xavier. Detective Amy O’Rourke and Detective Harvey Li are present, along with Geoffrey Carson, Mr Xavier’s attorney.”

Charles swallows against a dry throat, then says, firmly but quietly, “It’s Dr Xavier, actually.”

The male detective, Detective Li, snorts, nostrils flaring. “ _Dr_ Xavier. Doctor of Psychology, right? That’s how you got the state to give you a vulnerable kid as your live-in fucktoy.”

Charles’ eyes widen, shocked by the brutal bluntness of it, and he says, forcing himself to keep it together, “Yes, I am a doctor of psychology. Erik came to live with me because there was no other alternative that was appropriate for the state of his mental health.”

“How’s that working out for you?” Detective Li asks, sneering, and Detective O’Rourke shoots him a Look that Charles knows must be calculated. Good cop, bad cop. Of course.

“I know you have Erik’s best interests at heart,” O’Rourke says gently, settling her hands atop the table, fingers interlaced. “I’m sure you understand why we have to go through all this. There are a lot of bad people out there, and we need to clarify this misunderstanding so we can make sure the child is safe.”

“I completely understand,” Charles says, and meets her gaze, willing her to believe him, even though he knows she’s probably thinking the same as her partner on the inside. “I’m all too aware of how cruel the world can be, Detective. Erik saw the very worst of that growing up, it’s of utmost importance to me that he’s well and safe.”

Li leans forward then, still sneering, his heavy brows shadowing his eyes. “And that’s why you decided it would be good for him if you took over from Shaw, is that it?”

Charles -- he can’t -- he keeps up a good front, he can manage that much, now, by sheer bloody willpower, but he can’t think of what to say to that, and so he falls back on his mother’s voice in his head, filling his skull and reverberating around in there, the worst kind of entitled, rich-boy response coming out of his mouth. “I’m afraid I don’t respond to being spoken to in such a way. Can we please behave like professionals instead of brawlers in a bar? Thank you.”

Li looks like he might self-combust, his face going red, but O’Rourke interjects before he can say anything: “Why don’t you explain the photos to us, Charles. If we can just clear that up, we can all get out of here. All right?”

Next to him, out of the corner of his eye, Charles sees Geoff smirk, an expression that’s meaningless to him without his power giving him context.

He’s had time to think about what to say, and so Charles nods, gathering himself and placing his hands on the table, loosely clasped, makes his shoulders loose instead of tense, makes his legs stop shaking. Relaxed, he tells himself, not like he’s hiding anything. “After everything that happened to Erik as a child,” he says, swallowing, “he was in severe need of affection and approval that wasn’t contingent on his good behavior, that was unconditional. With Hellfire he was unable to have physical affection without it becoming coercive and sexual, and so when he finally accepted that I wasn’t going to hurt him, and that he could have affection without needing to pay for it with his body, he took it.”

He takes a breath, lets it out, and continues, forcing himself to meet her gaze. “I won’t deny that we are close, and that Erik … has issues with moderating his closeness with others, given his upbringing. I will openly admit, and have in the past to Agent Collins of the FBI, that there are some boundaries that should have been more firmly reinforced to fit with social and cultural norms. This is why those photographs appear to be so inappropriate, because Erik is more affectionate with me than is normal for a parent/child relationship. But as a psychologist and a professional I feel it is more important for him to feel accepted and loved as he is than it is to reject him in order to make him more ‘normal.’ Erik will never be ‘normal.’”

It feels like a betrayal, to say so out loud and on the record, and Charles’ stomach clenches uncomfortably, but it’s the truth, and one he hopes they may accept.

O’Rourke writes ‘Collins, FBI’ on her notebook; Charles can read it upside-down. 

“I see,” she says, setting her pen down and meeting his gaze again. “Of course, that does raise the question as to why the two of you seem to be unclothed in the photos. I’m sure there’s a good explanation.”

Charles has to fight to keep her gaze, the urge to look down washing over him -- is she exerting Dominance, he wonders, uncertainly. “We’d been out for a run,” he says, and reaches for his water to keep from having to say anything else.

“Do you really expect us to believe that?” Li asks; demands, really, leaning forward again to fix Charles with a look that’s trying to force him to look away, to show submission. “Convenient, isn’t it? The time you decide to take pictures of yourself and your boy cuddling is when you’re all flushed and sweaty?”

The pressure of his gaze intensifies, and Charles breaks, looking down with a mixed sensation of fear, self-loathing and relief at giving in. His breath curdles in his throat and comes out in clots as he says, “I can hardly prove to you otherwise, can I? I can only state the facts and let you interpret them.”

O’Rourke pages through her notebook, frowning down at it until she finds what it is she’s looking for and taps the text, says, “The digital timestamps on the photos show they were taken in December. Surely it was a bit cold to be running shirtless?”

“Of course,” Charles says to his hands, struggling to make himself look back up, knowing Li is applying Domineering force to keep him where he is. “We’d been out wrapped up for the weather, but you still sweat under the layers once you get going, if you’re pushing yourself. When we get back to the apartment I usually take my top off right away to put it in the laundry, since it’s on the ground floor. Erik must have put his in with mine. I don’t recall the specific day, so that’s a guess.”

“So how did you end up in bed together?”

God. What had he -- Charles had thought about this, what was it he was going to say? “I don’t remember,” he says, and knows it sounds stupid even as he says it, finally gets himself to look up and meet her eyes again to try to counterbalance it. His voice isn’t as strong as he’d like it to be, almost questioning rather than stating fact when he continues, “Like I said, I don’t remember the specific day. Erik was probably horsing around. He likes to throw his weight around sometimes, it’s part of growing into his Dominance.”

“So what,” Li asks, his eyes boring into the side of Charles’ face, “we’re supposed to just buy that he wrestled you onto your bed and then you took happy snaps together?”

“I don’t know what you believe,” Charles says. “I’m just answering your questions, sir.”

“You know,” O’Rourke says, somewhere between casual and sympathetic, “if Erik used his Dominance to force you to have sex with him, that’s illegal. It’s possible we’ve got it the wrong way around. Do we?”

God, no, not this again. “No,” Charles says immediately, sharply, his hand twitching on the tabletop trying to turn into a fist; he keeps it lax, but he knows the detectives both see it, their eyes darting downwards to take in his reaction. “No, Erik hasn’t done anything wrong. If there is fault to be found in our closeness, then it is entirely my own.”

“All right,” O’Rourke says. Her hand comes up between them as if to surrender, palm toward Charles. “It was only a question. After all, Erik’s -- what, seventeen, isn’t he? He’s an adult, really. He’s bound to be dealing with his own desires, starting to want to experiment with submissives. It wouldn’t be surprising if he developed feelings for you, as the closest sub in his life. You’re not even that much older than he is.”

“I’m almost twice his age,” Charles says, trying to deflect the question.

“Does Erik think of it that way?”

“My age?” Charles tries to smile, but it’s more a milquetoast twitch than a grin. “He says I dress like an elderly professor and that my facebook makes me look like I gave up ten years ago.”

Li still watches him intently, but he doesn’t say anything, almost ostentatiously quiet; O’Rourke presses onward, leaning in toward him across the table like she’s very invested in what he has to say. 

“Tell me about Erik,” she says. “What’s he really like? We’ve all seen the trial footage, read interviews, but you know him better than anyone.”

And … Charles knows it’s a trap, knows without even having to look that there’s an angle here, but it’s hard to be neutral when he finally says, “Erik is … he’s very strong. He’s been through things that would have broken anyone else, and he’s come out strong and brave and good. He tries very hard to do the right thing, even though he doesn’t always have the same measures for that as everyone else. I’m -- I’m very proud of him.” He swallows, reaching for his water again. “He’s a very special person.”

“It sounds like you care about him a lot,” O’Rourke says.

“Of course I do,” Charles says, staring down into the half-empty glass. “He’s my family.”

Li shifts in his seat, his suit rustling a little against the hard plastic. “Not your son?”

Charles pauses, looking for the barb there, but can’t see it. “He came to me already thirteen years old. I was twenty-six. Maybe if we’d found him earlier, younger … ”

“So you got to see him grow up,” O’Rourke murmurs. “From a small and frightened child into a strong and Dominant adult.”

“He’s going to college in the fall,” Charles says, edging around the implication, feeling like he’s standing on the edge of a pit, balance wavering. “Harvard, probably. He hasn’t decided yet.”

“How’s that make you feel, your Dom going off and leaving you on your own?” Li asks, eyebrow raised. “Big apartment for a sub all alone. You’re -5S, right? Tough to be alone like that, for a high sub.”

God. Stop it. Just -- Charles’ breath is coming a little faster now, as much as he tries to hide it, feeling like he’s being herded into a corner, backing up and backing up but with no route of escape. “He’s not my Dom,” Charles protests, but it tastes like a lie in his mouth, and he can hear his voice weakening, see the two detectives perking up across the table like wolves on a scent.

“Does he know that?” O’Rourke asks, and Charles -- he -- he bites his tongue, hard, inside his mouth where he hopes they can’t see the movement for what it is, hard enough to taste blood instead of ashes before he says, “You’d have to ask him.”

Li snorts, and makes a disgusted sound. “You’re a fucking telepath, you know the answer. You just don’t want to admit that Lehnsherr has you on a leash.”

“That’s not true,” Charles says, and Li says, “Isn’t it?”

“Look,” O’Rourke interjects before Charles can say anything else, her voice firmer now than it was before, “we have our own staff telepath who has been standing in the observation room this whole time, reading you. All Detective Li and I have to do to know the truth is go out there and ask him. But we’re trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and let you tell us the facts first. It’ll go a whole lot easier on you if you cooperate.”

“Telepathic evidence is not admissible in court,” Geoff says.

“No, but it’ll tell us if we’re looking in the right direction. The evidence is out there. I can leave here right now and get a judge to sign me a search warrant for your home, and a subpoena for every email you’ve ever written or photograph you’ve ever taken. But that’s a lot of work. Tell the truth, and we’ll make sure the DA goes easy on you.”

Fuck. God. Charles is fighting the urge to throw up, the chill flutter of it rising, but he manages to say, “No matter what I tell you, you’re going to do all of that anyway,” finally letting his hands come together to tangle his fingers up and squeeze, hard, trying to contain himself. “I could say anything, that Erik and I hate each other, that we love each other, that we’ve never touched or that we have sex all the time, and you would still do all of that. Let’s not pretend, detective. I’m not an idiot.”

“I don’t know,” O’Rourke says. “The difference between having the detectives on your side and having the detectives against you is pretty significant. Say, difference between rape 1 and rape 3, or sexual abuse versus aggravated sexual abuse.”

There’s a moment, then, where Charles wavers on the edge of that pit, the self-destructive impulse to confess weighed against his conscience -- and against Erik’s order, earlier, not to say anything. Like this, Charles feels he could -- he could go either way, throw himself in the pit or throw himself on the pyre instead.

“I want you on my side,” he says, swallows, his fingers tightening around one another, “but I’ve said all I have to say on the matter. I’m … I’m sorry not to be able to help more, Detective.”

Li looks like he wants to bite Charles, his eyes narrowed and full of frustration, and O’Rourke says, “Very well, then. Elliott, why don’t you come on in.”

Charles turns to look at the door as footsteps sound outside, and then it opens to admit a tall, skinny man wearing a laminated badge on a lanyard with a large blue ‘T’ emblazoned on it. The other telepath looks Charles up and down, his eyes cool, and says, “Let’s get started, shall we?”

*

_Erik_

They leave as soon as Erik is packed. It takes less time than Erik would like, Raven hovering over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t tarry -- or try to destroy evidence, more likely -- not even trying to disguise the way she goes through his desk drawers, looks in his notebooks, pulls books off his shelf to check inside -- as if he’d have slipped pornographic photos of him with Charles in between the pages. Why she bothers, he has no idea. What would she do if she did find something? Give it to the police and cement Charles’ conviction? 

It doesn’t feel real, walking out the front door behind Raven, carrying his things and not-knowing if he’ll ever be allowed to return. It feels like he ought to wake up, breathless and sweaty with Charles’ arms around him and Charles’ voice soft, soothing, telling him he had a bad dream. 

He remembers the last time he left home like this. Not willingly; he was screaming and kicking and biting until some Dominant FBI agent picked him up and held him tight with both arms, carrying him bodily out of the safehouse with his arms caught between his body and the Dom’s chest, rendered utterly helpless. He might be walking on his own two feet this time, but it feels no different to step out the lobby and onto the street, into the flash of cameras and the roar of reporters, onlookers, Raven reaching back to grasp his upper arm and pull him through. 

In the cab, he sits against the window with his phone held in both hands, staring down at the screen as it lights up again and again, calls and texts from people he knows, doesn’t know, anyone and everyone who wants Erik to open his mouth and say, ‘Yes, I did it again, I made my parent fuck me. No one should be surprised.’

“What a mess,” Raven mutters, looking out the window as they try to pull away, the car moving through the crowd like trying to drive through treacle. “Charles never seems to get himself into normal-size fuck-ups, he always has to go big.”

“They don’t have any proof,” Erik says, though it’s more to convince himself than her. His phone lights up again, CNN calling. “They can’t press charges without proof.”

“That is not my main concern right now, Erik,” Raven says. Her expression when she turns to look at him is incredulous. “Whether or not he’s going to be convicted is not really the biggest deal to me when I’ve just found out that he’s been -- ”

“Raven,” Erik says sharply, tipping his head toward the back of the cab driver’s seat, and she rolls her eyes, flicking her fingers dismissively.

They ride in uneasy silence for a few minutes. Erik wishes he could fall asleep, or at least think about … nothing at all, or something, anything, other than what Charles must be doing right now, how he must be feeling, the fact that if their situation is Charles’ fault, the fact they got caught is still certainly Erik’s.

He never should have copied the photos onto his phone. He should have known the boundary between ‘safe’ and ‘not’ was way, _way_ before shirtless-in-bed. And now Charles is the one paying for it.

His phone buzzes in his hands again and he glances down, both surprised and not when he sees who it is.

“Hey, Madelyne,” he says tiredly when he answers, dialing the volume down with his thumb so Raven can’t overhear her side of the conversation.

“Erik,” Madelyne says, and she sounds breathless and worried, the voices in the background almost certainly those of the news anchors on television. “I just saw -- are you okay? Oh my God!”

“What are they saying?” he asks, realizing he doesn’t actually know -- he only knows what Charles has told him, nothing about what’s happening in the world outside their own little orbit around each other.

She pauses, and the background noise suddenly vanishes -- she must have turned the TV off. “They’re saying Charles -- Dr Xavier -- has been raping you,” she says in a voice that shakes, a creak of plastic as she holds her phone too tight. “There are -- there are pictures. Erik, I -- I’m so sorry, I had no idea.”

“That’s not what happened,” Erik says, practically cutting her off. He can’t help recoiling at the use of that word -- _rape_ \-- the implications as repulsive now as they were when he was thirteen and first heard it used to describe what Hellfire did to him. For a brief he moment he wonders if he’ll feel the same way about Charles five years from now as he does about Hellfire, before he dismisses that line of thought out of hand: he already decided how he’ll move forward as far as things go with Charles. That’s his choice, even if the law might say he’s too young to make it.

“Oh. That’s … well, um.” Madelyne exhales, long and low. “I mean … you look happy, in the photos they showed, so I hoped maybe it wasn’t what it looks like, but … Erik, Dr Xavier is like, forty and your dad. I know you have … you’re not particular about who you sleep with, but that’s not … it’s pretty illegal, even for you. I mean … I hate to ask, but … did you …?”

They’re nearly to Raven and Hank’s building, now, the brown façades of the East Village sliding past outside the window and Raven watching him with interest from the other seat. Madelyne made him promise never to lie to her, but the truth isn’t an option either.

“I can’t talk about this over the phone,” Erik says, too sure they’ll be taking his phone records within the next day or two, that everything he’s said is open for analysis and overanalysis. “I’m moving in with Raven for the time being. You remember where she lives, right?”

“Yeah,” Madelyne says, then, “Yes, I remember. Can I come over? Is that okay? I don’t want to be a pain if you need to be alone.”

“It’s fine.” He wouldn’t be alone, anyway -- he’d be with Raven, listening to her tell him for the hundredth time what a horrible person Charles is. Not that alone would be much better. “I’ll see you later.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Shall I bring anything? Skittles, soda, number of a good law firm?”

“Maybe the number for your dad’s spin doctor,” Erik says dryly, and Madelyne laughs, though Erik can tell it’s insincere. When he hangs up, dropping his phone back down into his lap, Raven says, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? She’ll be the press’s next target if they see her coming over. They’ll think she’s your girlfriend.”

“Good. Maybe then they’ll drop all this about Charles.”

Raven makes an exasperated sound. “So you’d throw Madelyne under the bus to save Charles from things he’s done to himself? They’ll crucify her, Erik, you know they will. They won’t let it go and she’ll have her garbage hauled out all over the street for people to see. She doesn’t deserve that, she’s a nice kid.”

“You live in a big building,” Erik snaps, the thread of his patience quickly running out. “She could live in another apartment. She could be visiting someone else. And just because you disagree with someone’s decisions doesn’t mean they’re malicious.”

The cab pulls to a stop at the curb outside Raven’s building and Raven pulls two twenties out of her bag, passing them up and telling the driver to keep the change. The sidewalk is empty of reporters -- for now -- but that doesn’t stop Erik sending his power spinning out down the street checking for cameras. Raven opens the car door and gets out, gesturing for Erik to follow. “Come on, let’s get inside. You can bitch and moan at me in there just as comfortably as out here.”

Raven lives on the fourth floor, high enough off ground level that there’s little risk of an enterprising paparazzo managing to shoot photos through the windows. It feels like déjà vu, walking down this hall with Raven again, like it’s last year and he’s left Charles for the brief peace that distance could give him. 

“Hank didn’t know, remember,” she says with her back to Erik, fitting her key to the lock. “He saw it on the news this morning. So be nice to him, okay? He’s freaking out.”

“Does he know you knew?” Erik asks. He catches the key in the latch before she can open the door, not wanting Hank to overhear. He hadn’t -- somehow, he hadn’t thought about Hank at all, how Hank will react to … this. He and Charles were -- are? -- friends. And Erik doesn’t think he can take seeing one more person who used to love Charles start to hate him.

Raven turns to look at him, her mouth twisting into a lopsided and bitter smile. “I told him, yeah,” she says, and shrugs, a big, exaggerated gesture more suited for the stage than the hallway. “He’s my husband, Erik. I wasn’t going to lie to him any more when it’s public knowledge.”

If Charles kept something like that from him, Erik thinks, he might not ever learn to forgive him. But he doesn’t say that out loud, just presses his lips together and nods his head, releasing his grasp of the key to let Raven turn the knob and push open the door.

Hank is sitting in the living room, watching the news with his hands on his knees, kneeling on a floor cushion, his shoulders bowed. He looks around when they come in and his eyes widen for a moment, looking between the two of them. “Erik,” he says, hesitantly. “Hi.”

“Hey.”

Over Hank’s shoulder, MSNBC plays the same clip over and over again, the film from when Hellfire was sentenced and Charles embraced Erik on their sofa. Erik didn’t realize at the time the way it looked -- how his shock at the verdict might be interpreted as flinching away, how possessive the sight of Charles’ fingers curled tight in Erik’s hair. 

Erik lets his duffel slip off his shoulder, catching at the crook of his elbow before he drops it down onto the floor. 

“It’s not like they say,” he tells Hank, dragging his gaze away from the television to look Hank in the eye; Hank’s gaze immediately drops, his head tipping forward. 

“Well.” Hank’s fingertips dig into the fabric covering his thighs. “Raven told me what she knows. It’s quite a lot like that, isn’t it? Charles has been sleeping with you. For a while now.”

Beside Erik, Raven walks forward and goes to stand next to Hank, running her fingers through the fur on the top of his head and tugging him against her thigh, though he doesn’t relax the way he used to, the way Erik is used to seeing them. “Erik has to stay here for a while,” she says, expression tight.

Hank thinks I did this, Erik realizes in a dull epiphany. They both know what he’s like, how easily he makes people follow him into bed. What’s more, the way Hank imagines it probably isn’t far from the truth.

“I’ll use the same bedroom as last time,” he says after an empty moment, leaning down to retrieve his bag, which feels heavier now than it did just a second ago. “In two months I’ll be eighteen. It won’t be for long.”

“Don’t be an idiot, you’ll stay here as long as you need to,” Raven says, looking at Erik just so she can roll her eyes. “You’re going to college in September, right? You’ll stay with us until then, and during the breaks you can come back here too. We’re your family, dipshit.”

Erik nearly corrects her, that he meant he’d move back in with Charles -- only that assumption, he realizes now, is predicated on Charles being acquitted. Which he very well might not be. A heavy weight drops into Erik’s stomach, pulling it down toward the floor and making him feel ill, a coppery taste in his mouth. Somehow he’d never thought about it before now -- never _really_ thought about it, the prospect of Charles in prison, of only ever seeing him behind bars. And Charles would be suppressed the whole time ….

He swallows against the sickness in the back of his throat. “Of course. I only meant, if this all blows over ….”

“Yeah,” she says, her eyes softening a little. It’s sympathy, though, and Erik knows it’s for him, for him believing that Charles might get out, because Erik wants him to so badly. Raven probably thinks Charles deserves to be in jail. “Well, we’ll see, won’t we?” she continues. “Geoff is going to call me when he can to let me know what’s going on.”

At her feet, Hank shifts, glancing back towards the television. “I just can’t imagine Charles being arrested,” he says, his voice a dry rasp. “He just … he doesn’t seem the type, you know?”

“They never do.” Erik leaves before he can get roped back into conversation -- or worse, before he has to see another shot of Charles, flanked by police, or himself in the oddly contrasting photos they display onscreen: his mug shot from after the raid, pale and looking far closer to ten than thirteen, juxtaposed just a few minutes later with a photo of him and Charles together -- fully clothed -- from just a few weeks ago, one he recognizes as being taken from his Facebook profile. 

This is how they do it, Erik thinks as he shuts the bedroom door behind him and drops his bag by the closet, going to sit on the edge of the guest bed. Is this how they decide to hang someone in the court of public opinion? Never mind the actual evidence, never mind _proof_ , when all you have to do is remind the world who Erik is, what was once done to him, and bask in the collective outrage.

Erik swings his legs up onto the mattress and lies down, staring at the dark ceiling overhead and feeling the strange compulsion to go and smoke a cigarette -- an urge he hasn’t had in almost a year, now. He exhales, breathing out until there’s no air left at all, until his lungs burn and his head spins. At first he thinks he’s hearing the soft thump of his heart, beating hard in his chest to make up for the lack of oxygen, then realizes it was a knock when the door opens and Raven slips in, shutting it again behind herself.

“Hey,” she says, leaning against the wall and folding her arms under her breasts, looking at him from across the room. The light in here is strange, caught between two buildings, so her face is in an amber haze, tinted strangely across her scales. “I know today is pretty shitty, so I wanted to ask -- how are you doing, really?”

Erik pushes himself up, not wanting to stay caught, vulnerable with his belly up, and leans back against the headboard of the bed instead, dragging a pillow into his lap. “Charles got arrested because of a photo I had on my phone,” he says by way of response, hands clenching into fists under the pillow, where Raven can’t see. He isn’t sure how she expects him to feel, given that.

She frowns, a crease appearing between her eyebrows. “Did you lose your phone, then?” she asks, shifting her weight. “How did the media get it?”

“I don’t know. Someone must have hacked in.” Erik can’t even motivate himself to try and seek out who it was, right now -- it feels pointless, when the damage is already done. He shakes his head. “Stupid. I wanted to pretend there was something normal about us being together, but there wasn’t. If I hadn’t denied that, I never would have taken the risk.”

“I can’t believe Charles let you take them in the first place,” Raven says. “What a _moron_. Seriously. I can’t believe him.” She wipes her hand over her face, hiding her expression for a moment, but when it’s exposed again her disdain is painted all over it, clear as day. “I can’t believe Charles was stupid enough to do this. Especially twice.”

“Oh,” Erik says before he can stop himself, bitterness like bile on his tongue, “it was far more than just twice.”

“Jesus, Erik, shut up,” Raven snaps, her head jerking up to stare at him, disgusted. “Stop acting like this is all an inconvenience to you, instead of something downright stupid and immoral that Charles has gone ahead and done and is suffering the consequences of! I love him, but Jesus fucking shit do I hate him right now. I can’t believe he would do this, and it makes me so angry I could kill him, I really could.”

“ _You’re_ angry?” Erik snaps back. Something in his chest clicks from misery to irritation, so quickly it feels automatic. He pushes the pillow away and it tips off the edge of the bed, falling onto the floor near the window with a soft thump. “I didn’t realize you were the one he did this to. Christ, Raven, I’m so sorry, please let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

The look of confusion and alarm on her face is almost comical. “Fuck, Erik, he didn’t -- _was_ it consensual? He didn’t -- ?”

“We talked about this last time,” Erik says before she can say that word, positive if she does he’ll throw up all over this white duvet. “I didn’t start sleeping with him because I just _wanted_ him so very badly. He was the only person I knew who had never hurt me, and I would pay any price he needed to keep it that way. That things are different now don’t negate the way they started.”

“ _Are_ they different now?”

Erik lets out a soft breath and clenches his eyes shut, wishing that would blot away the headache that’s starting up just behind his left eye, a steady throb that sends pain shooting back toward his skull. “We were working on it,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose as if that would make a difference. “I -- care about him.” He can’t bring himself to say _love_ in front of Raven. “It was taking me a while to come to terms with what happened, but I was managing it. We would have been fine if this hadn’t happened.”

“So no, is what you’re saying,” Raven says, back on firmer ground. “Erik, having sex with someone because you like them and you don’t want them to leave you isn’t healthy! Especially if you don’t really want it. Fine is not the same thing as -- as a good relationship, as having someone you love and who loves you and who you can build a life with. This thing between you and Charles is poisonous, it’s not good for either of you. The fact you describe it like an injury you had to get over should be the giveaway.”

“But it’s my injury to get over,” Erik says, as evenly as he knows how, and lowers his hand from his face to look back at Raven properly. She’s frowning at him. “I’m the one who has to forgive him for what he did. Not you. Not the rest of the world. Just me. And I forgive him -- so that should be the end of it.”

“You and I both know that’s not what’s going to happen,” she says, quietly now. “And the fact you have the right to forgive him doesn’t magically fix everything that’s messed up about the two of you. It doesn’t make everything better, and it certainly won’t make the cops let him go and the media leave him alone. Charles’ life is pretty much over. You must know that.”

Erik does, but he doesn’t want to admit that out loud, where the words can hang in the air and take shape, become real. His pulse pounds in his ears. “I’m not going to abandon him.”

Erik promised Charles he never would, and he intends to keep that promise. As much as one could argue that Charles broke his promises to Erik -- the implicit promise of safe guardianship, of healthy physicianship -- there was one promise Charles always kept. Charles has always loved Erik, deeply and unconditionally, and Erik loves him back so much it feels like the earth could crumble and drift apart and that feeling would still be there, a fundamental and essential part of the universe.

Raven sighs, and she crosses the room, coming to sit down on the edge of the bed by Erik’s hip, looking down at him from the new closer angle, her expression sympathetic. “Sometimes you have to do what’s best for yourself,” she says, her hand coming to rest lightly over Erik’s wrist, scaled fingertips slippery against his skin. “It sounds selfish, but you need to be good to yourself, too. You don’t have to tie yourself to Charles forever, Erik. He’d want you to be the happiest you could possibly ever be, not dragged down with him.”

“I’m happy with him,” Erik says. He doesn’t expect her to believe him. That’s part of why these laws exist, of course -- because a seventeen-year-old can’t possibly know what makes him happy.

“Mmm,” is all she says, though. She pats his hand, then squeezes it, her grip warm and dry. “Anyway. Madelyne should be here soon.”

Erik nods, and when Raven leaves he tries to summon up optimism or -- something, anything, except the certain sense that she isn’t who he wants to see, that the only person he wants to see is locked in a room somewhere downtown, paying for his sins.

*


	47. Forty-seven

_Erik_

Erik has what feels like his entire life subpoenaed over the next twelve hours, everything from a search warrant for his phone and computer to requests from his and Charles’ ISP for all their e-mails and internet history. Erik has wiped the pornographic photos from his hard drive as best he can, but he knows damn well they’re recoverable by a decent enough software engineer -- he just has to hope the State doesn’t know swineherd.

“Don’t tell them anything,” Frank had said when Erik asked him, his voice a little crackly over a bad phone line. “They can’t make you talk, so don’t. Don’t give them a toehold in your head. Give them a crack and they’ll split you open, that’s what cops are trained to do.”

Of course, there’s no way of knowing what Charles has or hasn’t told them already, outside the parameters of the order Erik gave; he’s been coming up with loopholes ever since and hoping Charles hasn’t thought so deeply about it himself.

They meet Erik’s new victim advocate in the foyer of the police station the day after Charles’ arrest: a short, prissy-looking lady named Jo who shakes Erik’s hand first, then Raven’s, her face calm and businesslike. “Good to meet you,” she says, and gives Erik a warm, motherly smile, straightening the front of her jacket. “I’ll be sitting in with you and representing your interests while we talk to the detectives. Do you have any questions, before we go in?”

Lovely. Another person here to tell Erik how he’s supposed to feel.

“How do you define my interests?” he asks, pretending he doesn’t notice the metal of all the cameras outside the station, all trying to film or photograph him through the windows; probably the image of him walking into the station with Raven is already all over /r/eriklehnsherr on reddit, not to mention the news.

“Essentially, it’s my job to assess your case and your circumstances to help make recommendations to the court about what happens to you and what decisions they make about your future.” Jo fishes in her purse for a folder which she opens, removing a sheet of close-typed paper and handing it to Erik. “That’s the long version. What it means for you is that I’m responsible for making sure all the legal razzmatazz has as little negative impact on you and your future as possible and that your needs are considered as important an outcome as the legal one.”

“All right,” Erik says, folding up the paper to read later. “Then, just so you can understand how best to represent my interests, you should know that my primary goal is making sure Charles escapes this unscathed. I’m not interested in testifying, so the sooner we can wrap this up, the better.”

Jo nods. “I can understand that, Erik, but that’s up to the legal team, not to me. What they decide is out of my control. My priority is your overall objective well-being, and if it turns out Dr Xavier is innocent, well then, nobody will be happier to hear it than I. But if he’s found guilty I have to take that into account in my recommendations. Does that make sense?”

“Fine. Then let’s get this over with.”

He should have known better than to expect an ally here, of course, but being unsurprised doesn’t make him less annoyed by it. He and Raven follow Jo deeper into the building, past uniformed police officers and plainclothes detectives, suited-up administrative officials and other members of the public here to enjoy the hospitality of New York’s finest. Erik stretches out his power, out and out, until he finds it -- the silver ring he made Charles, the inner circle of the metal warm where it presses against Charles’ skin. He’s sitting down somewhere, grasping the edge of a metal seat -- and now Erik can sense the shape of his body, too, from where it touches the chair, feels it when Charles shifts his weight.

 _I’m here_ , he thinks, before he remembers Charles won’t hear him. So instead he heats the metal of the ring on Charles’ finger, just a little, and slowly turns it round his finger. ‘Hello.’

He can feel it when Charles lifts his hand, and when he closes his other hand over it, pressing the ring closer to his skin. His fingertip rubs over it, smoothing over the metal. Erik turns his attention two feet higher, to the slim circlet of metal around Charles’ brow. He could remove the suppressor so easily, slip the needle free from Charles’ temple -- only, if any of the telepaths in the building sensed him before Charles could shield himself they’d be in even worse trouble. So he settles for sending another throb of warmth through the ring instead before his attention is stolen away by the detectives waiting for him just outside a door marked ‘Conference Room 3A.’

They’re the same pair that came to arrest Charles yesterday, a man and a woman, and Erik tries not to glare at them but it’s hard enough not to use their watches to make them punch themselves in the face as it is, never mind controlling his own expression.

“Mr Lehnsherr,” the male detective says, and offers Erik his -- uncontrolled -- hand to shake. Erik very nearly ignores it, but it’s not Erik’s own liberty that’s at stake here.

“And you are?” he asks, and shakes the damn hand.

“That’s Harvey,” his female companion says. “I’m Amy. We’re the detectives in charge of this case. I know this isn’t your first rodeo, but we’re still required by law to tell any witnesses if there’ll be a telepath present during interview. You’re used to telepathy, of course, so I guess it probably doesn’t bother you too much!”

She smiles, and Erik’s left wondering if she meant that to stave off complaint or if she’s simply trying to frame herself as a mutant supporter, someone with whom Erik might sympathize.

“Hi, Amy, Harvey,” Jo says -- clearly they know each other. “Shall we go inside and sit down?”

Harvey nods. “Of course.” It rankles to see him so polite now, when he was so rude yesterday in their apartment when they came to arrest Charles; Erik’s teeth grind down on a million things he could say, none of them helpful, his stomach roiling with anger and worry as Harvey opens the door to the conference room, waving them all to go inside. “We’re in here.”

Inside the room is … pretty average, actually -- this could be any office building, not a police precinct but just … an insurance brokerage, or a PR firm, or something, anything innocuous. There’s a potted plant in the corner, and a medium-sized cherry conference table surrounded by wheeled office chairs; Erik takes the one Harvey pulls out for him, nearest the tape recorder that’s set in the middle -- that, at least, makes it clear this is no normal meeting room. A thin man is already in there, cleaning his glasses on his shirt before he looks up at Erik from across the table -- the telepath, then.

 _I know nothing I think or know is admissible in court,_ Erik tells him silently, but the man doesn’t respond.

Amy pauses with her finger hovering over the tape recorder. “Do you mind if we record?”

“It’s fine,” Erik says; he presses ‘play’ with his mutation, and the tape clicks into life. It’s a meaningless gesture, really, given that he could use magnetism to erase the recording if he has to -- something apparently none of them have thought of.

“I have an eidetic memory,” the telepath says, putting his glasses back on. “And fast enough reflexes to prevent you from doing that, if you tried. I’d suggest you don’t bother.”

“What’s that?” Jo asks, looking between them; Erik just lifts an eyebrow and says, “I’m not required by law to consent to being recorded. Your memory is inadmissible evidence, and notes on a legal pad aren’t that much better.”

“I meant don’t bother being recorded, if you’re just going to erase the tape.” The telepath shrugs. “It’s a waste of everyone’s time.”

“As long as we all agree,” Erik says, and stops the tape recorder with his power, folding his arms across his chest. “This whole thing is a waste of everyone’s time.”

There’s a long silence before Raven takes the seat next to Erik’s, settling the telepath with a firm look; then she turns to the detectives and says, “I know we’re here so you can talk to Erik, but I’d like to see my brother, too. Is that something that can be arranged?”

Harvey’s lips tighten, but the woman, Amy, says, “Of course. I’ll arrange it as soon as we’re done here.”

They can’t keep Charles from having visitors, then. He wonders if that privilege extends to him. It feels like years since he’s seen Charles, somehow, like he’d find him old and gray, withered and ancient from the time that passed. “Can I see him, too?” he asks before he can think better of it; beneath the table one of his hands grasps his knee, wrinkling the fabric of his trousers.

The two detectives glance at each other, some silent communication passing between them before finally Harvey says, “Yeah, okay, fine. I’ll sort it with the officer on duty.”

Erik’s surprised, though he tries not to let it show on his face, his stomach suddenly tight and knotted-up. Even knowing there must be a catch doesn’t quite eliminate the sense of relief he feels, knowing he doesn’t have to go another night wondering if Charles is okay, if he’s planning to hurt himself, if he’s already found the means to.

“Erik, I know this must have been a difficult past few days,” Amy says, turning to a new page on her legal pad but then setting it down, her hand nowhere near her pen. “How have you been?”

She sounds like Charles, Erik thinks. Or rather, she sounds like Dr Xavier, the role Charles played in therapy, the porcelain professional façade. He’s learned better than to be fooled by that now.

“You’ve taken away my guardian on false charges,” Erik says. “As you can imagine, I’m eager to put this matter to rest so that he and I can both return home.”

Harvey raises an eyebrow. “False charges? Dr Xavier has been arrested on suspicion of, at the very least, indecent liberties with a minor, as evidenced by photographs apparently taken by the two of you which were leaked somehow to the media. Of course, we’d be happy to hear that the photos have a more innocent explanation. How did the two of you end up naked in bed together if it’s not how it seems?”

“Shirtless,” Erik corrects him, and hopes to god Charles remembered to stick to the story they came up with. “We went for a run. We got overheated, we took our shirts off. I tackled Charles onto the bed because he was trying to claim first shower and he always uses up all the hot water.”

“An apartment the size of Nebraska and you don’t have enough hot water for two showers?”

“Not the way Charles showers, no.” Erik tilts one corner of his mouth up as if to say, _you know how he is_ , only they don’t, none of them do, not even Raven. Only Erik.

“You’re pretty close, then,” Amy says, like it’s a question.

“Reasonably so.”

“Reasonably?” Harvey’s eyebrows rise a little. “That’s not what the doctor said. Though maybe he’s a bit clingier than you are? Some dads are like that.”

“He’s overprotective. That’s not a crime,” Erik says, frowning and knowing better than to take the bait with _he’s not my dad._ Under the table one of his legs starts jittering up and down, an anxious tremor that’s impossible to stop now it’s started. It’s difficult not to give into the desire to defend Charles too keenly, to give away the truth through denial.

“The way I understand it, you’re a one kid army,” Harvey says, and shoots Erik a quick, conspiratorial grin. “What does he need to protect you from?”

“If you ask him, he’d say from myself.”

There’s a minute pause, but then Amy asks, apropos of nothing, “So, you’re off to college next year -- where do you think you’ll end up?”

An odd question, Erik thinks, considering what preceded it -- that’s worrying, in and of itself. He sits up a little straighter, trying not to frown. “I don’t know. I was leaning toward Stanford or MIT, but ….”

“Dr Xavier says you were planning to go to Harvard,” Amy tells him, looking faintly -- and falsely -- surprised. “Is that not the case?”

“Harvard is also a contender,” Erik says. “So what?”

Harvey’s the one who leans forward, though, tapping the end of his pen against the tabletop. “Just kind of weird, is all,” he says, “for him not to know. Maybe Harvard’s where _he_ wants you to go?”

“Yes, it is. He went to Harvard for undergrad, so he’s personally invested. I don’t see how that makes him a statutory rapist, if you don’t mind me bringing us back on topic.”

“It’s not that,” Harvey says, and he makes a note on his pad, then puts his pen down, looking back up at Erik with an expression made carefully neutral. “He says you’re very close, so close it’s abnormal but not illegal, but you say you’re only reasonably close. He says you’re going to Harvard, no other options given, but you still haven’t made your mind up. You say he’s overprotective. It all paints a picture of a man who is very invested in controlling you and your choices, and who is holding on far more tightly than you are. It’s worrying, Erik, especially given the context of those pictures. Are you ever frightened of disobeying his wishes?”

 _Christ_ , Erik wants to say, _he’s not Shaw_. But instead, he elects not to answer that question, not because he’d ever answer in the affirmative -- but because it’s so patently ridiculous that he’s not sure he could manage a response that wouldn’t be sarcastic enough to anger Amy and Harvey. And angering the detectives on his case could end up backfiring on Charles, the only person either of them could afford to take it out on. Instead he just sits there in stony silence, doing his best to convey via his expression just how stupid a question he thinks that is.

“Do you think Charles is clingy?” Amy prompts him, probing at the sore spot. And it’s working, clearly -- irritation sparks at the frayed ends of Erik’s nerves, itching against the fear that Charles must have said too much, must have given them _some_ reason to choose this line of inquiry over all others.

“Charles is a -5S, but given his omega-class telepathy, he is functionally -1 or -2S. Prior to myself, no one had ever managed to put him into subspace. I can. If he’s become chemically dependent on that, it wouldn’t be surprising.” Erik’s leg is still going under the table, fast enough now he worries it’s visible in his upper body.

The detectives look at each other again for a split second, then Harvey says, “Erik, how often do you put Dr Xavier into subspace? Do you often order him to do things?”

“Once a week,” Erik says, choosing a number that sounds good to him, not too far -- they obviously know Erik and Charles had sex, or they will once their telepath talks to them, but all Erik needs to worry about right now is explaining away the situation in a manner that’s realistic but doesn’t give any evidence beyond reasonable doubt to a hypothetical jury that Charles slept with him. “I’ll give him small orders every day. Bring me the frying pan, turn up the volume, that kind of thing. Is that a problem?”

“You’re obviously invested in his wellbeing,” Amy says, ignoring his question. “Is there a limit to what you would do if you thought he needed it?”

Ah, so there’s the rub, Erik thinks bitterly. It must be a coincidence, the detective guessing at his weaknesses. It means nothing that she’s finally placed her finger on the truth, identifying the hard kernel at the core of the matter, of how this all started: the fact that Erik would -- and did -- do anything and everything he had to make Charles keep loving him. He feels queasy now, his stomach an unsettled ocean threatening to surge up the back of his throat.

“Let’s say the limit is right before having sex with him,” Erik says coolly, nails digging into his palms just out of sight.

“All right,” Harvey says. “We can say that. Is it true?”

“Why do you even have to ask me that question? You’re sitting next to someone who knows the answer,” Erik says, jerking his head toward the telepath, who shrugs and says, “That’s my job.”

“We want to hear it from you, Erik,” Amy says, her voice gentle, still so much like a feminine version of Charles. “It doesn’t make Dr Xavier a bad person if he had needs.”

“No,” Erik says. “Not having needs. Just acting on them.”

“You agree, then? Only bad people would force a child to care for their needs?”

The jitteriness from Erik’s leg is everywhere, now, crawling like insects beneath his skin even as he finally manages to stop his leg from shaking, crossing his ankles and locking them tight behind the stem of his chair. “That’s not what I said.”

Harvey nods, and folds his hands together on top of the table, leaning towards Erik. “Look, we’re not trying to trap you here. We’re trying to make sure of exactly what happened, so all that media crap doesn’t get spread around and paint over the real truth. So. It might not be what you said, but was it what you meant?”

“I know there are bad people out there. And I know there are people who abuse children. I think I know that better than most. But Charles isn’t like that.”

“Then what is he like?” Amy nudges, and Erik says, “I’ve said all I’m going to say on the subject,” and crosses his arms over his chest, looking down at the center of the table, at the dead voice recorder instead of at any of them where he might have to look in their eyes and know that they know.

“I bet you’d have more to say if I told you he confessed,” Harvey says, his tone as bland as milk, and Erik says, “He didn’t.”

He didn’t, because Erik ordered him not to, because Charles is -5S and can’t disobey -- Erik’s one of the strongest Dominants on the _planet_ , and so they’re bluffing. The loopholes …. Charles wouldn’t betray them like that.

Knowing this, knowing it in his bones doesn’t stop Erik from feeling cold all the sudden, as if the blood has frozen in his veins.

“You sound very sure of that,” Harvey says, his dark eyes watching Erik carefully, looking for signs of weakness. “You mentioned before that he’s depressed. People don’t always react the same way when they’re not entirely themselves.”

“I’ve been living with him for four and a half years,” Erik says. “You think I don’t know how he reacts?”

A shrug. “I think you’re worried about him, more than about yourself, which is admirable but doesn’t change the fact that you came into his care as a vulnerable young man, and that Dr Xavier has taken advantage of the way you need his love to make you feel that you have to give him what he wants or else risk losing that affection.” Harvey’s hands spread, displaying his conclusion. “I think you’re a very strong, brave kid who needs to take a step back and be a little more objective about the person you’re protecting. It’s all very well and good to love someone, but when you grow up you realize that not everybody deserves that kind of loyalty.”

“Charles does,” Erik says firmly, and he finally sits upright in his chair, placing his elbows on the table and leaning in to match Harvey’s posture, holding his gaze and refusing to back down. “Even if he made bad choices -- even if he did take advantage -- that would be between me and him. He might not be a good person by your standards, but he’s _my_ person, and I won’t throw him away like this.”

“So you’re saying he did take advantage of you? Sexually?”

“I won’t answer that question.”

“You more or less did already,” Amy says, gently. “You said, ‘even if he did take advantage’ -- and not as if it were a hypothetical. At this point you might as well just come out with it, Erik, instead of dancing around it. Wouldn’t it feel better to have it out in the open instead of having to lie?”

“We’re done here,” Erik says, pushing his chair back from the table and standing up, his fists clenched so they won’t see his hands tremble. There’s a yearning pit in the center of his chest, deep and black and growing. “I want to see Charles now.”

For a moment he thinks they’re going to refuse, can see the look on Harvey’s face -- but then Amy touches his wrist, and Harvey lets out a breath, short and frustrated, before saying, “All right. Give me five minutes and we’ll sort it.”

“Me too,” Raven says, getting up, but Amy says, “One at a time I’m afraid. It’s station policy.”

Erik swallows against the heaviness in his throat and watches as Amy and Harvey rise to their feet, putting the notepads away into their bags. In his opinion they both take longer than strictly necessary to do so, before finally Harvey pushes past the end of the table to get to the door and head out down the hall.

“Harvey and Jo will go with you,” Amy tells him, setting her full satchel down on the table near where Erik was sitting just a moment ago. “For the time being, we can’t let you see him unsupervised. I know that’s a disappointment.”

“It’s fine,” Erik says shortly, not wanting to give any more ammunition than they already have.

Harvey comes back a few minutes later, and gestures shortly for Erik and Jo to follow him. He doesn’t say much, just leads them along the corridors of the precinct and through a couple of sets of secure doors before finally they reach one that’s guarded by a uniformed officer.

“Visitors for Xavier,” Harvey says, jabbing a thumb towards Erik and Jo.

The guard does a double-take looking at Erik, obviously recognizing him, but he doesn’t comment as he lets them in, swiping his keycard to send the doors swinging slowly open. This part of the building is nothing like the exterior -- the floor is raw and unfinished cement, the walls plain, and as they pass by the holding cells Erik watches prisoners come up to dangle their wrists out between the bars as if they’re straight out of an old movie. He feels worse the closer they get, sensing Charles’ ring and still not able to stop the shaking in his hands, slipping them into his pockets to keep Harvey from seeing.

Charles is near the end of the row. He’s sat on his thin mattress in the corner where two walls meet, his knees drawn up to his chest and his head resting against them, hiding his face; his hands are tucked in and out of sight. He doesn’t look up at first, but after a moment he lifts his head, and his face looks drawn and wan as he says, “Erik,” as if he’s seeing a ghost.

Erik knew what to expect -- he’s been in a cell like this before himself, with the blocklike bed and the steel commode attached to the wall, the rickety sink with creaky taps. It was one thing for him to be there, but it’s something else entirely to see Charles among all those trappings, looking as if someone slit open a vein and drained the hope out of him. He feels seasick; nauseous.

“Charles,” Erik says, pushing past Harvey and striding over to the door of the cell, pressing himself as close as he can get without bending the bars aside to step through. “Charles, come here.”

It’s awful to see how Charles unfolds himself slowly, but not as if he’s trying to disobey, more like he’s lost sensation to his limbs; he winces, stumbling a little as he gets his feet under him, but then he comes obediently to Erik’s hand, leaning in against the other side of the door and resting his head against it, so close and yet separated by so wide a gap. “Hey,” he murmurs, his eyes moving to take in every detail of Erik’s face, like he’s been starved of it.

“Are you all right?” Erik asks, lowering his voice. He reaches through the bars to catch Charles’ hand, clasping their fingers together and squeezing tight, hardly remembering the detective’s presence at all -- all there is is Charles, his blue eyes and the damned suppressor band around his head, keeping him from being truly there in every way he should be, present in every sense Erik possesses. Christ.

Charles sounds exhausted, like he hasn’t slept in days. “I hate wearing this thing. Everyone feels dead. It’s too quiet. Except it’s not, because I’m in jail.” He squeezes Erik’s hand back, and tries for a smile, but it’s weak and unconvincing. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Erik says. He feels in the metal bar where it’s pressed against Charles’ brow, the top of his cheek, and is insanely jealous of it for touching more of Charles than he is right now. Erik reaches his free hand through, just to cup Charles at the back of his skull and keep him there, close, Erik’s fingers threaded through his hair and Charles’ head warm against his palm. His heart clenches painfully.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he says. “If they’re going to indict you they’ll have to do it soon, and then you can post bail and go home.”

Charles is trembling, Erik realizes, just a tiny bit, an almost invisible shiver of his body as he leans in close to Erik, quivering through him from head to foot. “I’d like that,” he says, his eyes closing tightly.

“I’ll take care of you,” Erik promises, and already knows he’ll find a way to do that no matter what it takes, even if he has to sneak into Charles’ apartment in the dead of night to bathe him, to cook for him, to wrap him up in the warmth of a blanket and curl up at his side for hours in the darkness of their bedroom. He’s terrified to leave Charles alone in that house. “Everything will be all right.”

“Everything’s over,” Charles says. His voice is strangely, awfully gentle, like he’s trying to comfort _Erik_. “Everything is over now. The practice. The mutant center. My reputation. It will be … I just want to go home, and hide until everyone forgets I exist.”

“Don’t talk like that. It’s not over.”

“Erik, I think it would be best if you stepped back a bit,” Jo says from somewhere behind him, sympathetic but firm, and Charles jerks like he’s been stung, reminded that there are people there that he can’t feel when he’s wearing the damn band. Erik moves back, but only a little, only enough to look to Harvey, and demand, “Let me in.”

“I can’t do that, kid,” Harvey says, his arms folded across his chest; his expression is one of utter displeasure, and he’s looking at Charles like he wants to step on him then scrape him off on the sidewalk. “Come on, you’ve had your few minutes.”

Erik thinks about leaving, about walking down this hall and out into the fluorescent rooms outside, about Charles curling up on that thin mattress with the world completely shut off from him, dead and empty. His stomach quivers, uneasy and nauseated, and he says, “Just a few minutes more. ...Please.”

It’s his fault Charles is here, the look on Charles’ face, not trusting that if he turns his back on him Charles won’t slip away, forever ….

“Don’t worry,” Charles says, stepping back and wrapping his arms around his own middle. “I’ll be all right.”

Erik wishes he could believe him. Instead there’s just the black swell of dread in his bones, heavy and unignorable.

“You can have another couple of minutes, but that’s it,” Harvey says from behind Erik. “Then you have to go home. Okay?”

“Thank you, Detective,” Charles says, but all he gets is a grunt in return, and when Erik glances back he can see the look of disgust on Harvey’s face. It’s the expression Charles used to wear when they were at court, when they had to look at Shaw.

“Is there anything you need me to take care of at home?” Erik asks Charles once he’s certain he can speak evenly, his hands feeling strange and useless now that they aren’t touching Charles; he stuffs them into his pockets, shoulders tense and tight.

Charles manages a quick twitch of the corner of his mouth, but shakes his head. “No. If I’m here longer than a few days, though, you should … you should clear out the refrigerator. Take out the trash. That sort of thing.”

“I can have Raven bring you something. A book.”

“That would be nice.” Charles looks down, and then snorts. “Something long, perhaps. _Crime and Punishment_.”

The silence that follows is a heavy one, Erik’s gaze slipping away from Charles to stare down at the floor for too long before he catches himself at it, the old trappings of conditioned submission like a refractory sickness creeping over him. He dips his power into Charles’ ring again and warms it against his skin, wishing he could feel the thread of Charles’ telepathy woven into his mind in return.

Charles steps forward again, his arms unfolding so he can rest his hands against the bars, his fingers wrapping loosely around them. “It’s okay,” he says, though there’s a little waver in his voice that Erik can’t not-hear. “Go home with Raven. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise me you aren’t,” Erik says, finally meeting Charles’ gaze again, and it’s a struggle to keep from making that an order when Harvey and Jo are standing just there, watching. The back of Erik’s throat feels raw, like he’s swallowed shattered glass.

“I think Detective Li would have something to say about it if I tried,” Charles says.

Erik wants to attempt a smile, but his lips won’t cooperate. “Good,” he says instead, drawing his hands out of his pockets and forcing himself to let his arms hang loose and still at his sides even though every part of him yearns to reach for Charles again.

Better, he thinks, that Charles is in a holding cell where people can see him, watch him, than let home to his own devices where Erik isn’t allowed to be there and protect him.

“All right,” he says eventually, making himself turn toward Harvey, who is watching the two of them like he’s trying to divine something from the way they stand, the way they talk. “We’re finished.”

“Come on,” Harvey says, stepping in closer and clapping a hand on Erik’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

“Bye,” Charles says, and there’s a hitch in his voice this time, his hands tightening around the bars. For a brief, reeling moment Erik wants to take it back, to step closer and grab onto those bars and refuse to let go, but his body takes over mechanically and steps back, away from Charles with the people who are ostensibly here to protect him.

“I’ll see you soon,” Erik promises, hoping he can keep that promise, and the detective tugs him away, nudging him down the hall. Erik doesn’t look back, because he is certain that if he does, if he has to see Charles gazing after him from within that cell, he’ll tear this entire place down just to be with him.

 

*

>   
>  _To: me  
>  From: Elias Braden-Newell_  
>  **This unfortunate week**
> 
> Dear Erik,
> 
> I know we parted on bad terms a few days ago, a fact which saddens me, but though I would normally have waited for a more appropriate time to re-establish our dialogue I couldn’t hold back from sending you this missive having seen on the news what is now happening for you and for Charles.
> 
> I should probably say that I am shocked and appalled at finding out such a thing was happening to you, however I like to think I know you well enough to know that you rarely do anything that is not of your own choosing, and so I suspect that such a message would not only be inaccurate and disingenuous but also unwelcome. If you should wish to talk about it to one who knows Charles well, and who would be willing to discuss the matter without the common man’s judgement (instead applying that which you and I both know to be more accurate, that of someone who understands your mutual temperaments and can see the two of you for who you are, regardless of common taboos) then please do let me know.
> 
> It does worry me that you have put yourself in a position for someone who tends towards the needy to require you so strongly. Perhaps this might be seen as a blessing in disguise in the future, though I suspect you will not thank me for saying so now. It does however free you to pursue your own goals in a way you could not have before when so tied down.
> 
> Let me know if you would like to talk and I will happily make myself available to you.
> 
> Your friend,
> 
> Elias

 

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_Anonymous_ asked **erik_lehnsherr** :

> omg you just can’t catch a break!!!

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> i still really like that photo the sartorialist took of you and cx and it’s my desktop background but only because you just look so hot in it, is that ok?

_grazyna_ asked **erik_lehnsherr** :

 

> I heard about what happened and I just wanted to let you know there are a lot of people out there who love and support you. Please don’t hesitate to ask for help. I hope you’re seeing a new psychologist now. It really does get better and I know you know that but sometimes it’s easy to forget. Be well.

_Anonymous_ asked **erik_lehnsherr** :

> evry1 thinks u r just this sad little cupcake flowr but i bet u raped him not the other way round, ur dad is a sub he cant rape a dom and ur a 7D. u should kill urself and leave a note confessing

  
**hannigan12** (3984 points) gold x2 in /r/news  
It’s fucked up that it takes a famous 7D getting abused as a kid, then stat raped as a teenager, to prove that subs aren’t the only victims of sexual assault. If a 7D Dom can get taken advantage of even after he’s started acting Dommy then it could happen to any of us.

>  
>
>>   
>  **arnoldarnold** (18 points)  
>  Oh come the fuck on, if it were a sub getting stat raped by a Dom reddit would be saying ‘we don’t have all the evidence, innocent until proven guilty, don’t kill him in the court of public opinion’
>>
>>>   
>  **gargantuanturd** (1014 points)  
>  THERE ARE FUCKING PHOTOS OF IT, FUCKTARD. But of course the subs rights activists will try to turn it around on Lehnsherr because everyone knows Doms can’t control themselves and just rape everything in sight #yesallsubs
>>
>>>   
>  **genpot** (-94 points)  
>  It’s not exactly rocket science to see this is the wrong way around, everyone knows abused kids become abusers and Lehnsherr is a 7D, Xavier is a -5S. As IF Xavier could take advantage of Lehnsherr without his say-so. Just because he’s the adult doesn’t make him the aggressor
>>
>>>   
>  **grangerdanger** (10 points)  
>  If Lehnsherr managed to convince stick-up-his-ass Xavier to break the law, he’s gotta be INSANELY good in bed. That’s all I’m saying.
>>>
>>>>   
>  **arbitrarygreeting** (53 points)  
>  Maybe so, but what always gets me is, even if Lehnsherr’s a perfect 10 could you really fuck that knowing Shaw and all them got there first? I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it, like I don’t care how amazing it is if I know he got all that practice from being Shaw’s live-in pornstar. Just imagine the terrorist STDs.
>>
>>>   
>  **bunnybunnybunny** (80 points)  
>  Does nobody else think maybe they just love each other and the age stuff is society trying to impose that on them? Xavier’s not that old, and Lehnsherr’s gotta be older than his years with all the shit that’s happened to him in the past. Why are we assuming either of them had their agency taken away from them?
>>>
>>>>   
>  **vvvvvvvv** (742 points)  
>  Lehnsherr’s “older than his years?” That’s the classic pedo excuse. Do you even know how you sound right now? As far as Xavier not being that old goes, he’s 31 years old. He’s fucking a 17 year old. It takes a certain kind of person to be in his 30s and look at a _high school student_ and think, yeah, I’m gonna tap that. It’s sick, and even if Lehnsherr was into it, it doesn’t make Xavier not a pervert.

 

**FOX News**

> “I’m not saying that this isn’t terrible and an assault on American values and on basic human morality, because clearly it is and what’s happened to Erik Lehnsherr is shocking, as are these photographs, Jim. But let’s consider the facts.
> 
> “Charles Xavier is submissive and a well-loved, well-respected worldwide leader in his field, works with young mutants to help them control their powers, has been instrumental in dozens of court cases where his testimony was used to help prove mutants innocent or guilty of crimes they were accused of that involved their abilities. Whereas Erik Lehnsherr is a known terrorist and mutant supremacist, is a 7D -- one of less than three dozen in the world -- and is known, frankly, to have very loose morals about who he sleeps with and doesn’t seem to care about the legalities of it.
> 
> “We know he’s been promiscuous of his own free will ever since he was freed from Hellfire. So, really, how can we know what he did to lead to this happening with his new guardian, someone whom nobody has ever thought of or could ever describe as a predator? Are we leaping to conclusions based on their respective ages and histories, instead of questioning the real facts here? Are we overlooking a good, honest man’s real reason to fall from grace, simply because we love to see people fall off pedestals? I’d hate to think Charles Xavier was being burned at the stake by the media when the real story hasn’t even been allowed out into the light, all because Erik Lehnsherr is making a career for himself out of his past and has worked his way into the hearts of the American people despite the mass death and destruction he wrought as a child.”

**Jezebel**

> Psychologist and mutant rights activist **Charles Xavier** was  arrested two days ago on suspicion of statutory rape and child sexual abuse. Given Xavier’s long history of mutant activism as well as his moving testimony on seventeen-year-old ward Erik Lehnsherr’s behalf during the Hellfire Club trial, in which Lehnsherr faced the Dominants who orchestrated his extended and near-ritualized physical and sexual abuse, this comes as a shock to almost everyone.
> 
> Everyone, that is, except for those familiar with research that shows former victims of sexual abuse are several times more likely to be revictimized in the future. While Fox News might have you believe rich white corporate heirs like Charles Xavier could never ever rape disenfranchised Jewish victims of abuse and terrorism, the evidence that this is exactly what happened is startling.
>
>> If Beanstalk weren’t so good in bed I’d have much less of an excuse to keep working so hard at making it work between so staunch an integrationist and so stubborn a separatist, I’ll tell you that much! And yet somehow we’ve lived together for three-and-a-half years without murdering each other. Pretty good going.
> 
>   
> This was taken from Cerebro, an integrationist blog now revealed to have been the personal project of Charles Xavier over the past six years. (In case you haven’t been paying attention, Xavier is a known integrationist, Lehnsherr a known separatist, and they’d been living together for -- you guessed it -- three and a half years as of the date this entry was posted.) Accompanying the photos released two days ago of Xavier and his foster son in compromising positions (by which we mean: naked, kissing, in Xavier’s bed), this was enough for the New York state district attorney’s office to press charges against Xavier: one count of rape in the third degree, one count of indecent liberties with a child, and one count of aggravated sexual abuse in the first degree.
> 
> It’s worth noting that the above quote, clearly about Lehnsherr, was dated to a time last year when Lehnsherr was still only sixteen years old.
> 
> The victimization of Dominants on behalf of submissives is far less common than the other way around, but far from unheard of. What is much _more_ common is victimization of  non-telepaths by telepathic mutants and foster children by their foster parents. That Charles Xavier was Lehnsherr’s psychologist, uniquely aware of the traumas Lehnsherr experienced in childhood and of his influence over Lehnsherr, and chose to be yet another parental figure taking advantage of Lehnsherr’s body and his vulnerability is appalling.
> 
> If these allegations are true, they mean that Charles Xavier, a thirty-year-old man, used his influence and telepathy to manipulate and coerce a vulnerable teenage survivor of severe and extensive child sexual abuse into his bed. In which case, rape in the third degree -- the charge in New York for statutory rape of children over fifteen years old \-- seems insufficient to account for the sheer levels of perversion and criminal intent on behalf of the perpetrator.
> 
> Of course, according to Fox News, this is all total bullshit because everyone knows Lehnsherr’s a 7D slut-terrorist.
> 
> We’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

*

_Charles_

When they finally allow him to leave -- on bail, which the court set at one million dollars, a sum even Charles would wince at losing if he decided to run -- it’s a gray and dreary day outside, something that feels strange to Charles to see after three days without windows, the dull sunlight seeping in at the windows almost painful after days of electric fluorescence. He has to sign the papers before they’ll let him even leave the cell block, Geoff silently handing him a pen he takes from the breast pocket of his smart suit.

Charles signs. The officer across from him takes the forms back with ill-grace, and then says, “Bend your head so I can take the band off.”

Charles’ breath catches, and he wishes for one brief moment that Erik were here to do it -- but then the officer is reaching for Charles’ temple, and he forgets it in the sting of pain that is the needle being roughly tugged out from under skin that had started to heal around it, the release of pressure that is the metal coming unfastened from around his head.

The voices, when they come, are loud and crash against Charles’ mind like a typhoon, tearing and dragging at him with their needs and feelings and demands and the sheer volume is just --

“You all right?” Geoff asks, his sturdy hand grasping Charles’ upper arm to steady him when Charles sways; Charles gasps instead of speaking at first, then says, “Yes, thank you -- I -- it’s -- loud. In my head.”

He lifts his hands to his face and presses the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids, the pressure somehow soothing as he struggles to drag up shields that were torn away from him by the suppressor, building them back up from scratch. He can feel Geoff’s concern, and against that in counterpart the officer’s disdain, sickened by Charles’ weakness.

“I’m okay,” Charles says, when he finally has it -- mostly -- under control, loud but not incapacitating. “So, what -- what’s next? Now I’ve signed for bail?”

“Well,” Geoff says, falling into step alongside Charles as they walk out of the cell block, toward the front desk to retrieve Charles’ personal effects, “there will be an arraignment next week, where they’ll formally read your charges and you’ll have a chance to plead. We’re still in the discovery process -- that’s where the DA and I both go evidence-hunting -- and that won’t be finished before you’re arraigned, so I suggest pleading not guilty. But we don’t have to talk about that now. My office will set up a time to meet with you in the next day or two and I’ll walk you through it.”

“Okay,” Charles says, trying to shift his posture to be stronger, less … honest. He can already feel the press outside the station like a pack of wolves, waiting for him to break from cover, and the very thought of it is horrifying, but he has to try and look … he’s not sure, actually, what way he should look. Somehow less guilty. “And so now I, what? Go home and wait?”

“Pretty much.” Geoff passes over Charles’ jacket, wallet, and Rolex. “And -- take my advice, stay away from Lehnsherr. They’re not going to let you see him unsupervised anyway, but if you can avoid seeing him at all that’ll look better, like you’re showing signs of rehabilitation.”

Rehabilitation. Right.

“I’ll tell him to stay away from the apartment,” Charles says, and tucks his wallet into his back pocket, then slips the watch on over his left hand, snugging it into place. Since he has no intention of leaving the apartment for any reason ever again, except to go to court and possibly to go to prison, that should solve the problem. “Maybe you could … talk to him, too. Tell him how important it is. He’ll listen to you more than he would to me right now.”

Geoff hums out acquiescence, and leads the way across the lobby toward the front doors, pausing there with his hand pressed against the glass panel, looking back at Charles with his brows lifted. “If you want to make a comment,” he says, “now would be the time.”

God. God. “No,” Charles says, the word coming off his tongue like a flinch, his whole body tensing for the blow. “No, I -- unless you think I should?”

What would he even say? A confession is out of the question, but could anything he said really make a difference when everyone outside is there for blood? Or would he just be feeding them, making them even hungrier to taste the rest of him?

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Geoff says grimly, “so that’s good. I’ll be giving a statement on your behalf once you’re safely in your car and well on your way back to your apartment. Probably best if you aren’t there for it.”

The relief that washes through Charles leaves him feeling weak, but he locks his knees and just says, “All right. Thank you,” before taking out his sunglasses, still there in the pocket of his jacket, and sliding them on. “Then I guess I’d better get this over with.”

“Brace yourself,” Geoff says, and pushes open the door.

Outside the reporters see him almost at once, and the noise is -- it’s incredible, the roar of the crowd shouting and screaming at him, for Charles’ attention, to damn him or just for a statement; Charles wipes his face blank and ignores all of them, even as the cops struggle to keep the crowd back, only just keeping a clear path between the door of the station and the curb where a car is waiting, door open and ready. Charles doesn’t run, but he walks as fast as he can without looking afraid, though he can almost feel their hands on him, grabbing him, tearing him apart --

The car door slams shut behind him, and on the other side of the backseat Raven says to the driver, “Go, now.”

The windows are tinted dark to keep people from seeing inside, but that doesn’t keep Charles from seeing the hands slapping up against the glass, people trying to peer in at him, hearing the shouts; he’s shaking, he realizes distantly as they pull away, and Raven is touching him, her hands on his shoulders, her voice saying, “Charles, you’re okay now, we’re going home.”

God. God.

“How’s Erik?” Charles croaks, trying to pull himself back together; he takes off his sunglasses and scrubs his hands over his face, his breath coming in harsh pants, in and out. “Is he okay? Where is he?”

“He’s fine, he’s at home with Hank,” Raven says, reaching past Charles and taking hold of the seatbelt, drawing it across him and plugging it in. “He’s worried about you.”

Charles can hear her thinking, _worried you’re going to hurt yourself alone in the apartment,_ but she doesn’t say it, not out loud.

“I’m fine,” he says, drawing his hands back down and clasping them in his lap, tangling his fingers together. “Just … grubby, from wearing the same clothes for three days in a row. Nothing a shower won’t fix.”

“Good idea,” Raven says. “I can smell you from here.”

And Charles manages to laugh, but they both know his heart’s not in it.

After a few blocks Raven turns to face him again, and this time her mouth is set in a tight line, her brow furrowed. “What you did, Charles … ” she begins, then lets out a breath, starts over. “You promised me that would never happen again. You swore to me it was done, that you knew it was wrong and that you had stopped. And yet you did it again, and now look where that’s landed you. Out on bail waiting to be convicted of statutory rape, having fucked Erik over just the way you always hated the most. You claim to love him, but you fucked him anyway, and now here we are, with me having to try and decide if I love you or hate you, Hank in pieces trying to work through knowing that you’ve done this and I knew and didn’t tell him, and Erik falling apart because you’ve fucked him up even worse and then had the gall to go about being suicidal and making him feel responsible for fixing you. It’s not okay. It’s not. And here I am trying to tidy up after you, stuck with your mess looking after your consequences. It’s not okay.”

Her breath is coming fast when Charles finally looks, her cheeks a deep indigo. Raven’s eyes are sparking, yellow and furious.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and looks back down at his hands, unable to make himself hold her gaze. “I never meant for any of this to happen.”

“You never fucking do, Charles, that’s the damn problem,” Raven says, and he can feel her warring with the urge to hit him, to punch him in the head. “How the hell are the rest of us supposed to live with this, huh?”

It would all be much easier, Charles thinks, if he could just go away and never bother any of them again. Quieter. Neater.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and Raven makes a sound of disgust before looking back out of the window and away. She’s silent for the rest of the trip, and when they reach his building, finally -- surrounded by press again, cameras lifting and ready to snap, all she says is, “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

Raven stays only long enough to make sure Charles is in the apartment, alone and safe, before leaving, closing the door behind her with a firm finality that feels like being sealed into his tomb, as if outside she might be concreting over the cracks of the door, plastering Charles inside, never to re-emerge. For a long time Charles just sits in the gallery on the hard wooden floor, listening to the people outside shouting and talking into their microphones to their cameras, narrating the collapse of his life as if it were entertainment, just another disaster movie for people to watch with popcorn: _still life with convicted felon_.

After a while he gathers up the energy to lie down on the cold floorboards instead.

 

*

It’s night time when Charles wakes up, sweltering under the blankets; he’s not sure at first what woke him, but then he hears a noise from the far end of the corridor, and thinks, oh. Okay.

He doesn’t bother sitting up, since he knows Erik will find him, and so he’s still lying down in his tangle of bedding when Erik comes into the bedroom and stops to stare at him, his eyes wide and gleaming in the near-dark.

“What’s this?” Erik asks, waving his hand at the pile of blankets layered high over Charles, one laid out under him to cushion him from the floor.

Charles had felt cold, earlier, so when he’d finally got up from the gallery tiles he’d gone into each of the bedrooms and taken all the pillows and blankets so that he could bring them back with him to sleep in his own room. But when he’d reached his bed he’d felt … the thought of getting into it alone was like a knife in his side, like all the air leaving his lungs at once and tearing the wound wider. Instead, he’d taken all the blankets and cushions and made a pile on the floor to crawl into, half-buried beneath them where he could sleep without memories plaguing him too badly.

Erik asked him what this was -- Charles answers honestly, “I don’t know,” and shrugs, curling into himself as a sense of shame runs over him from head to foot, clammy and awful.

A sigh, and then Erik moves closer, his sock feet quiet on the carpeted floor. He kneels down in the nest of blankets just next to Charles, hand resting a warm weight on Charles’ shoulder blade. For a moment he’s silent, just breathing, his thigh and hip brushing against Charles’ knees, and then at last he says, “Did you eat something for dinner?”

“I’m not hungry.”

Erik leans down to kiss Charles’ burning cheek, chest a light pressure against Charles’ arm and his hand moving down his back. “You have to eat,” he murmurs, breath damp against Charles’ ear as he tips his brow down against Charles’ head, skulls tipped together and the cold tip of Erik’s nose brushing Charles’ skin. Erik’s fingers twitch, curling against the fabric of Charles’ shirt. “Please eat something for me.”

It’s exhausting just to think of it, of having to get up and go downstairs and consume anything at all -- far easier just to stay here and be nothing and nobody, but … he can’t damn Erik along with him. “You’re not supposed to be here,” Charles says, and doesn’t move, even though he wants to be held -- wants, desperately, for Erik to keep him here, and grounded, not to let him float away. And yet. “If anyone knew we were here together alone … ”

“Ssh.” Erik kisses the crest of his ear, the corner of his jaw. “No one saw me come in.”

Charles closes his eyes, and then lifts his hand to touch the side of Erik’s face, his fingertips pressing lightly against Erik’s stubbled cheek -- he’s warm, and real, and Charles’ breath hitches, the urge to -- he doesn’t even know what he wants to do, he just wants -- something. To not feel this way any more. “I’m sorry,” he says. His empty stomach gives a sickening lurch, the thought of food both awful and enticing. “I did this. I’m sorry all this happened.”

“I know.”

Erik shifts again, this time to pull back the blankets and lie down next to Charles on the pile of pillows, his hand slipping into Charles’ hair and fingers dragging back along Charles’ scalp. One of his legs curls around Charles’, latching them together with Erik’s knee hitched up over Charles’ thigh.

“Look at me, Charles,” Erik says, orders him.

It shouldn’t make him feel this much better, just to have Erik’s hand in his hair, that possessive hold, the thing Erik does when he loves Charles the most. But it does, and Charles opens his eyes, swallowing down everything else so he can meet Erik’s gaze, be obedient, staying where Erik’s positioned him, warm and close.

“Good,” Erik tells him, and when he kisses him it feels inevitable, like it’s been on pause ever since the cell two days ago; Erik’s mouth is warm and wet and familiar, and Charles kisses him back, leans into it like a starving man, his arms coming to curl around Erik’s shoulders and pull him closer, until Charles can roll over onto his back and draw Erik down over him, hiding from the world from under Erik’s mantle, covered up by all the blankets in the remotest corner of their apartment, where he wishes nobody could ever find them.

Erik touches him gently, like he thinks Charles will fracture if he pushes too hard, and Charles pulls him down closer so he can feel the weight of Erik’s body blocking them in, pressing down on top of him as Erik sucks at Charles’ lower lip.

It’s too good, too personal, and after a second it’s too much, making Charles’ stomach clench up with anxiety. _Don’t,_ he thinks, and he breaks the kiss, drawing away a little, his breath coming faster for more than one reason. _We shouldn’t._

“What’s wrong?” Erik asks, his face still close and his gaze flicking between Charles’ eyes, tiny and barely-perceptible saccades.

“They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.” Charles lets his hands slip free of Erik’s body, falling to the pillow on either side of his head, like he’s being held at gunpoint. “I already -- haven’t I done you enough damage?” God, he’s so stupid. He should have -- he should send Erik away. Right now. “You should go home.”

“This _is_ home.” Erik reaches up to grasp Charles’ head between his hands, thumbs skimming over Charles’ cheeks and Erik looking at him with such concern it’s physically painful, like a knife through Charles’ heart. “I’m not going to pretend it was good for me, the way we first started sleeping together. You were right to end it. You _did_ end it. But this time it was my choice. A choice I’m able to make _because_ I know what you did was wrong. But I still want you, and I still love you. That hasn’t changed.”

“I love you,” Charles says, his throat feeling thick and swollen and his eyes prickling. “That’s why I want you to go. So I don’t drag you down with me. I’m not -- I’m not _well,_ Erik. And you -- you shouldn’t be stuck with trying to fix what can’t be fixed. I don’t want to be your -- your _Humpty Dumpty_.”

“You aren’t broken, Charles,” Erik says, a little sharply, and he kisses him again -- but on the cheek this time, close to the corner of his mouth. “You’re human, like anyone else. You think we all don’t make bad choices? The people who love you don’t abandon you when you do. And I won’t abandon you now.”

“Ha,” Charles says, voice breaking. “So you admit mutants are humans.”

Erik snorts, his mouth twisting into a strange sort of smile as he presses his brow down against Charles’, one of his hands slipping around to the back of Charles’ neck. “If I let you win this one, will you let me stay awhile?”

He shouldn’t. But … if damage has been done, it’s already been done. “Okay.” Charles closes his eyes, moving his hand to rest against Erik’s. “Okay.”

Erik kisses him, softly, chastely, and says, “I’ll take care of you,” his lips falling to Charles’ neck and grazing the skin over Charles’ jugular, Charles’ heart racing there where Erik must feel it. Charles takes a shaking breath in and tips his head back, exposing his throat even more; Erik makes a sound almost like a growl, and for a moment there are teeth digging into the arch of Charles’ throat, not hard enough even to mark him but enough to make him moan, body shifting underneath Erik’s, his heels pressing down into the duvet folded between him and the floor.

Erik’s hands reach down between their bodies, pressing his palm against Charles’ cock through his trousers, and somehow he ends up fully-dressed with Erik naked on top of him, Erik’s hand around Charles’ wrist guiding his fingers up and into his ass, Erik breathless and gasping against Charles’ neck as Charles strokes him inside, fingers curling and parting to stretch him open, the wet tightness of him arousing in a way that takes Charles completely out of his head until he can focus on just this moment, on the way Erik’s lips suck at his ear, the tip of his tongue and the shiver of his body when Charles rubs over his prostate, making him feel good.

By the time Erik sinks down on Charles’ cock, taking him deep inside and clenching around him, holding him inside his body, Charles is hot and trembling all over and he wraps his arms around Erik, pulling him down until he’s curled over Charles and they can kiss, mouth-to-mouth, Charles’ fingers digging into Erik’s back to keep him there.

“I love you,” Erik tells him when their lips part, the air humid with their mingling breaths as Erik rolls his hips over Charles’ cock, grinding down so Charles is completely buried inside him only to rock himself back again, the two of them moving together in an unremitting rhythm. His bare skin feels feverish beneath Charles’ palms, eyes glassy in the moonlight.

“I love you,” Charles says back, gasping as Erik squeezes around him, clamping tight and dragging Charles’ pleasure to the surface. “Ahhh … ”

He’s so tired that it all feels surreal, the pleasure of his cock sliding in and out of Erik’s body, the slick clench of Erik’s hole around him and Erik’s mouth on his, his hands on Charles’ chest, giving himself leverage; in the dim light Erik is golden and beautiful, and Charles can’t think, can only feel, lost in the physical sensation of being ridden.

He comes with a loud groan, shooting deep into Erik’s body, hips stuttering upwards to shove and pump himself into Erik’s ass; after, he urges Erik closer and sucks him off while Erik kneels over Charles’ face, hands braced on the wall as he rocks slowly in and out of Charles’ mouth, watching his cock slide in and out and become slick with saliva. When it’s all over, Charles swallowing down Erik’s come -- hiding the evidence -- he licks him clean, takes his time and doesn’t let Erik move away from where he’s sat over him, Charles below him, between his legs, where he feels most submissive.

Erik reaches down after a while to comb his fingers through Charles’ damp hair, thumb grazing Charles’ temple, and he says, “Wait for me, Charles. Just two more months.”

“Then what?” Charles asks hoarsely, turning his head into the touch, his cheek coming to rest against the inside of Erik’s knee. “What happens then that makes any real difference? They’ll still know. I’ll either be in jail or an outcast, still. Your age doesn’t change that.”

“I’ll come home. I’ll live with you, here. And if you can’t resume your practice then you can move with me when I go to college -- we won’t have to be apart.” He braces one hand against Charles’ shoulder, holding himself there with his weight resting back on Charles’ chest. “People will forget, eventually.”

Charles doesn’t think they will, not something like this. And not something so public. But if that’s what Erik needs to believe … he can give him that, at least. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and he means it. At least for now.

They’re quiet for a while longer, just sitting there together, but eventually Erik draws back, climbing off of Charles to pull back on his clothes, a dark silhouette against the open bedroom door. “Come on,” he says when he’s finished, his belt buckling itself as he leans down and offers Charles a hand. “Downstairs with me. I’ll make you something.”

Charles tucks himself back into his pajama bottoms and follows. His hand is folded into Erik’s as they go back downstairs in the dim apartment, the lights only turned on low so that nobody can see in, from another building or from the air, if they have the right equipment -- or the right mutation. His jacket isn’t on the floor of the gallery any more, Erik must have put it away. In the kitchen Charles waits until Erik has taken out the things he needs from the fridge and then goes to sit by his feet, the cold of the linoleum seeping through his thin pants.

Erik rests his hand against the top of Charles’ head from time to time, stroking his hair, as he moves about the kitchen, chopping and frying and stirring. He makes a large pot of potato leek soup for Charles, but there’s bread dough rising in a bowl on the counter and two casseroles baking in the oven for Charles to eat later in the week by the time Erik gestures for Charles to move and kneel down by the kitchen table instead.

Once Charles has settled down Erik feeds him by hand, the bowl of soup balanced on his knee as he slips the spoon into Charles’ mouth, and it’s simple, easy, to fall into shallow subspace, where everything is calm and quiet, and the only thing Charles has to think about is letting Erik take care of him, and doing as he’s told. He opens and swallows, opens and swallows until the soup is gone, and when Erik sets the bowl aside Charles leans his head against Erik’s thigh and sighs, drowsy and contented for the first time in a long time.

It’s nearly morning before Erik leaves, but before going he makes sure Charles gets back in his proper bed, draping the blankets over him and setting the alarm on Charles’ bedside table for eleven. “I don’t want you sleeping all day,” Erik tells him firmly as he plugs Charles’ cell phone in to charge. “Text me when you wake up and let me know how you’re feeling.”

“Yes, Erik,” Charles says, curling onto his side and looking up at him, blinking slowly. “Don’t be seen. It would be bad.”

Erik leans down and kisses him on the forehead. “I won’t be. Now. Get some sleep.”

Charles closes his eyes, leaning into the weight of Erik’s hip where he’s sitting on the edge of the bed. It only seems like a moment and yet the next thing he knows it’s morning and Erik is gone.

*


	48. Forty-eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With immense fangirling and thanks to [bourbonss](http://bourbonss.tumblr.com) for the art in this chapter!

_Erik_

It’s still dark when Erik leaves the apartment. He goes the way he came, by way of the roof, jumping over to the neighboring building and letting himself inside to take their elevator down to the ground floor. There are white media vans parked outside in the valet area, windows dark, but no one so much as lifts an iPhone as Erik starts heading in the opposite direction, passing through the shadows and the soft pools of light from the streetlamps, toward the subway. Presumably they’re still sleeping, like Charles upstairs in their apartment, the world -- at least temporarily -- blotted away.

At five AM, only a few people are already up and at work, or starting their commute. Most of them don’t notice him at all, too exhausted, with dark circles under their eyes, to pay attention to a teenager dressed all in black with his nose buried in a book. That lasts until midtown, when Erik feels the characteristic digital click of a phone camera go off and looks up from _A Clockwork Orange_ to see a college-aged Dom on the other side of the train faking interest in his phone screen, tapping at it like he’s sending a text.

Normally, Erik would let it go, let the photo surface on twitter or instagram or wherever it goes, but this time his tiredness and frustration pushes him to get up and cross past the doors to hold onto the pole next to the guy’s seat.

“Did you just take a photo of me?” he asks, grip tightening on the pole.

“What?” the guy asks, looking up at Erik with eyes just a little too wide. “No, man, who do you think you are?”

Erik glances down at his phone and sends little taps of static electricity at the screen, pulling up the photo app. True to suspicion, there’s a picture of him sitting there with his head tilted down toward his book, looking far less tired and ill than he feels.

“What were you planning to do with this?” He puts a bit of Command behind it, not a lot, but enough for a Dom to feel it, and the guy twitches, glancing down at the screen then back up, guilty and annoyed both.

“Look, I was just gonna show it to my girl, say I spotted you on the subway today,” the guy says, shoulders setting defensively, his mouth tight. “Not like it’s worth anything, picture of some dick reading a nerdy book.”

“Don’t,” Erik says, and with another burst of static he erases the photo. It won’t take it off the guy’s Recently Deleted album, but Erik can’t be bothered to stay on the train after it’s pulled into his station -- he gets off as soon as the doors open, his footsteps echoing off the ceiling, audible when it’s this early and so relatively empty.

His entire body feels heavy and hard to move, but it’s too late, he decides, to bother about trying to get sleep -- he has to be at school in a few hours so instead he just drops by one of the Village’s hundreds of independent coffee shops and gets a dark roast, bringing it with him as he returns to Hank and Raven’s apartment, sipping gingerly at the hot brew as he takes the elevator up.

Erik uses his power to turn the knob of the front door, slipping the lock and stepping softly into the living room. The lights are still off, which bodes well for secrecy -- though he can excuse it if someone’s up, can say he couldn’t sleep. No one would be surprised. Erik toes his shoes off by the door and heads for the hall, only to notice the kitchen is very gently illuminated, and when he listens he can hear the quiet sounds of someone moving around in there.

He glances in as he walks past, and sees Hank stood at the sink, looking out the window at the sun rising; he turns and looks behind himself, a mug of tea in his hand, pausing and frowning at Erik. “Where have you been this early?” he asks.

“Coffee,” Erik says, holding up the cup in his hand only to take another small sip, watching Hank over the rim of his lid. “I couldn’t sleep.”

He doubts he’d have slept well even if he’d stayed here all night -- he certainly didn’t when Charles was in police custody.

Hank doesn’t look appeased, though; if anything he looks more concerned, turning fully to face Erik. “We have a coffeemaker,” he says, glancing Erik up and down, before his nostrils flare and he just -- stops, dead, staring at Erik with eyes growing wide through his glasses before he lifts his cup back to his lips with a hand that’s not entirely steady.

 _Shit._ Fuck. Fucking -- _Christ_ , Erik didn’t even think about … Hank’s sense of smell, his mutation, he _knows_ , even from all the way over there, he knows. Horror drops like a rock into the pit of Erik’s stomach and he can tell he’s gone pale, feels the chill on his cheeks as his hand tightens around his coffee, short nails scratching at the cardboard sleeve.

Erik takes in a shallow breath, the back of his throat dry, and says, “Please don’t tell Raven.”

“Tell her what?” Hank asks, looking down into his tea, not even able to look Erik in the face. “It’s … it’s none of my business, Erik. Though -- if you have to ask someone not to tell on you, usually that means you shouldn’t have done whatever it was you did.”

Erik glances down the hall at Raven’s darkened bedroom door and then steps closer, into the kitchen properly so he can lower his voice and not risk being overheard. “I had to check on him,” he says, holding onto the edge of the countertop with his free hand. “You didn’t see him -- he was…. Someone needs to check on him.”

Hank’s fingers clench on the cup, but he still doesn’t look up. “If anyone saw you there Charles would be in much worse trouble,” he says, his tone almost aggressively neutral, striving so hard not to be confrontational. “Especially if you got caught being -- well -- carrying his DNA.” Hank sounds so embarrassed to say it, like he can’t believe he has to; he sets his cup down on the counter and stands up, his full height countered only a little by his habitual stoop, still taller than Erik. “It’s none of my business. I don’t want to know about any of this.”

This entire matter, Erik thinks, is a painful exercise in being reminded of the differences between the values Erik grew up with and those the rest of the world holds dear.

“All right,” Erik says, clutching his coffee like it’s the one thing keeping him grounded. “Well -- good.”

He makes himself turn around and go straight back to his room, grabbing a change of clothes before he heads into the bathroom and fills the tub. Once he’s in the water, though, surrounded by heat and steam with all the evidence slowly washing away, it’s hard to make himself want to get out. He stays even after he hears the sound of Raven’s alarm, her footsteps moving around her room and then out into the main apartment. When there’s the low rumble of Hank’s voice, and her response, Erik slips down beneath the surface of the water and pretends he can’t hear anything at all.

After a while, though, there’s a knock at the door, a quick rap of knuckles Erik knows isn’t Hank. “Come on, Erik. We need to talk and you need to get out before you turn into a prune.”

“Five minutes,” he says, and only after he hears her retreating footsteps does he emerge from the tub, water splashing up against the ceramic sides and making his skin feel cold in the spring air. He dries off and dresses quickly, brushing his teeth at the sink and using a comb to fix his hair as best he can when it’s soaking wet.

When he goes back out into the apartment Raven is waiting for him, standing with arms crossed and an exasperated expression on her face, still in her dressing gown, the fluffy fabric bundled around her slim frame. “You dumb fuck,” she says, her mouth a flat line. “Do you even realize how stupid you are?”

“I don’t really want to hear about it,” Erik tells her, feeling far more exhausted now than he was even a minute ago, the weight of a night without sleep crashing down on his shoulders all at once. He turns and heads into his bedroom, grabbing his satchel off the floor and propping it up in the desk chair, collecting his homework from where it’s still spread out from last night and stuffing it into one of his folders.

Raven follows, of course, stalking after him on light feet. “If you were seen,” she says, “Charles would go to prison for sure. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Do you get that, Erik? Bad enough that all of this shit happened, bad enough that he’s getting what the law says he deserves for it. But now you’re going over there trying to make it worse? I thought you cared about what happens to him, but you’re acting like a dumb kid, as if what you do doesn’t matter. But it does. And Charles is the one who’ll pay for it.”

The papers aren’t in order -- Erik opens the folder again and stacks them properly, pushing in all the angled pages and knocking them against the desk to get them even. “No one saw me. No one’s ever going to know about it if you don’t tell them, but I couldn’t just leave him like that.” He puts the pages back in his folder and flips the cover shut, not looking at her. “I had to make sure he didn’t go home just to hang himself from the rafters in the coat closet. Forgive me for giving a shit -- you just _left_ him there yesterday. You didn’t even make sure he was all right.”

“Erik … ” Raven trails off, leaning against the doorframe, her breath coming out in a sigh. She shoves her hair back with one hand, the movement large enough Erik flinches, catching it from the corner of his eye. “You’re right, I didn’t go in yesterday, because I’m still pretty pissed with him over all of this. I was, however, going to go over there today. It doesn’t matter if I visit him, I’m his sister and an adult, and not the subject of the case against him. But if you going there was stupid, having sex with him was even stupider. What the hell were you thinking? Last time we talked about it, you told me you didn’t even want to have sex with him!”

“It’s complicated,” Erik says, sliding the folder into his bag and finally straightening up to look at her properly, grasping the back of the chair with both hands, smooth wood pressing into his palms. He doesn’t want to look her in the eye, some still-startled part of him wanting to get down on his knees and plead that he’ll be good so long as she doesn’t hurt him. “I didn’t want it when I was sixteen, but things have changed since then. I’m _angry_ with him for taking advantage. But I’m also in a real relationship with him now, one I’m consenting to.”

“You realize how fucked up that sounds?” She looks at him with a strange expression, one he’s not sure how to read. “Apart from the fact you can’t consent, being a minor, you can’t just -- ugh, I hate wording it like this, but -- this isn’t a Harlequin romance, Erik, you can’t just fall in love with your rapist and have everything be fine! It doesn’t work like that.”

Heat floods his cheeks, sickness clawing up from his gut. “He didn’t _rape_ me,” Erik snaps, sharp enough it nearly counts as Command.

“If you don’t want to have sex with someone, but they give you no other choice, that is rape,” Raven says, her hands in fists where she has her arms folded across her chest. “Don’t try and play semantics to get around it, Erik.”

“Oh? Well I put him in subspace the first time it ever happened. So I suppose, now that it comes to it, I raped him right back.”

“You -- ” For once, Raven is speechless, but she recovers after a moment, taking a deep breath before she says, “What do you want me to say, Erik? That it’s okay, because you’re both as bad as each other? You’re not. He put you in that position in the first place, where you felt your only choice was to let him fuck you so you wouldn’t lose him. And then he let you keep doing it. Charles is not a good person, and I love him because he’s my brother, and I want to hate you for putting me in this position, having to hate him, but the fact is this is Charles’ fault. He should have been better. He failed.”

It hurts Erik somewhere in the deepest part of him, behind his sternum and drilling back toward his spine, to hear Raven talk about Charles like this. Knowing she’s probably right doesn’t make a difference -- he wants to close his ears and think instead about everything he loves about Charles, his soft smiles when he thinks Erik isn’t looking, his stupid lines in bed, the way he feels with Erik’s arms wrapped around him and Charles’ head tucked against his chest.

Maybe Charles failed in what he was supposed to do, but he must not have failed in everything or Erik wouldn’t love him like this, so much and so fully that sometimes it feels like it might consume him.

“You shouldn’t hate him,” he tells Raven even as he knows she doesn’t have to listen to him, and probably won’t. “I wasn’t an easy child to have around.”

“Difficult children get sent to their room, or grounded,” she says, sounding tired. “Not buggered.”

The wrongness of all this sits uneasily in Erik’s stomach, and he can’t help thinking she’s talking about Charles the way Charles used to talk to him about Shaw -- and as much as Erik resents Charles for how things used to be they aren’t at all the same.

He flips the cover of his satchel over and buckles it down, just to have something to do with his hands.

“You’re entitled to feel how you feel,” he says, his fingers clumsier on the buckles than his power would be. “I understand it. And you’re probably right. But it doesn’t change how I feel about him, or the fact that I’m going to go back to him when I’m eighteen. I had to decide if I loved or hated him too, you know, and I made my choice.”

“I can’t stop you,” Raven says, and she shrugs, pushing up the sleeves of her bathrobe to the elbows, then tucking her hands just inside, holding on. “But I don’t think it’s healthy. For either of you. No matter what, I love Charles, and I love you, too, dipshit. I don’t want to see the pair of you making each other worse.”

Erik’s never felt worse with Charles. Maybe he’s not the person he could have been, if he and Charles hadn’t slept together, but they did -- and now Erik can’t imagine a life without him. He has to believe they can make each other better if they don’t have the law hanging between them.

He slings his satchel up over his shoulder and meets Raven’s gaze again. “I have to get to school. I made Charles enough dinners to last a week while I was over there. Make sure you put the bread dough in the oven and get him to do the dishes.”

At this Raven snorts, stepping back towards the doorway. “If he doesn’t do them when he’s not in the middle of being prosecuted into an early grave, I don’t think he’s likely to do them now. But I’ll tell him.” She glances back at Erik, then turns and comes over to drag his head down and plant a kiss on his forehead, quick and brusque. “School is going to be brutal, I know. But don’t let the bastards see you bleed, okay?”

Erik turns up one corner of his mouth and says, “Never.”

 

*

It’s a promise he knows he can keep, but that doesn’t do much for the antsiness that starts building in his stomach from the time he gets on the train, getting worse the further they get uptown and finally graduating into a full-fledged nausea once he’s stepping out at street-level. He senses the reporters’ cameras long before he gets to his school, the lot of them gathered out on the sidewalk and mostly-ignoring the efforts of the administrative people trying to convince them to move across the street.

They notice him sooner rather than later: sharks scenting blood in the water and swarming around him, shouting his name, waving microphones in his face as if they’re trying to catch the sound of his breathing; one woman gets right along next to him and asks, as if it were no big deal, “How do you feel about being embroiled in two such similar cases, Erik -- did Shaw’s evil infect your new father?”

“I think you’ll find,” Erik tells her, the words _no comment_ dead in his lungs, “the cases have startlingly little in common.”

She looks delighted that he’s said anything at all -- her eyes light up, and she says, a little breathlessly, “Can you tell me a little more about what you mean? What’s the real difference between Sebastian Shaw and Charles Xavier?”

“One of them raped me and the other one is Charles Xavier. Excuse me,” and Erik climbs up the front steps of the school, going where they can’t follow even if their shouts trail him all the way into the foyer, audible long after the doors shut behind him.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, apparently -- from the looks he gets the moment he steps inside he very nearly wants to turn around and go back for more Q&A. Pity, fascination, suspicion…. It might as well be written in ink on their faces. Fine. Erik’s used to it. This is no worse than the looks he got when they found out he was Hellfire, the sickening sycophantism and quieter bigotry. Even the teachers can’t control their expressions enough to pretend they’re not thinking it, a strange blend of sympathy and revulsion in all their expressions.

Madelyne is at her locker getting out her books when Erik reaches his own, and she looks up immediately, hip-checking it closed and coming over to stand beside him, alternately glancing at Erik and glaring at passersby. “Hey,” she says, giving Oliver from AP Economics the stink-eye.

“Careful,” Erik says, “it might be contagious,” laying on the sarcasm thick as he transfers half his books into his locker and pulls out a few fresh pens.

“What, being rich and studly? I’ll take it,” she says. She reaches into Erik’s hand to pluck a pen from his grasp then actually _throws it at someone_ , shouting, “Go stare at someone else, asshole!”

“I needed that,” Erik says, gazing after the pen’s trajectory a bit forlornly, but its metal spring is already lost in the swarm of fifty others just like it. Madelyne just says, “I’ll give you mine,” and wraps her hand around his elbow, tight, like she’s afraid he’ll disappear if she doesn’t hold on.

She looks up at him properly, finally, her mouth set in a moue of unhappiness. “I hate the way they all act like it’s their business,” she says, tilting her head against his upper arm for a moment. “I’m sorry if I’m making it worse.”

“Well, I’m sorry I stole your future husband. I know you were pining for him.” Erik makes himself give her a small grin, having decided somewhere between 79th and 86th that the best defense against high school drama is good hair and a devil-may-care attitude. He refuses to slump morosely around the school bleeding angst to fuel the rumor mill, even if that’s exactly what he feels like doing.

But instead of laughing Madelyne says, “Eww,” and lets go of his arm to punch Erik in the side, not hard but pointed nonetheless. “That’s not funny, I didn’t know he was creeping on you!”

Erik had explained the situation to her to the best of his ability when she came over to Raven’s, but a healthy appreciation for the taboo and illicit is not something Madelyne and Frank have ever had in common. A part of Erik had worried she might not speak to him again, considering this was yet another secret he’d kept from her -- though maybe that just hasn’t occurred to her yet.

“We have to get to class,” he says by way of response, catching the back of her elbow to guide her down the hall, keeping his gaze straight ahead instead of meeting the looks of the students who keep looking over their shoulders at him, even stopping dead mid-corridor to stare.

“Dude, I -- ” some kid starts to say, but Madelyne gives him such a death glare that he shuts up until they’re already past, stunned into silence.

“You have to let other people talk to me eventually,” Erik tells her.

“Not if they’re stupid people,” she says, and Erik is suddenly, intensely grateful for her, for the way she steps up to defend him even though she thinks he’s nuts for trying to defend Charles; Madelyne might be human, and a sub, but she’s fiercer than half the Hellfire club.

When they get into the classroom Mr Jenkins gives Erik a sorrowful look, then gestures for the class to be quiet and says, “I know there’s a lot to talk about today in light of the news, but I think it would be kinder of us to leave it alone, so anyone gossiping about it or being a nuisance is getting detention. Is that understood?”

Because _that_ helps, Erik thinks acidly, but he takes his seat all the same, pulling his laptop out of his bag and opening it on his desk. The first thing that pops up, of course, is information on the penalties for Charles’ charges from the site Erik was reading last night -- he tabs away quickly, but probably not quickly enough; heat burns at the nape of his neck.

Though the subject matter is boring as hell, Erik manages to stay more keenly focused on the lecture, today, than he has in recent memory -- he doesn’t dare check his social media accounts or his email, acutely aware of the eyes behind him watching his screen, watching him. Skype pops up an alert midway through, Frank sending an instant message, but Erik ignores even that.

Fuck high school, he thinks, typing down notes on short-run aggregate supply. Fuck being stuck in this building for half the day, until he can escape to his afternoon CS seminar at Columbia where no one knows him well enough to think they have anything to say to him, where he can very nearly be just another face in the crowd. He wishes this lecture would draw on endlessly, loop and reloop until long past lunch, but eventually the bell does ring and Erik reluctantly packs his macbook away, getting to his feet amidst the rabble of all the other students so excited for their seven minute break.

“Come on,” Madelyne says, coming to stand next to his desk, her folder clutched against her chest. “Let’s go. We can ping paperclips at everyone who even opens their mouths -- I’ll give you points if you get them inside without using your powers.”

Remarkably, Erik makes it all the way until lunch before someone says anything to him about it -- a few comments from teachers, useless platitudes mostly, and the unending stares -- but Madelyne serves as a strong deterrent, and she’s waiting for him outside all three of his morning classes without fail.

At lunch, though, Madelyne lines up for the salad bar and Erik finds himself fiddling with his phone waiting for his pad thai to be finished, checking and rechecking his email -- each time there’s something new there, mostly from news agencies and people offering to be Charles’ lawyer, as if he didn’t have one already.

“Erik? Hey, Erik.”

When he looks up there’s a couple of kids he recognises from his Chinese class standing awkwardly by the counter, waiting to pay for their own lunches; the one who spoke is a short, plump girl, who swallows nervously and says, “I’m sorry for, y’know, all that stuff happening.”

He’s briefly inclined to say something cutting, but the look of anxiety on her face stops him. She’s probably a sub, probably afraid of him because he’s ex-Hellfire and 7D, but the unusual color of her eyes suggests that she’s a mutant and mutants look out for their own.

“The media have blown this out of proportion,” Erik says instead, keeping his phone in his hand.

“Oh, I … I’m sure,” she says, looking down at the change clutched in her palm. “Um.”

“Come off it, Jenna,” her friend says quietly, in a way that’s just loud enough to be heard but just hushed enough to imply Erik’s not intended to overhear it, if anyone takes offense. “Everyone knows he’s not picky.”

Erik lifts a brow at his phone’s screen but elects not to say anything to that, taking the excuse to escape as soon as his food’s done, grabbing the bowl and carrying it over to his usual table with Evan and Petra. They both look at him, clearly debating saying something before Erik says, “Do either of you have the notes from last week’s English? I missed Friday.”

“I do,” Petra says, and gives him a quick smile before turning back to her own food.

“Okay, seriously, though,” Evan says suddenly, putting his fork down. “Are we not going to talk about this? Because, like, I’ll not talk about it if you don’t want to talk about it, but I can’t guess if I’m supposed to talk to you about it or not, and it’s driving me mad. Not to make it all about me or anything, but a bit of guidance would be welcome.”

Erik lets out a sharp breath and looks up from his noodles, chopsticks still stabbed down into the bowl. Evan’s looking at him expectantly, both brows raised, and Erik shouldn’t feel irritated but he does, anyway.

“Just because it’s on the news,” he says, “doesn’t make it not my personal life. Unless you want to tell us all about how _your_ last fuck went, I suggest we leave it alone.”

“Condom split,” Evan says, without even pausing. “Spooge went everywhere. It was pretty gross, and she punched me because apparently it’s my fault. And then she made me pay for the morning after pill. It totally sucked, definitely not worth it.”

Erik should have known Evan would call his bluff; he’s been having lunch with him for almost five years now.

"Fine. What do you want to know?"

“Whether we’re talking about it or not, like I said,” Evan says, casting his hands in the air. “Like, I’m not asking for the nitty-gritty, just whether we’re avoiding it or not! It’s awkward trying to work out if it’s rude not to say anything, and how we feel about it and shit. Like, are we angry or sad and do we hate your Dad or not and whatever.”

 _He’s not my_ fucking _father._ “We adore Charles and we hope it all blows over so he doesn’t have his life ruined by the vultures at fucking Buzzfeed. If we can all be on the same page about that, great.”

“Okay,” Evan says, and shrugs. “That’s all I wanted to know.”

Petra snorts, and covers her mouth with the back of her hand to keep from spitting out her food; after a moment Evan jerks and says, “What was that for?”

“Being an idiot,” she says, and takes another bite of her sandwich.

Even with his friends’ relative support, though, it’s not easy getting through the rest of the day. Erik’s relieved when he finally gets to leave and head uptown to Columbia’s campus -- or, he is until he realizes the reporters have much greater license to follow him around when there are no walls to keep them out. It’s not worth fighting the media just to get to his lecture hall, so Erik gives up and takes a cab back to Raven’s. She’s out -- presumably, hopefully, with Charles, and Hank is at work, so Erik has the entire apartment to himself for hours. He spends those hours with his phone hooked up to his computer, trying to chase down the person who hacked it.

He can’t figure out how they accessed the phone -- it looks like it happened after Erik himself unlocked the Touch ID -- but he can see the path the images took, forwarded off to a domain Erik’s never heard of before, one he can’t crack even after several hours sitting there with his laptop and favorite toolkits. Whoever did this is good: the domain is registered in Sweden, which could mean anything, and the IPs that access it are worthless, routed through Tor and untraceable, at least with Erik’s abilities. Maybe not for the NSA, but Erik doubts they’re keen on helping out an ex-terrorist.

So he ends up forwarding everything he has to swineherd and giving up for now, unplugging his phone and going to lie down on his bed, staring at the photo that incriminated Charles and thinking he’d do just about anything, now, to never have taken it in the first place.

 

*

_Charles_

The next few days pass in slow-motion, like watching an old film through a vaseline-smudged lens, everything soft around the edges and blurring together, shapeless and timeless.

Charles wakes up and showers and eats when the alarm on his phone tells him to, something he set to remind himself to do it; as long as he takes care of himself Erik won’t risk coming over again, which will be safer for him than sneaking in in the night to try and look after Charles. It’s exhausting, keeping to a schedule, but it’s better than simply sitting in his armchair all day trying to read, the words blending into meaningless drivel, or the endless desire to sleep through it all, to lay down like Sleeping Beauty and wait for it all to be over.

Raven comes over a couple of times, not that she stays long. The first time she shouts at him -- clearly she knows Erik was there the night before -- but the second time she makes him come and sit with her on the couch, and she puts her arm around his shoulders and they watch a film together in the quiet dark, though if pressed Charles couldn’t now say what film it was.

He stops texting Erik when it occurs to him that still being in touch might make things worse if the police look at his cell history, and after that things are even more disconnected than they were before.

Of course, stopping himself from texting Erik is the best way to ensure that Erik calls him, instead.

“What are you doing, Charles?” is the first thing out of Erik’s mouth, his tone just as demanding over distance as it is face-to-face.

He’s sitting on the floor in the laundry room watching the clothes in the washing machine spin, but Erik doesn’t need to know that. “Not much,” Charles says, tucking his knees up to his chest and resting his arm across them, leaning back against the wall. “You shouldn’t be calling, Erik.”

“Is talking on the phone illegal now?” He hears the rustle of papers -- maybe Erik’s homework, maybe a book. “I want to know how you are. You haven’t texted me in days. Are you eating?”

“Not right this moment.”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“About an hour ago,” Charles says with a sigh, giving in, and tips his head back, too, the cool plaster chill against his crown. “I had macaroni and cheese and the last of the salad greens. And a glass of tapwater. I’m eating, Erik.” Pathetic, to need someone to chase up after him to make sure he’s fulfilling his basic bodily needs, he thinks, listening to the clunk of the washing machine as it goes into a spin cycle. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Erik says, but his voice is a bit gentler now, a soft creak audible -- Erik tilting back in his chair, or perhaps climbing onto Raven’s guest bed. “I’m doing all right. I keep -- expecting you to be here.”

He doesn’t say, _in bed_ , but Charles hears it all the same.

“That’s normal,” Charles says, closing his eyes. “There’s not been many days we haven’t seen each other ever since I first met you, excluding the time you spent with Raven last year.” At the time they had seemed like the longest days of his life, but at least then he had his work to distract himself with. Now, Charles has nothing, and he feels it ache inside his chest, a sullen throb he can’t shake, just at the thought of living like this forever -- hiding in the apartment away from the world and its new knowledge of his transgressions, unable to commit his attention to anything that might actually distract him.

Still, he has to be strong for Erik’s sake, so he makes himself continue, “How have things been at school?”

“People need to learn to mind their own business,” Erik says, disgruntled, but then, “I’m going to be valedictorian. It’s official now. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Congratulations,” Charles says. He even manages a real smile, sitting up and wishing -- wishing he could reach out and hug Erik, show him just how proud he is, his heart fit to burst. Wishes he could feel it without knowing how disturbing it is, to celebrate one’s lover succeeding in high school. “That’s wonderful news, Erik. I’m so proud of you. Especially given how far you’ve come -- it’s a great achievement, I hope you’re excited.”

“Mmm.” Erik doesn’t sound excited, but with everything else going on, Charles knows better than anyone how otherwise significant events start to seem like ephemera. “You were valedictorian, too, weren’t you? Maybe I can plagiarize your speech.”

Charles lets out a little huff of amusement. “If you like, but I’ll warn you, it was very trite. I was not a good writer at sixteen. Mostly I was just happy to be leaving home.”

“Well, what else would I do? They told me to write from my experiences, but no one else here has my experiences, not anything close. I can’t tell them the whole world is their oyster, that they can be anything they want to be, because they can’t. By the time you’re eighteen the world has decided your life for you already, and good luck getting off that track.”

“That’s not true,” Charles says, and this, at least, he knows how to answer. He folds his legs tailor-fashion and settles himself, resting his elbow on his knee, before continuing, “A lot of things are giving you directions at this point in life, it’s true, and in terms of character most of that is set, you’re quite right. But there are always choices to be made, and there are always different roads you can take to get to different places, away from where you feel fate is dragging you. Just going to college, for instance, opens up a world of possibilities depending on what course you choose. Or something can happen that changes things entirely. An opportunity. An accident. A twist of fate. Nothing is set in stone, Erik. Not at your age, anyway.”

A long pause, then Erik says, quietly, “You really think either of us can ever come back from this?”

The answer to that … Charles doesn’t sigh, keeping his voice steady as he says, “I think you can, Erik. It’ll be unpleasant for a long time, I won’t lie to you about that. But you’re strong, and inspiring, and charismatic. This won’t keep you down.” Not, at least, so long as Charles doesn’t let himself drag Erik down with him.

Erik must notice how Charles leaves himself out of the equation because he doesn’t speak for a very long time, the silence so complete on his end of the phone that Charles finds himself checking the screen just to make sure he hasn’t accidentally hung up on him.

“I’d better go,” Erik says eventually, that creaking noise sounding again, Erik shifting on his bed. “Hank might need help with dinner.”

“All right,” Charles says. He feels tired again already, the reminder that Erik isn’t here, that he lives somewhere else now, making him feel very old and alone. “Congratulations again, Erik. You deserve it; you’ve worked so hard.”

“Thanks,” Erik says quietly, and hangs up.

Once he’s gone Charles lets the phone fall into his lap and sits for a while longer, thinking about Erik as valedictorian, revelling in it, before the washing machine beeps and it’s time to move the laundry over to the dryer.

 

*

The next day Charles gets a call from Geoff, asking it he can come to the apartment to discuss the case; Charles really has nothing better to do, so he tidies up a little, puts on real clothes, and doesn’t let himself feel anxious about it until he can feel Geoff coming up in the elevator. It’s not … Charles knows Geoff is being paid very well to be on his side. But still, he can’t help but feel that he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When he finally opens the door and lets Geoff inside it feels like a risk, like allowing the external forces that hate him now a glimpse into the apartment, and so Charles shuts the door as quickly as he can after Geoff has come inside. “Thank you for agreeing to come here,” he says politely, extending his hand to Geoff to shake. “I’m a bit leery of public appearances right now.”

“That’s understandable,” Geoff says, following Charles into the parlor where Charles has poured them each glasses of water and put out a bowl of frozen grapes -- the only fruit he had on hand. “I will say, though, that you probably aren’t doing yourself any favors hiding like this. Innocent people don’t hide.”

“Most innocent people don’t have to hear what people are thinking about them,” Charles says. He takes a seat in one of the crisp white armchairs, folding his hands in his lap -- they’re his, they’ve been his for years, and yet he still frets at the thought of getting so much as a smudge on the pristine fabric, as if his mother might just step out of the wallpaper to punish him for it at any moment. “I just … it’s awful. Especially knowing that they’re not wrong.”

Geoff makes a sound of understanding. “Be that as it may, I still suggest getting out and letting yourself be seen. We want the public to think you’re above it all. That even if you _were_ with Mr Lehnsherr, that it was not in a shameful context.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Charles says, knowing full well that he won’t follow through, no matter how well he understands Geoff’s point, and agrees with it, to an extent. It’s one thing to go out if he has something to do or somewhere to go; but right now he’s not competent to be working, he’s responsible enough to know that, and everything else seems inconsequential. Not worth the pain of going out and confronting the world at large.

He reaches over for his glass of water and picks it up to take a sip, closing his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts. When he opens them again it’s easier to ask, “Is there anything in particular we need to discuss today?”

“I think we should discuss your expectations regarding the outcome of the trial,” Geoff says, settling more fully into his chair and crossing his legs at the knee. “What are you anticipating will happen? What do you hope will happen? And, finally, what kind of outcome would you be reasonably willing to live with?”

Those are difficult questions to answer. Charles puts his glass back down on the table and folds his hands together in his lap, tangling his fingers together. “I think I will probably go to prison,” he says finally, numbly, feeling rather lightheaded at the thought of it. “I hope -- I hope that doesn’t happen. But mostly I want Erik to come out of this well, not to be tainted by it all any more than he already has been. As to what I could live with … my expectations, as you can probably tell, are fairly low. Anything that mitigates those outcomes would be … I could live with a lot, to be quite honest.”

Geoff makes a note on his pad, the movement of his fountain pen against the paper inaudible. “Are you dedicated to maintaining your innocence throughout a full trial, or are you willing to plead guilty to lesser charges? I would strongly encourage you to consider a plea bargain if the DA can be persuaded to cooperate.”

Given that Charles is far from innocent, he can’t help but feel that insisting on a full pardon would be rubbing salt into a wound already aggravated by his lying to the police about it. “What would a plea bargain entail?”

“That would depend on the DA and the judge who decides sentencing. Right now the DA’s pushing for Truman, who’s very hard on sex crimes -- we want Harrison, and I’ll fight to see we get him. He’s keen on rehabilitation.” Geoff picks up his glass of water and finally takes a sip. “So. You can imagine pleading guilty to indecent liberties or third degree sexual abuse without the ‘aggravated’ and getting ten years with parole in five. Or, best case scenario, just one charge and you can accept probation and sex offender registration. A lot of this will depend on what comes up in discovery, though the good news is, so far the answer’s ‘not much.’ We’ve got the photos, the blog, and of course Lehnsherr’s testimony, but that’s not necessarily going to convince a jury beyond reasonable doubt.”

The idea of pleading guilty, publicly, to any of it is enough to turn Charles’ stomach, but then he can’t help but think -- these are all things I did. Regardless of Erik’s involvement, I committed these acts. I don’t get to be churlish about them now. Five to ten years in prison, five to ten years wearing the suppressor … Charles isn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t rather take the death penalty and have it over with.

“Erik won’t testify,” he says, sure on that front at least. “He hates the justice system, and he wouldn’t want to make things worse.”

Geoff puts down his glass with a soft clink. “I’m afraid he won’t have a choice,” he says, not unkindly. “The DA convinced a judge to issue a subpoena requiring him to testify. He could lie, but if he’s caught, he’ll be arrested for perjury.”

“Oh.” Charles’ fingers clench around one another, knuckles pinched and bloodless as he closes his eyes, unable to hide the way that shakes him, like being unmoored. “I see.” In which case … as many times as Erik has protested lately that he loves Charles, will stay with him no matter what, when confronted with the choice between lying and telling the truth when compelled to do so, Charles suspects he knows what Erik will do. Erik has, after all, spent much of the past six months unhappy and, sometimes, resentful, of Charles and their relationship.

Charles couldn’t blame him for it, either. It’s no less than Charles deserves.

“Look,” Geoff says, clearly seeing the despair on Charles’ face, “it’s not all bad news. You don’t have a criminal record, you’re a pillar of the community, you have a political agenda that most people approve of, and the fact of the matter is there are plenty of people on the far right who still only see Lehnsherr as a terrorist who was clever enough to cry ‘rape’ when he got caught. I fully expect we can get probation and sex offender registry, no jail time. Maybe we can even get you down to a misdemeanor charge, though I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.”

A pillar of the community, Charles thinks. And that’s a good enough reason to let him off molesting his teenage ward.

“All right,” he says finally, opening his eyes and looking up at Geoff, trying to be calm, to be an adult about this. “What do you need me to do?”

“Think it over,” Geoff says, getting to his feet and tugging at the front of his immaculate jacket, doing up the second button. “I’ll talk to the DA about possible plea bargains, and I’ll talk to Lehnsherr, see if we can’t convince him to help us make him look like an unreliable witness to the prosecution. We should be able to have a deal for you in the next week.”

Charles’ legs feel shaky, but he gets up too, and offers his hand to Geoff again, saying, sincerely, “Thank you for all your help. It’s very much appreciated. I know I haven’t made your job easy for you, but I’m very grateful for your bearing with me.”

“That’s my job.” Geoff gives Charles a thin smile and lets him walk him to the door, pausing with his hand on the knob before he goes. “Think about what I said, Mr Xavier. Don’t lock yourself up in here. It’s bad PR.”

Charles nods, wanting to be more cooperative on this point but knowing he can’t be. “I’ll think on it, Geoff. I promise.”

Geoff leaves with his mind buzzing with things to do next, and Charles goes back inside to the kitchen to brood over a mug of tea, unable to settle down to anything or to feel calm, really, even with Geoff’s reassurance that he thinks they can get a deal without jail time. It’s just … Charles wants to believe Erik will absolutely testify in Charles’ favor, will only say the right things and none of the wrong ones. And yet he also knows that Erik loves him _despite_ the way they got together, that it’s a splinter under the skin of their relationship and probably always will be. Impossible to be certain, really certain, of what Erik will say.

Charles drinks his tea and tries to put it all out of his mind, but it’s easier said than done.

 

*

_Erik_

“They’ve offered me a deal,” Charles says, his voice soft and subdued even over the phone, the way it always is these days. “If I plead guilty to aggravated sexual abuse of a child in the third degree, and indecent liberties with a minor, then the prosecution will recommend I only serve three years in prison. I think I’m going to take it.”

The roaring in Erik’s ears nearly drowns out the sound of Charles’ words, his heart plummeting down through the floor of Raven and Hank’s apartment.

“You _what?_ ” Erik croaks. “Charles -- _no._ They don’t have that kind of evidence -- you should go to trial, you’ll be acquitted!”

There’s a creak of leather on the other end of the line -- probably the sofa -- as Charles moves, the silence awkward and weighed down by all the things he isn’t saying, all the ways Charles is withering under this pressure, the life being sapped from him by the scrutiny he’s under from the press and the public. It takes a long time before he finally says, “Geoff thinks this is my best option, to keep things as minimal as possible. He says that given the profile of the case and the public opinion it’s likely the judge will be harsher than they might be otherwise. At least this way we minimize the risk of my getting ten years prison time. And, besides,” a pause, and a sound Erik thinks might be a breathless huff of bitter amusement, “I did do it, Erik. I deserve to be punished.”

Erik paces there in the middle of Raven and Hank’s home, not-caring about the way Raven’s staring at him, the concerned looks Hank keeps giving him from where he’s on his cushion trying to read the newspaper. They might as well be thousands of miles away -- and if they’re thousands of miles away, then Charles is a million. Erik’s chest hurts.

“No, you don’t. Don’t talk like that.” Erik gathers his reserves, trying to sound firm and decisive when he says, “You can’t do it. No jury would ever find you guilty just off two photos and a _blog_ post. That’s absurd.”

“They’ve subpoenaed you to testify against me. If you don’t, you’ll be prosecuted for contempt of court, and if you lie and they find out, for perjury.”

Erik’s dimly, distantly aware that he’s stopped pacing, halted dead in the middle of the kitchen with his phone pressed to his ear and his gorge rising in his throat. This is … this is worse. This is every bit as bad as the Hellfire trials, and worse because it’s Charles. Erik thinks about three years, about what he was doing three years ago -- God, that would be the first time Charles ever wanted him, when he was fifteen, the two of them at the lake in Westchester and Erik teasing Charles about electric eels. It feels like a lifetime ago, but a lifetime in which Charles was there for every moment, in Erik’s life and defining it. He can’t imagine three years without him.

“I won’t,” Erik says, but his voice isn’t as steady as it was before. “I won’t testify.”

“Erik, you have to,” Charles says. “Or they’ll lock us both up, and what would that help? This way -- this way you can finish college, nearly, without worrying where I am or what I’m doing. They -- they’ll make sure I eat, too, you’ll like that.”

Jesus Christ. It’s almost too horrible, comically so, like a twisted and illogical dream; Erik will wake up and look back and wonder how he didn’t realize he was asleep because everything was too damn _fucked up_ to be real.

“If I’m worried about your depression I’ll put you in _therapy_ , Charles, not jail!”

“I’m going to take the deal, Erik.”

Erik presses his fingers to his brow, digging in hard, but it doesn’t rub away the pain drilling through his head. “No. Don’t. Charles, if you take that deal, you will regret it.”

This time when Charles speaks his tone is almost sharp, astringent, pained and cutting, as if spoken through gritted teeth. “What do you suggest I do, then? Wait and see what worse punishment they come up with, stand up in court and deny it to their faces, only to see them force you to the stand and either have you denounce me or drag you off to prison, too? No, Erik. I know when I’m defeated, and this is it. I don’t get to win this time. All I can do is choose how to lose.”

Erik exhales, but once he’s lost the air he’s not convinced he can breathe in again. When he does manage it, it hurts. “When do they want your response?”

“Two weeks from now.”

Relief. God -- sweet, blissful relief. “All right. All right, good. Say no. I’ll get you a better offer. I promise -- I _guarantee_ you a better offer in two weeks. Do you trust me?”

“Always,” Charles says, but he doesn’t sound confident, a feeling that’s borne out when he continues, “but Erik, you’re the victim, not the prosecuting party. They’re not going to let you influence the offers they make me. Please don’t spend the next two weeks battering yourself against a brick wall.”

“I won’t,” Erik says, hoping the renewed surety in his voice is convincing. If not -- well, as long as Charles doesn’t take the offer, it doesn’t really matter what Charles thinks between now and then. “It’s my birthday in two weeks, you know. I’ll be eighteen.”

“Oh good,” Charles says, “you’ll be legal. That’s a weight off my shoulders.”

Erik makes an exasperated noise. “Never mind. Fine. But on my birthday, I’m coming over, so make sure the house is clean. I’ll make my own cake.”

“You’d be better off distancing yourself,” Charles says, with another creak of the sofa. “It’ll be better for your public image long-term, if you do decide to go into politics.”

“Don’t make my decisions for me, Charles. I’m coming over on my birthday. Now,” Erik glances at his watch, “it’s 11:14. Go to sleep, and I’ll call you in the morning.”

He makes it an order, even though he still doesn’t know how well that translates over the phone, and when Charles has finally agreed and they’ve said their goodbyes he hangs up to find Raven watching him worriedly, her arms folded across her chest.

“What did they offer him?” she asks, not even pretending not to have been listening.

“Sexual abuse and indecent liberties. Three years in prison.”

Her face pales, but Raven doesn’t so much as bend, the only other visible sign of her reaction the way her lips tighten and blanch, too. “Oh.”

Hank is looking very determinedly down at his newspaper, but his head is bowed, now, as are his shoulders, as if he’s carrying a great weight. Erik can’t escape the feeling that they both think he is responsible, that if only Erik had been less -- if only Erik had been _less_ , this never would have happened to Charles. Erik’s inclined to agree with them. He knows now, of course, that isn’t a healthy thought -- that anyone would tell him he’s wrong, irrational, but recognizing that and feeling it aren’t the same thing.

“He agreed not to take the deal for now,” Erik says, tucking his phone into his back pocket so he won’t be tempted to fidget with it. “I think he should … think about it, first. He shouldn’t surrender just because he feels guilty.”

Raven lets out a short, sharp breath. “Geoff is a great lawyer,” she says, and she actually reaches up to swipe at her eyes this time, wetness smearing across her cheeks. “If he thinks this is Charles’ best option, he -- he’s probably right. Shit.”

Hank twists to look up at her, and then reaches for Raven’s hand, clasping it in his own and giving it a tug; Raven immediately goes with it, letting him draw her down onto his cushion to lean against his side, Hank’s arm around her back and her head on his shoulder, drawing in close to one another. “It’ll be okay,” he murmurs, though it doesn’t really sound like he believes it.

They look so…. Erik can’t imagine what Charles is going through right now, but he wants to be there for him like this, touching him, anchoring him down somewhere he can’t be swept away. But that’s not an option, of course, because the law says they aren’t good for each other, because somehow them loving each other -- consensually this time, both of them going into it with their eyes open, knowing each other’s sins and loving them anyway -- means hurting each other. And Erik wants, so badly, to be good for Charles. He might have every reason to leave him, but in the way Charles says his name, the way Charles smiles and the warmth of Charles’ body, he has every reason to stay.

“I’m going to go for a walk,” Erik says, though he’s not sure either Raven or Hank hears him.

There’s media downstairs, of course, a barrage of them swarming the sidewalk eating bagels and drinking shitty street coffee; the moment they see him though they converge like filings to a magnet, bagels dropped and trampled as they try to get close enough to Erik to shove a microphone in his face, cameras on shoulders and people yelling all sorts of questions to try and be heard above the others; Erik evades them only by hailing a cab and driving off before they can follow. They’ll be waiting when he gets back, but he doesn’t plan on being back for a long time.

He’s not sure where he’s heading until he’s already almost there, directing the driver mindlessly until he realizes he’s brought himself to Chelsea, a block away from the old New York safehouse.

“Let me out here,” Erik says, passing a twenty up to the cabbie and getting out onto the sidewalk.

It’s quieter now, and Erik can just walk like someone who belongs here under the green trees and beside the hired dog-walkers with their corgis and beagles, the honks and beeps of traffic muted across distance. Erik could be almost anyone. He could be Charles’ lover, coming home early from work with a gift in his pocket and a promise of dinner plans. He could be not-actually-Shaw’s-son, holding his hand and shyly evading the gazes of passers-by. He could be Zane’s murderer, come back to clean up the job.

The safehouse feels too-empty when he lets himself in, past the excessive security and into the elegant living room. Erik tries to see it through Shaw’s eyes, imagining how Shaw felt about that sofa, his opinion on whether the art matched the drapes. When Erik looked at Shaw, he always felt like Shaw must be thinking about _him_ , as if he were the most important thing in the known universe.

The silence feels strange, unlike the music and white noise of Shaw’s parties, the grunting groans of the Doms who had Erik here. It presses down on all sides, cold memories infusing the walls and the floor beneath his feet, and Erik --

Erik can’t do this.

He pulls out his phone, staring down at the lock screen -- him and Charles, making faces at the camera -- for a second before he unlocks it and dials, not Charles, but Frank.

“Come over,” Erik says when Frank picks up, not bothering with a salutation.

“Now?” Frank asks, just as laidback as ever; there’s a sound of shifting paper, then the click of a pen. “Feeling lonely with Charles on house arrest?”

Irritable, Erik elects to ignore the question. “I’m at the safehouse. Are you coming or not?”

“Yeah, okay. Keep your pants on until I get there.”

Erik hangs up and drops his phone onto the sofa, wandering down the hall toward the bedrooms. He chooses the master suite, running his fingers along the white bedspread and kicking the toe of his boot against the trunk of tools at its foot. His power slithers along the metal shackles hanging from the ceiling, knocking the chains against one another, the sound more comforting than ominous.

What is he locking himself into, Erik wonders, with what he has planned? He doesn’t doubt he’s making the right decision -- his gut tells him to do it, his conscience, his love for Charles. But in the past few months Erik has become all too aware of how very young he really is. Is he prepared to make this kind of decision? Can he stand here, now, and say that he really _has_ forgiven Charles for everything, deep in his heart, that he can let go of the resentment and move forward?

Can he truly and honestly say, _I’m better now, I know the difference between reality and surreality, I can make these decisions with an open mind?_

He thinks he can. But it would be choosing another life, dedicating himself from now until forever to one man and one cause.

He can hear Raven’s reaction in his head right now, telling him he’s a stupid boy, making a terrible mistake. Maybe she’s right. Erik makes a lot of mistakes, after all. But if Raven had her way, he and Charles wouldn’t be together even now. Erik would go and tell the police ‘yes, we slept together, it started December before last,’ and ignore the way his heart is tangled up with Charles’ and all the ties which can’t be undone.

Once upon a time, some Dom Shaw left here alone with him during a party -- Erik sitting at the foot of the bed waiting for instruction and the Dom talking himself into it. _You sleep with all of them, don’t you?_ and then, _You don’t mind, right?_ then, _Well, since we’re here, mind if I get my dick wet?_

So, Erik knows perfectly well people can talk themselves into all sorts of things. But if he can’t trust his own instinct, what can he trust?

It isn’t fair that Charles should be punished for his mistakes while so much of Hellfire -- while their guests, and patrons -- still go free. And Erik has it all on videotape, he thinks abruptly, pausing there with his power still sunk deep into the manacles and chains, twisting within the steel. He has it on _tape_ , hundreds of Doms who raped him to save their own skin. All those men and women Erik has vowed he’ll kill, one day and one way, chasing down those people who ruined his life and making them pay their dues in full.

The control room is behind a hidden door in one of the smaller, less-used rooms. Perhaps Shaw’s security here would have posed a threat for anyone else, but not for Erik’s power -- and Shaw never counted on Erik using that power against him, so the mechanics are all metal. Inside there are shelves upon shelves of CDs, all of them carrying hours and hours of footage, some of it useless, some of it what Shaw would have considered use _ful_. Erik sits himself down in the dusty, hard-backed chair in the middle of the room and flips through the tapes, the dates meaningless to him on the labels except as numbers, numbers that represent Erik’s torture and systematic brainwashing, the blackmail of people so morally bankrupt they hardly needed to give Shaw anything else to hold over them.

So many of them are blurs and nameless faces in his memory, but here … here, they’re crystallized in amber, their crimes recorded in HD color. When Frank arrives, Erik is sitting on Shaw’s perfect white leather sofa with the film projected onto the white wall opposite, the Picasso that so offended Charles taken down and leaned against the window, Erik gazing at the nonstop reel of all the men and women who hurt him, hard evidence of everything Erik had stolen from him.

“What are we watch -- oh,” Frank says, coming to a stop staring at the wall. “That’s kind of disturbing. Are you sure we can’t find some better porn online?” It’s obvious how uncomfortable he is despite the joking; Frank shifts from one foot to the other, his posture firming, almost puffing up in the kind of Dominant display he never usually bothers with, given the size of him.

“Have a seat,” Erik says, patting the sofa next to him and pausing the tape with his power. It freezes on a blur, skin and the mahogany wash of his own hair.

Frank looks over at Erik and slowly crosses the room, but he pauses by the projector, waiting for a moment to see if Erik’s going to stop him before he disconnects the power cable; the image immediately vanishes, leaving the wall blank and unmarked, as if nothing was ever there. “What’s up?” he asks, walking the rest of the way over to the sofa and taking a seat. “I’m guessing this isn’t your standard quinceañera.”

Erik tilts his head against the back cushions, just enough so he can see the lines of Frank’s face and keep him in his gaze. After a second, he tilts up the corner of his mouth and says, “You’re a criminal man, aren’t you, Frank? I couldn’t help noticing your reaction when we killed Zane.”

The response he gets is carefully casual. “When I barfed in the sink? That’s not criminal, Erik, unless you’re starting up the stink police.”

“Tearing a man limb from limb is disgusting, it would make anyone sick. I mean before that.” Erik stretches his legs out along the floor, crossing them at the ankles and turns his face more fully toward Frank. “It’s not a value judgment. You know who I am. I’m just asking.”

Frank pauses, consideration passing across his face before finally he sighs, looking back at Erik with a rueful expression. “I’ve done things I’m not so proud of, yeah. And a few things I am. I’m smart enough not to talk about them, though. What’s that saying? Two men can keep a secret if one of them is dead?”

Erik hums noncommittally and looks back at the blank wall where his younger self was just a few minutes ago, being slowly tortured and dehumanized, brainwashed one step at a time until there was nothing left in him but adoration for his captors and fear they might see too deep in him one day and decide to cast him aside. He gestures at the wall and says, “Criminal to criminal, then, what do you think about them? Do you think any of them ever regretted it?”

“I think so,” Frank says, slow and careful. “You told me once that Shaw used to blackmail people into fucking you, so he’d have something to hold over them. And that once or twice you knew people didn’t want to, but they had to anyway. I think some of them regretted it, yeah. Doesn’t make it better, of course.”

“You never think about the fact that they probably have people who love them,” Erik goes on, not even sure if he cares about whether these Doms were loved or not, what they did when they went home in the morning, who met them at their doors. “I wonder if they told anyone. I wonder if they saw the news about me and Charles and thought, that’s a relief -- Xavier did it, so anybody would have done it, so it’s not my fault anymore.”

Frank doesn’t say anything, unusual for him, so Erik just keeps going.

“What do you think is the line, there?” Erik asks, finally turning bodily toward him, shifting one knee up onto the couch. It presses against the side of Frank’s thigh. “How much is the responsibility theirs, or Charles’, because they were adults who should have known better -- and how much is mine, for doing everything I could to be wanted?”

“I think you’re spending more time thinking about them than they deserve.” Frank meets Erik’s gaze directly, firmly, his hand resting for a moment on Erik’s knee. “People are shits who do shitty things to one another, and if they’re nice it’s because they want something from you enough to make it worth their time to make you want to help them. Those people wanted sex, and they took it from you because they could, or because they had to to avoid worse pain from Shaw. There’s no philosophy involved. And the fact that other people don’t understand that has always baffled me, because to me it’s always been obvious.” He looks over at the projector, sat innocuously in the middle of the room, and gets to his feet, stepping over towards it. “Nobody does anything altruistically.”

Erik lifts an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you want to watch more,” he says.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Frank says, popping the top of the projector and taking out the disc. “I’m going to destroy the stupid thing so you’ll stop thinking about it.”

“Don’t bother,” Erik says, resting his elbow against the back cushions and his head against his hand. “I’m not upset. I’m just … wondering.”

“Liar,” Frank says, and he closes his fingers on the disc and crunches it, squeezing his hand into a fist as the broken pieces slip between his fingers and fall to the carpet in a shower of silver. He shakes the remnants from his palm as Erik stares, half relieved and half annoyed, because it wasn’t Frank’s right to do that. That evidence -- like all the rest still packed away -- was Erik’s to destroy.

“That was unnecessary,” he says dryly, but Frank just shrugs.

“I wanted to,” he says, and looks down at the projector. “This can live.”

“Do you have any idea how much money we could have extorted out of the people in those tapes?”

“Do I look like I care about fucking money?” Frank asks, glancing back up at Erik. “I could have plenty of that if I was willing to crawl back home. Besides, you don’t give a shit about money either. You just wanted to sit here and wallow in it to make yourself feel worse about all the stuff you’ve got going on. Probably make yourself hate Charles so you don’t have to care so much he’s in jail, if I know you at all. It’d be right down your street.”

It very nearly hits too close to home. Is that what Erik’s been doing this whole time? He knows damn well what will happen if Charles goes to prison, and it’s probably exactly what Frank says. Erik will find a way to summon back up all the anger and hurt he feels over what Charles did, and wrap himself in it so he doesn’t have to _feel_ anymore.

If Charles … if Erik’s successful, though, and Charles _stays_ , Erik can let all that go. The both of them can move forward, knowing this is what they’ve actively chosen for themselves. They can be happy.

God, he wants to let it go.

Erik barks out a sound he realizes belatedly is a laugh. “Fine. Fine, you’re right.” He pushes himself up from the sofa and stretches his arms over his head, feeling tendons and ligaments draw out long and taut, a soft crack in his middle spine. “What do you want to do, then? Order pizza and watch _Clueless?_ ”

“What is this,” Frank asks, “a sleepover? Do you have an Easy Bake Oven I should know about?”

“I’m not staying here alone in this house,” Erik says point-blank. “And I’m not going back to Raven’s, either. Not when I’m the reason her brother’s facing sex abuse charges and three years in prison. Hope you packed your toothbrush.”

Frank doesn’t look convinced, but he just tucks his thumbs into his belt loops and says, “You can just kiss me and put up with it, if you’re dragging me away from my study time to play hooky with you. I’m a real student, you know. But fine. You’re paying for pizza.”

Erik obliges him, and he makes a point during a ‘bathroom break’ to lock up the door to the control room, melting the latch -- no matter what Frank says, Erik doesn’t want him destroying the rest of those tapes. One day Erik will want to hunt those Doms down, he’s certain of it, and until that time the evidence has to stay secured.

He takes one of the smaller bedrooms that night, stripped down to his boxers with the covers pulled up to his waist. He lies there in the dark for several minutes, staring at the ceiling and not quite sure he’ll be able to fall asleep, before the door creaks open and Frank steps inside, leaning back against the frame, a silhouette in the soft hallway light. “You said you didn’t want to stay here alone,” he says, his eyes just a gleam, unreadable.

Debating it only lasts a moment; Erik reaches for the corner of the blankets and tugs them back, wordlessly inviting Frank to walk forward and climb in beside him, the mattress creaking under his weight and dipping towards him, threatening to roll Erik downhill.

Frank settles, folding his hands up behind his head; he’s in his shorts too, his bare chest putting out heat like a furnace. Erik wonders if Frank thinks Erik’s upset enough to fuck him tonight, but dismisses the thought a moment later because it doesn’t really matter -- Erik won’t. He’s committed to Charles, even more firmly now than he was this afternoon.

After a moment Erik closes his eyes and tries to let his mind go blank. It’s hard, though; he feels Frank nearby, smells aftershave. Frank’s so broad-shouldered he takes up more than half the bed. That smell lingers in his mind, coloring the edges of it and weaving in between his dozing dreams as he slip deeper toward mindlessness. He knows this, he thinks dimly. Doomed to walk the same road over and over again, same ancient scenery closing in all around….

He remembers this room and the scratch of the blindfold against his closed eyes as the Dom bore him down on the bed. Erik’s bare skin and the man’s warm hands, the sound of shallow breathing and the pain in Erik’s inner thighs from keeping his legs spread too long.

The camera in the wall watches as Erik tilts his head back to expose his neck, but mostly so the camera can see the Dom’s face because Erik’s invisible, a prop to be abandoned afterward naked and smelling like sex and aftershave….

  


 

Erik jolts awake all at once, kicking the duvet back as he rears up gasping for air. The room spins around him, familiar lines and edges, that same bed soft beneath him and for a horrible moment Erik doesn’t know when he is -- if he’s now or then, almost ten or almost eighteen, a heavy pain throbbing in his skull.

“Hey,” Frank murmurs sleepily, and his hand comes to rest on the small of Erik’s back, familiar and heavy. Erik’s whole body shudders and he twists his fingers into the sheets, tight and sweaty fists.

“I’m fine,” he says, a second too late. “Just a -- “ Just a memory, just a flashback. “Dream,” he finishes, exhaling.

“It’s okay, baby, just lie down,” Frank says, and moves his hand around to Erik’s stomach, pressing him inexorably back down onto the mattress. “You’re okay. It’s just me.”

Erik turns his face toward Frank like a leaf to sunlight, seeking out the reassurance of the sight of him, a person Erik can place firmly in the present day. His hand grasps Frank’s wrist all the same, holding on tight, not sure if he wants to push him away or pull him closer.

“You’re all right,” Frank murmurs, his fingers stroking Erik’s belly, his eyes only half-open, still half asleep. “It’ll all be over soon, you’ll be okay.”

Erik’s starting to breathe more evenly now, his skin freezing everywhere it’s exposed to the open air and his pulse beating in his ears. He lets go of Frank’s wrist, eventually, his hand slipping to rest on his stomach next to Frank’s. He wills himself to think of nothing at all. He _believes_ he’s not in this room, believes it so hard that eventually … eventually, the dark waters claim him again, pulling him down into grateful amnesia.

When he wakes again, it’s not from memory.

“He’s sleeping,” Frank’s saying out in the hall, not far away; his voice is lowered, but Erik can just about hear him, his accent thicker somehow, more of a twang to it. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I’m doing my best, but he ain’t exactly in a strong headspace right now.”

Is he talking to Charles? Erik wonders murkily, blinking heavy lids against the night and trying to peer out through the cracked door, where he can only-just see the edge of Frank’s body in profile. Why would Frank be calling Charles?

“Yeah. Well. There’s a lot going on right now, and I can’t stage manage inside someone’s head, I’m not the telepath in his life. Uh huh. No, sir. No, I don’t think he knows. He ain’t the kind to sit on that kind of knowledge, he’s the kind to go blow shit up and think about it later.”

What doesn’t Erik know?

He picks carefully toward wakefulness, keeping his body still and lax under the covers even as he seeks out metal in the vicinity and tries to capture the quality of the vibrations off them, to hear who’s on the other line. He can sense the radio waves -- they’re an electromagnetic frequency, like so many things -- can feel the antenna on Frank’s phone convert them into electrical signal, into sound. If he’s very, very careful, he thinks, he can translate them ….

“Kip -- as you -- deen, en -- -- -- -- carul -- and -- -- stay -- ge su slip,” he hears, fragments that don’t quite fit together or even make real words, the sounds slurring together or missing beats. “ -- -- gu irk. No -- -- en -- etter.”

“Yes sir,” Frank says, his voice, at least, clear enough to understand. “Okay, I can do that. Thanks. I’ll be in touch.”

Erik listens as Frank hangs up, then lingers out in the hall another moment before he finally pushes the door open and steps back inside. Erik closes his eyes, waiting until Frank is already back beneath the covers with his phone plugged into his charger, before he says, “Who was that?”

“Hey,” Frank says, turning onto his side; he certainly doesn’t sound like he’s worried about being overheard. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up, I was trying to be quiet.”

Erik blinks at him through the sleep crusting his lashes together. “Who were you talking to?” he asks again, not moving even when Frank’s elbow presses up next to his shoulder, a hot point of contact.

A huff of breath. “My therapist, if you have to know,” Frank says, not a hint of deception or restraint on his face, though it’s hard to tell with this light. “I don’t really like being here, given the part where I ripped a dude apart last time I was in this apartment.”

 _What don’t I know?_ Erik wants to ask, more than ever now, but he swallows those words. Frank wouldn’t answer the question honestly, but not even he can keep secrets forever. Not from Erik.

“Go to sleep,” Erik tells him instead, lifting his hand to push against Frank’s shoulder. “We’ll be out of here in the morning.”

“All right,” Frank says. He lets himself be pushed -- no way Erik could move him if he didn’t want to be moved. “The things I do for you … ”

“I gave you the best blow-job of your _life_ , according to you. You’re still paying me back for that,” Erik says with a tiny grin, and Frank snorts, closing his eyes.

“Pretty sure I’d give Charles a run for his money getting you to come on my cock,” he says, “given the same number of opportunities. We can always give it a try if you don’t believe me.”

“I suppose that’s a hypothesis that will have to remain untested,” Erik murmurs, already feeling himself drift back down toward sleep, turning his face in toward his pillow and inhaling deep the scent of plain laundry detergent. The last thing he remembers is the brush of Frank’s hand against the small of his back, and then it’s morning, sunlight streaming in through the shuttered windows, chasing away all the oldest ghosts.

 

*


	49. Forty-nine

_Charles_

Charles wakes up the morning of Erik’s birthday with his heart already pounding, staring across the bedclothes at the empty side of the mattress and wondering if he’s made the right decision by not taking the plea bargain, by trusting Erik.

Of course, it’s no different than any other morning over the past two weeks. He’s woken up the same way every day, his breakfast alarm blaring at him while he panics silently that he’s made a grave mistake.

Charles sits up in bed slowly, creakily, and scrubs the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to clear away the bleary feeling; that done, he thinks about lying back down, but. The alarm is still going, and he knows that Erik will ask him later if he’s eaten. So instead he gets up, swinging his bare legs out of the bed and reaching for his robe. He thinks about going back to bed again, later, once he’s had breakfast; but Erik had said that he would be coming over today, and he wants the apartment to be clean. So Charles washes up his single bowl and spoon, then dries them, too, and puts them away.

Doing the vacuuming, Charles feels like the hoover is sucking the life out of him, too, as well as the dust from the carpets and the hardwood floors. The apartment is far too big. He should buy a roomba. Or move. And taking out the trash … he only has to take it to the chute out in the tiny hallway by the elevator, where nobody else ever comes because this is the only apartment on this floor, but Charles still feels exposed just being outside the front door, simultaneously afraid that somebody will come and catch him, and that he’ll be locked out somehow in his robe and his ratty old sweatpants and college t-shirt, trapped into either waiting for Erik or going downstairs to ask for help.

It is a very long day.

By the time late afternoon comes Charles has retreated upstairs to where he knows he can’t mess anything up, and so he’s curled up asleep in bed when he finally feels Erik’s mind approaching his, Erik’s body settling beside him and touching his hair gently.

“Charles,” Erik murmurs, that hand stroking down toward Charles’ nape, soft and warm. 

Charles thinks a welcome at him before he’s even really awake, and opens his eyes to blink up at Erik, letting himself smile. “Hey,” he says groggily, his own hand lifting to touch Erik’s hip. “We have to stop meeting like this.”

Erik smiles in return and leans down, kissing Charles on the mouth. He kisses him on the cheek, too, and the temple, before he finally draws back and says, “Is that my cake downstairs?”

Charles makes a face. “I don’t know. Does it look like a cake?”

“Not really,” Erik admits, grin widening, “but I appreciate the effort. Come on, get up. Put on some clothes and I’ll make you a proper dinner.”

“All right.” Charles sits up, but before he goes to do as told he wraps his arms around Erik’s neck and hugs him, tucking in close against him and squeezing tight; at first, he only means it to be a brief embrace, a quick expression of his feelings. But once he’s there it’s … difficult, to make himself want to let go, and he lets out a shuddering breath, staying there against Erik’s chest far longer than he means to, tucking his face in against Erik’s shoulder and just … inhaling, exhaling, trying to ground himself.

“I love you very much,” Erik says against Charles’ crown, his arms around Charles keeping him safe and sane, Erik’s heartbeat slow and steady through his chest and into Charles’. He rubs Charles’ back, down toward his hips then up again, one hand tangling in Charles’ hair.

“I love you.” Charles’ voice only shakes a little. “I’m glad you’re here. But you probably shouldn’t be. If someone saw … ”

“I’m an adult now, Charles. What are they going to do? I won’t pretend I hate you just to pacify MSNBC.”

“Maybe you should.” Charles lifts his head, and from this close and intimate distance he sees the flecks of color in Erik’s eyes clear and distinct, his pale freckles -- almost hidden, usually, by the golden undertones of his skin. “Erik, I’m going to prison. People are going to judge anyone associated with me with the same brush, and that includes you. Never mind that today’s your birthday and you’re a legal adult. They don’t care about that.”

Erik makes a soft noise, a harsh exhale. “You aren’t going to prison. I told you. Now come on, get up and get dressed. I’m starving.”

He waits until Charles disentangles himself and gets to his feet, padding over to his dresser to fetch some clothes; Erik stands near the foot of the bed and watches him, arms folded across his chest, before he says, “You know I won’t leave you, don’t you?”

It’s a feeling somewhere between joy and sorrow, a wrenching deep inside. “I know you don’t want to,” Charles says, taking out a fresh t-shirt and dragging the old one off over his head. “But, Erik -- you can’t fight everything. I know it’s not your nature, but you might have to accept defeat for once. I wouldn’t leave you if I had a choice.”

“If you had a choice, would you stay with me?”

“How can you ask me that question?” The clean shirt wrinkles in Charles’ clenching hands. “I love you. I’ve done things I would have sworn I would never do, for you. I’m not going to jail on purpose.”

“That’s not what I meant by it,” Erik says, “but never mind that now. Put your shirt on. I’ll be downstairs in the kitchen when you’re ready.”

Charles wants to push, wants to find out where Erik is going with this -- but he feels Erik defending that information in his mind, and pressing for it is only going to make Erik more stubbornly hide it, or resent Charles for taking it anyway. So finally he just nods, and pulls on the new shirt, Erik’s footsteps retreating down the hall as Charles goes to the closet to find some different pants to wear.

He spends a few minutes in there just breathing, in and out, his face leaning in against the sleeves of his suit jackets as he tries to reclaim some measure of calm; he can’t help but worry that someone will see, will know that Erik is here, will take pictures of the two of them together and publish them all over the internet to say horrible, awful things about them. About Charles, and Erik. About how Erik was clearly asking for it, maybe, the way he keeps running back to his abuser. No matter that they’re alone, that they’re isolated within the apartment, everyone else outside the walls unable to see in; it’s a paranoia Charles can identify but not shake, clinging to him like goose grass.

When he finally goes downstairs he pads quietly into the kitchen only to find Erik there, prodding at two filet mignon steaks sizzling on the stovetop griddle with a wooden spatula while all the knives in the kitchen, in seems like, are occupied slicing up vegetables, a spoon stirring some kind of thick broth in a saucepan near Erik’s elbow.

“You can start mixing together the salad,” Erik tells him, glancing at Charles over his shoulder, easy and Dominant as if this were any other day before they got caught out.

“ ... All right.” Charles goes to the refrigerator, opening the door to find it freshly full or groceries that certainly weren’t there this morning. Clearly Erik went shopping before he came here. He takes out the ingredients for Erik’s favorite salad, and sets them on the side to wash them carefully, putting them into the salad spinner and running it under the tap.

It’s strange, being so -- normal. But it’s comforting, too, to follow an old routine and to listen to the sounds of Erik cooking while Charles lays the table, fetching cutlery and plates, the rhythm of it coming naturally to his body while his mind wonders what he’s being buttered up for. Eventually there’s nothing left for Charles to do but sit down at one of the chairs and watch Erik cook, Erik gesturing when he’s done for Charles to carry the plates over so Erik can transfer the food onto them. It’s somehow even more elegant than Erik’s usual fare -- the filet mignon accompanied by a mushroom-wine sauce and roasted vegetables, split cherry tomatoes a flash of red to garnish. 

“One last thing,” Erik tells him after they’ve set the plates back down on the table but before Charles can start eating -- he pulls a matchbook out of his pocket and lights the three candles in the middle of the table, the flame burning dangerously close to Erik’s fingers before he blows it out and shuts off the overhead light.

In the candlelight the familiar kitchen looks different, warm and golden, shadows flickering on the walls; Erik’s face is lit softly, beloved and older, somehow, smiling at him. Charles smiles back and shakes his head, oddly touched by the unusual setting. “Very romantic,” he says, propping his chin on his hand. “Happy birthday, Erik.”

“Thank you,” Erik says, reaching out to squeeze Charles’ upper arm before his power snags Charles’ fork and nudges it against Charles’ free hand, silently urging him to eat. 

Charles rolls his eyes, but it’s fondness that prompts him to pick up the wayward fork and spear a roast parsnip, dabbing it in the sauce and lifting it to his lips. It tastes wonderful, and he makes an appreciative noise as he turns his attention properly to his dinner.

He hears Erik’s approval without even trying; Erik is thinking that now he’s here he can make Charles better meals, appetizing enough to entice him to eat properly again. Charles doesn’t bother to protest, since it wouldn’t make a difference if he did.

“This is lovely,” he says, cutting into his steak. “You really should stay somewhere in college that you can cook. Catered living isn’t going to suit you at all.”

Erik makes a soft, amused noise. “I certainly intend to.” He reaches for his wine -- Charles has no idea where Erik purchased it, considering eighteen is still underage in some ways in America -- and takes a small sip. “I chose Harvard, by the way. It gives me the most options, like you said, and I’ve already spoken to a mech E lab at MIT about doing research with them.”

It’s ridiculous, now, for the thought of Erik going to Boston to make Charles feel so happy and so lonely at the same time, given his own circumstances; and yet he feels that same wrench inside of himself again, tugging at his heart, before he says, “That’s wonderful news, Erik. I’m so pleased for you. I think you’ll love it there.” And Harvard, at least, usually has enough high-profile students to give Erik a little cover from the attention he’s bound to receive.

“Well, they sent me a private letter of support, which went a long way,” Erik says. “Not to mention the public statement.” Harvard had been one of several universities to publicly respond to suggestions made in various editorial spheres that Erik might find his college acceptances rescinded following the scandal.

“That was kind of them.” Charles deliberately doesn’t look to see what they said; no doubt it wasn’t complimentary about him. He goes back to his steak, cutting another piece. “We -- if you send over the financial details, I can organize the funding before … anything changes. That way you’ll know it’s going to be paid no matter what happens, without you having to tap into your trust fund.”

Erik doesn’t reply to that, just seems … curiously amused, as if there’s something funny about what Charles said; Charles looks, only to find Erik still convinced Charles won’t be going to prison, and amused that Charles thinks he will.

It’s … it shouldn’t sting, but it does, and Charles concentrates on putting his piece of steak in his mouth and chewing it, not wanting to ruin Erik’s evening by arguing about it. When they’ve both finished their dinners Erik clears the plates away and replaces them with plates of cake: one slice each of Erik’s -- which looks like it belongs in a shop window -- and one each of Charles’, which looks like it’s been sat on.

“You should have just thrown it away,” he says, embarrassed even to see it there next to Erik’s perfect cake. “This is just cruelty.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Erik spears a piece with his fork. “I’m sure it tastes fine. Open up.” He directs the forkful of cake toward Charles’ mouth, and, feeling ridiculous, Charles opens to receive it, closing his lips around the fork to take it in.

It’s not terrible. It tastes like cake, at least, if a bit dry. Charles chews, swallows. “It could be better.”

Erik makes a face. “You’re your own worst critic,” he says, and digs into his own plate, showing no visible signs of distaste as he eats Charles’ cake -- all of it -- before starting in on the other slice. In his mind, too, Erik is thinking that Charles’ cake wasn’t half bad, that Charles is being too harsh on himself because he’s depressed.

It might be true, but Charles isn’t the best judge of that these days.

He picks at his own plate, glancing up at Erik from time to time. He looks good tonight, and Charles would think it was just the separation except that Erik looks … like he’s really made an effort, everything about him pristine and perfect, carefully manicured into his best possible appearance. “If I’d known we were dressing up,” Charles says quietly, trying to sound amused, “I’d have worn something nicer. And shaved.” Instead he’s come downstairs looking like a hobo someone’s taken in for the night and let use the washing machine and the dryer. Possibly on himself.

“I’ll choose your clothes tomorrow.” Erik scoops up another bite of cake. “But for what it’s worth, even if you were wearing a paper bag I’d think you were lovely. Here,” he offers his forkful to Charles, leaning closer with his elbow braced on the table. “Eat some more.”

Charles takes it, the icing melting sweetly on his tongue. _I would have cut my hair at least,_ he thinks, knowing it’s grown overlong, almost enough to tie back.

“Mmm. I thought you were going for a man-bun. That’s popular now.”

“Can you really see me with a bun?” Charles asks incredulously, but Erik just shrugs, grinning wide.

Erik’s cake is much better than Charles’, unsurprisingly. Charles takes his time eating it, savoring it, and, in part, giving Erik a little time; Erik is palpably nervous with anticipation, even if he’s keeping himself from seeing why, and so Charles stays quiet, letting himself enjoy this moment, here together and happy for a night at least before he has to give the DA his answer tomorrow. When he finally finishes the cake he feels rather regretful, actually, to be moving out of this gilded time, onto whatever else Erik has planned.

He picks up his wineglass and takes a sip, glancing up at Erik over the rim. “So,” he says, and leaves it hanging, waiting for what’s next.

“Mmm.” Erik glances down toward the table, at his own fingers tapping the wood surface, a slight half-smile on his lips; a rush of anxiety and excitement like bubbles in champagne courses through his mind all at once, like the sense of standing on a precipice, the scenery both beautiful and terrifying, making Charles’ breath catch in his throat. “Charles, I want you to know that -- these years with you have been the happiest of my entire life.” Erik looks back at Charles, gaze steady across the space between them and the light from the candles flickering in his irises, as if Charles could look right through his eyes and see into his memories. “I never imagined life could be like this.”

“I’m glad,” Charles says. When he smiles at him, though, it’s a little sad -- it wouldn’t, after all, take much to beat Erik’s upbringing at the hands of the Hellfire Club. It’s not really much of an endorsement. “You know I love you very much. I’m glad Moira tricked me into taking your case.”

Erik’s brows shoot up. “Tricked you?”

“Didn’t you know that?” Charles snorts, shaking his head. “I never take child abuse cases, because they’re … difficult, for me. Moira didn’t tell me who you were or what had happened to you until after I got there and saw you, because she knew I wouldn’t say no after she’d got me in the room with you. I was pretty angry with her, actually.”

Erik smiles. “So you decided that if you’re in for an inch, you’re in for a mile, and offered to take me in.”

“Not really,” Charles says. It’s strange to think back to that time now, before he knew Erik as well as he does now, before everything really started -- to think of Erik as he once was, thirteen and alone in a big world he wasn’t prepared for. “You were scared, and dangerous, and you needed someone who wasn’t afraid of you and wasn’t scary to give you what you needed. I couldn’t walk away.”

“I’m glad.” Erik reaches over to steal Charles’ hand, lacing their fingers together atop the table. “I love you, Charles. I love you in every way it’s possible to love you. I never want to be apart from you.”

It feels like his heart is breaking. “You know I’d never leave you by choice,” Charles says, squeezing Erik’s hand as his eyes prickle at the corners, like sinking, wishing he could change their circumstances and yet knowing he can’t. “If things were different … ”

“They can be,” Erik says -- and he slips out of his chair, onto the floor, untangling his hand from Charles’ to reach for Charles’ face instead, tugging him down to press their brows together. Charles lets out a shaking breath and leans into the touch, his hands on Erik’s shoulders, keeping him close; just that touch is almost enough to undo him, Erik’s fierceness as he continues, “I’m never giving up on you.”

“It’s not a question of giving up or giving in,” Charles says. He wishes there were space for him to slip down off his chair, get closer. “It’s just real life, Erik, and there’s nothing to do about it but accept it. It’s -- three years isn’t so long, in the grand scheme of things, and if, after, you still want … maybe things will be different on the other side.”

“No matter what happens, I promise you that I’ll still love you three years from now. I’ll still love you thirty years from now, and when I’m ancient and dying I’ll love you. Always.”

“I’ll probably be ancient and dying first,” Charles says. He tries to make it a joke, but it doesn’t quite come out like one. He lifts a hand to stroke through Erik’s hair, looking at him and trying to take in every detail, every speck and line of his face, embedding it in his memory to keep with him in dark times. “Erik … ” But he can’t keep rubbing salt into the wound, over and over, and so Charles finally just sighs and says, “I love you. More than anyone or anything.”

Erik smiles, and leans back just a little, not enough to force Charles’ hand away but enough to Charles sees his entire face. “Good,” he says. “Then, Charles … “ He glances down, just for a moment; when Charles’ gaze follows reflexively he sees Erik’s holding a simple gold ring in his hand. Charles’ heart stops, and his head jerks back up to stare at Erik, too flabbergasted to speak. “Will you marry me?”

“Wait -- what?” Charles can’t quite believe this is happening, astonished and not properly processing things. “Erik … ”

“Before you say anything,” Erik says quickly, “I would ask this even if it weren’t for the situation we’re in. I love you, and I want to marry you.” He attempts a small, shaky smile, one that almost doesn’t match the confident man Erik’s grown to be. “Please say yes.”

Charles doesn’t know what to say, what to _think_. This was not at all what he was expecting -- he’d been suspecting to hear something more along the lines of a crazy escape plan using Erik’s underground connections, not -- not this! He lets out a strange, half-choked sound, then finally manages to say, “I -- Erik -- are you sure this is what you want, and not what you feel you have to do?”

Charles shifts his weight and pushes his chair away from the table, making space for himself to kneel down in front of Erik on equal standing, looking at his face and searching it, searching Erik’s feelings, for something to show him what he should do, for something to give away why Erik is asking this now. “I don’t want you to propose because you feel guilty about the photographs,” Charles says, though it’s painful to say. “Or because you’re just afraid of losing your one constant since you left Hellfire. You’re just -- you’re still so young, Erik. And this would ruin your life.”

Erik makes a soft, dismissive sound, his free hand smoothing up Charles’ thigh. “It wouldn’t ruin my life to spend the rest of it with you. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.” He leans in, tilting his head to the side to kiss Charles’ cheek, lips lingering there a moment longer than usual. It’s so tender, it makes Charles’ heart clench in his chest, longing and sorrow both together making it bittersweet. 

When Erik pulls back he says, “I’m proposing because if we’re married, I can’t be compelled to testify against you. You’ll get a better plea agreement, and you won’t go to jail. But I’m also proposing because I want to know that every morning when I wake up, you’ll be lying beside me. Because you’re the person whose face I want to see when I come home. If I make dinner for my husband, I want you to be the one eating it. I want to watch you get older and get older alongside you. When I think about my future, you’re there.”

“You’re _eighteen_ ,” Charles says, heart racing in his chest. He wants -- he realizes with something like shock that he wants to take what Erik’s offering, to say yes, as crazy as it would be. And he could do it, could open his mouth and take Erik’s offer -- but then, that’s what got him into this mess in the first place. “And everyone will see you as a victim, or an idiot, forever. Erik -- I can’t let you do this. I know how badly you’ve wanted to change your reputation, to use it to help other people. Don’t throw that away.”

“I think marrying you proves I’m not your victim,” Erik says with a lifted brow. “But I’m not worried about my reputation. I can handle that, and after a few years people will forget you were once my guardian -- you’ll just be my husband.” 

Erik takes Charles’ hand, squeezing once. He looks so sincere, his mind painted with affection and hope and fear that Charles really will say no. It’s hard not to just bend to his will at that look, not to just agree to ease Erik’s heart and make him happy.

“I’ve made my decision,” Erik says softly. “Please don’t ask me to un-make it. I know what I want, and I’ve had plenty of time to think about it. All I’m asking is if you want it as well.”

If this is a bad choice, then Charles isn’t sure he’ll survive it; his relationship with Erik might not, either, but at the same time -- he doesn’t want to let this chance go. To reject Erik would hurt him deeply, and Charles knows that would cut at his own heart, too, deeper than anything else ever could.

“All right,” he says. 

His throat is tight and anxious, breath fluttering under his breastbone, and he can’t decide if he’s made the right decision -- if there _is_ a right decision to make. He can’t think clearly at all while his heart pounds in his chest and skull, drowning out everything else. He squeezes Erik’s hand back where it’s holding his own, his teeth catching the inside of his cheek, sharp and painful; God, what if he’s just added another thing to the pile of things Charles has done to fuck Erik up worse than before? Fucked him, broke up with him, fucked him again, got caught at it and dragged through the mud, and now marrying him?

For a moment Charles frantically wants to take it back, gut clenching; the next he wants to cling to Erik, afraid that he’ll take it back instead, his heart refusing to let go. He loves Erik too much, too fiercely, for his fear to win out.

The grin that spreads over Erik’s face then makes it entirely worth it, his incandescent smile accompanied by a bright glow of happiness in his mind -- he kisses Charles hard on the mouth, his hands flying up to hold either side of Charles’ face, and after a second Charles presses back against him, uncertain but still -- despite everything -- joyful, hoping for the best and increasingly infected by Erik’s emotions.

“Here,” Erik says as he pulls back, reaching for Charles’ left hand to slide the golden ring onto his fourth finger, shrinking the metal to fit perfectly. It’s simple, but Charles knows, hears, that Erik made it himself, crafted it from the raw gold Charles gave him for their first Christmas together. It looks and feels strange to wear his ring, even as Erik stares at it, pleased and possessive to have Charles marked in such a way as his own.

“I don’t have one for you,” Charles says, looking back up at Erik.

“We’ll get one together, later on,” Erik says. When he looks at Charles’ face it’s with a soft gaze, taking him in, Erik’s thoughts giddy with the notion of Charles as his fiancé, soon to be more. “Hold on -- stay here, I have something else for you.”

Erik’s hands linger on Charles, though, like he doesn’t want to go even as he gets to his feet and then finally pulls away, disappearing into the living room. Charles can hear him moving about in there, the open and shut of one of the cabinet doors. Charles doesn’t look, though he wants to, desperately curious; instead he makes himself correct his posture, until he’s kneeling perfectly in pose, waiting for his Dom to come back. When Erik returns he has a plain dark blue box in his hands, the corners dipped in gold. 

“Sit at the table,” Erik instructs, taking his own chair. He puts the box down in front of Charles, nudging it toward him. Slowly Charles gets to his feet, and takes a seat, knowing what it is -- what it must be, but surely -- Erik doesn’t even, he always said ... “Open it.”

Charles reaches out, touching the leather of the case with ginger hands, then, biting the inside of his lip, he opens it, lifting the lid to reveal what’s inside.

Sitting on a bed of gray velvet, cushioned and shaped by it, is a dark blue collar, fashioned in smooth leather with gold rivets and a gold buckle, deceptively plain -- it’s clear just from the scent of it that it was probably very expensive, and Charles stares at it, everything inside of him clenching up tight with intense desire and longing, his hand coming up to cover his mouth.

“Do you like it?” Erik asks softly.

“I … yes,” Charles breathes, his voice breaking on the simple word. “I didn’t think you … you hate collars.”

“I do,” Erik admits. “But you want one, and I want you. I want you to know you’re mine every minute of the day.”

When Charles looks at him Erik smiles and reaches for his hand, the one with the gold ring on it, his fingers smoothing over the metal and his power warming it against Charles’ skin. The thought of waiting to put it on, now, of having to know it’s there and not wear it, is intensely agitating, the way Charles wants it anything but rational. 

“Thank you,” he says, and gets up, coming around the table so he can bend to kiss Erik on the mouth, deep and passionate, as he sinks to his knees beside Erik’s chair, drawing Erik’s head down with him. He wants the collar against his skin, even though he knows it means people will know, will see them and be unable to miss what they are, who they are to one another.

Erik brushes his thumb against Charles’ lower lip when they finally pull away, fingertips lingering on his skin. “The justice of the peace and a witness are waiting in a coffee shop a block down,” Erik says. “If I call them they’ll be here in ten minutes. Should I?”

It’s all happening so fast. It seems so -- furtive, to get married at home like this, in secret and so hurriedly, but then, Charles thinks, wryly, it _is_. “I guess we can’t get married at the courthouse.”

“We can if you want. I just thought you might prefer the privacy.”

“You were right.” Charles looks up at Erik and wonders yet again if this is the right thing to do -- it’s crazy, the whole thing, but Erik is so firm in his mind that he wants this, no doubts at all, nothing but determination. “I just wish it were simpler, than this, is all.”

“I know.” Erik runs his hand back through Charles’ hair, then settles it on the back of Charles’ neck, warm and reassuring. “We’ll do this, and in a few years once everything has settled down, maybe after I graduate college, we’ll have a proper collaring ceremony and invite Raven, Hank, anyone else you want. I don’t want to steal your perfect wedding from you, but I’m hardly letting you go to prison either.”

“I still might, you know,” Charles says. He leans his head forward to rest his cheek against Erik’s knee, letting out a soft breath. “Anyway. Call them. And I should -- I should go shave, and change. And shower. Maybe I should do that before you call them. So we can at least get a nice picture.”

“All right.” Erik’s fingers slip just beneath the collar of Charles’ t-shirt. “I’ll clean up the kitchen while you do that.”

“You don’t have to, I can get it later,” Charles says, reluctant to get up; he hesitates there for a moment longer, then gets to his feet, brushing his hands down his thighs. “I’ll be quick, okay?”

“I’ll be here,” Erik says, and Charles smiles and goes upstairs to get ready.

Ready to _get married_.

He has a little panic in the shower, leaning his forehead against the wall and staring into the tiles as the water beats down on his shoulders, the thought of Raven’s reaction -- of Geoff’s -- or Moira’s, or the prosecution’s, or, well, _everyone’s_ , falling on him like a ton of bricks; he manages to motivate himself enough to wash his hair and body, but he can’t stop thinking about how Erik is going off to college, how he still has so much life to live and time to grow and change and maybe he’ll realize he’s making a mistake --

The ring on Charles’ left hand feels strange, too, as he rubs the soap through his hair and down his chest, different and noticeable for it.

And yet -- nobody loves him like Erik does. Nobody makes him feel the way Erik does, despite everything -- alive and real, occupying real space instead of watching everything from a slight remove, as if there’s somebody who would notice if he popped out of existence, wouldn’t let him vanish into the ether. Even with everything that’s happened -- everything they’ve done and been to one another, all the bad things that have gone alongside the good -- there’s nobody but Erik that Charles can imagine wanting to be with. Life without him would be a faint wash, all the colour gone from the world.

When he finally gets out Charles has managed to convince himself to stick to his guns and go through with it; he can’t predict the future, so he has to live in the present. Still, he dries himself off and shaves in a sort of fugue state, trying very hard not to cut himself so that everything will be perfect.

He goes downstairs dressed in a suit and tie, his hair neatly combed back, and lingers in the doorway of the den, watching Erik where he’s sat on the sofa doing something on his laptop.

Erik looks back over his shoulder, eventually, and smiles when he catches Charles’ gaze. “Now I’m the one who’s underdressed,” he says, setting his computer aside and rising to his feet. “They’re on their way. I’ve asked them to keep it relatively brief -- I’d rather spend this time with you than a pair of strangers.”

“We should go in the parlor,” Charles says, the fluttering feeling in his stomach only growing. “It’s nicer in there. And they won’t see anything personal they could talk to the press about. Other than the obvious.”

“Anything you want,” Erik says. He offers Charles his hand as he passes through the door, and Charles takes it, letting Erik lead him through into the other room, together.

It’s not long until the justice of the peace arrives, but it feels like forever to Charles, waiting nervously, afraid he’s going to convince himself to change his mind. But when the man finally arrives, along with the witness, there’s no more time to panic about it.

“Hello.” Charles offers his hand to each of them in turn, and he’s surprised to feel just how unnerved he is by meeting new people again after so long isolated from everyone. “Thank you for doing this.”

“Neither of us knew who we’d be marrying when Mr Lehnsherr contacted us,” the witness says, but she doesn’t sound upset at all -- if she finds the idea of the two of them together disturbing, she’s ignoring it in favor of thinking how sweet it is, that Erik would go so far on Charles’ behalf. “There was a posting on Craigslist.”

“How romantic,” Charles says, glancing sidelong at Erik, who just grins and shrugs. Charles takes a deep breath and looks back at the two of them, his nerves rising. “So … what do we need to do?”

“Not a lot.” The Justice of the Peace smiles at Charles; the most reassuring part is how mentally detached he is from it, just doing his job without judgment or emotional involvement. It might ordinarily put Charles off, but right now he appreciates it. “Mr Lehnsherr indicated he’d rather have as short a ceremony as possible, is that what you would like?”

Charles would like for this to be normal, to have all their friends and family here and for people to be happy for them, for it to be uncontroversial and unsurprising to anyone that they want to be together, to commit to one another. But that’s not his life.

“Yes,” he says, instead of all that; the Justice nods, then says, “In that case, Mr Lehnsherr, if you could please hand the witness the collar and cuff -- I think it will be easier if she doesn’t mind holding them for you until we need them.”

Erik passes over the box and turns to face Charles properly, reaching for Charles’ other hand and squeezing his fingers once, gently. His gaze doesn’t leave Charles’ face as the Justice starts to speak, old words they’ve all heard a thousand times before. Charles’ breath catches in his throat, and he knows he ought to breathe, but he can’t quite seem to inhale.

“Erik and Charles, today you celebrate one of life’s greatest moments and give recognition to your love as you join together in vows of marriage. Erik, do you accept Charles to be your submissive?”

“I do,” Erik says, grinning wide at Charles, for all the world as if no one were here but the two of them, though Charles feels the shake of nervousness alongside the excitement in Erik’s mind.

“And Charles, do you accept Erik to be your Dominant?”

Charles swallows. “I do,” he says, and he can’t help smiling back at Erik, a reckless sort of feeling coming over him as he says the words, takes that leap of faith.

“Erik and Charles, just as two very different threads woven in opposite directions can form a beautiful tapestry, so can your two lives merge together to form a beautiful marriage. To make your marriage work will take love. Love should be the core of your marriage, love is the reason you are here. But it also will take trust - to know in your hearts you want the best for each other, for Charles to entrust Erik to order him with love, and for Erik to entrust Charles with his wellbeing in turn. It will take dedication - to stay open to one another; to learn and to grow together even when this is not always so easy to do. It will take faith - to always be willing to go forward to tomorrow, never really knowing what tomorrow will bring. And it will take commitment - to hold true to the journey you both now pledge to share together. 

“Erik, in your role as Dominant you must guide Charles and remember that all he grants you is from his love for you. You may guide him now to kneel, to receive the collar that will mark his submission to you.”

The witness pushes a cushion forward to the proper place on the floor and Erik uses his hands to help Charles balance as Charles sinks down to his knees -- in the classic style, with a single movement. He keeps his eyes on Erik’s, curling his fingers into Erik’s and feeling -- there’s a strange euphoria coming over him now, submission and happiness and the surrealness of this moment all mixing together, knelt on the floor at Erik’s feet. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t want to interrupt, but he knows Erik can feel the way he feels, the way Erik always does, so close to Charles’ heart.

Erik lifts the collar out of the box when the witness steps forward, his power unbuckling the leather. Charles shivers when Erik leans over to close the collar around his neck, leather soft against Charles’ skin and Erik’s fingers deft where they move at the front of Charles’ throat, clasping the buckle to fit. It’s so … it’s heavy when he swallows, a weight and a gentle pressure surrounding him, holding him in, and Charles feels … wanted, deeply in love all over again, and just a bit turned on at the same time, looking at Erik looking at the collar around his throat.

He doesn’t expect Erik to like it, so it’s not surprising that when Charles peeks into Erik’s mind he finds Erik viewing the collar with a sense of trepidation, his desire to like it and like the way Charles looks in it primarily intellectual. But Erik is genuinely happy with what he’s catching from the emotions Charles shares with him, and Charles hopes -- thinks -- that with a little coaxing, and some sharing of the way it makes Charles feel hot and bothered, that Erik might change his mind.

“Charles,” the Justice says, interrupting, and Charles startles a little, glancing away from Erik and back up at the Justice. “In your role as submissive you must follow Erik and obey him, always remembering that your submission is a gift given freely, not owed but offered in love. To symbolize your mutual bond, you may cuff Erik now to recognize him as your Dominant.”

The witness offers the box to Charles, the velvet pulled back to reveal a matching cuff, and Charles takes it with fingers that no longer shake, reaching to wrap the soft leather around Erik’s right wrist and buckle it in place, snugging it in close around his pulse and letting his thumb linger there over the metal, warming it with his skin. Erik’s fingers brush the underside of Charles’ arm and he smiles at him, more comfortable with the cuff than the collar.

“Erik and Charles, as you have now pledged yourselves to one another as Dominant and submissive, I now pronounce you wed,” the Justice says, smiling blandly at them both as the witness beams, the box snapping shut in her hand. “You may each now kiss your husband.”

Charles tips his face up as Erik bends down to meet him, and it’s -- he can’t say it’s perfect, not with everything else going on, but none of that matters right now. Because they’re married, tied together by a different kind of bond, one that everyone can see, and all Charles knows is Erik’s happiness like a fire in his mind, drowning out everything else as their lips meet in a kiss only barely restrained by having strangers there to see it.

Erik’s still grinning uncontrollably by the time he pulls Charles to his feet -- and the both of them have to sign the marriage license, along with the witness and the Justice himself -- but there’s no need to hurry the two out the door. They go easily enough themselves once Erik passes over their checks, giving their congratulations to both of them before they leave.

Charles’ hand creeps up to touch the collar at his throat, fingertips stroking over the soft leather and sleek metal of it, almost entranced; his breath hitches when it shifts against his skin, and Erik definitely notices, looking over at him and pulling his phone out of his pocket, gesturing with it.

“Shall I take photos now, before we’re indecent?”

“We should have asked the justice to do it,” Charles says, but he steps over to Erik’s side anyway, leaning a little against his shoulder and lowering his hand so the photo isn’t of him playing with his collar. Nothing to do, of course, about the flush on his cheeks, but maybe he’ll just look happy.

They take a few pictures, some looking at the camera, some at each other, before Erik puts his phone away and says, “Come upstairs, husband.”

“Yes, Erik.” A thrill runs down Charles’ spine at the words, and he lets Erik lead him upstairs by the hand, going into his bedroom -- their bedroom -- together, and closing the door behind them.

Once in there Charles reaches for Erik again and tugs him down into a deeper kiss, open-mouthed and filthy, trying to communicate with his mouth and tongue alone how he feels right now, how much he wants this, wants Erik; both Erik’s hands go for Charles’ shoulders, pushing his jacket off, dragging off his tie and then setting in on the buttons of his shirt. They undress each other in a fumble of hands and broken kisses, moving back towards the bed even as they’re pushing down trousers and kicking off shoes. Charles loses track of things, taken up in the moment and concentrating only on Erik, on his bare skin against Charles’. 

They fall back onto the mattress and tangle up in one another, barely breaking apart long enough to breathe before they’re making out again, Erik’s weight bearing Charles down into the mattress as he rubs down against Charles’ body, his thick cock leaving a wet mark on Charles’ belly.

“Here,” Erik says; he has a leather leash in hand, one Charles recognizes as being from an old play collar he used with Gabrielle. He threw the collar out a long time ago because it disturbed Erik too much, but hadn’t thought about the leash until now, as Erik loops it through a rung of the headboard and then clips it through the front loop of his collar. Charles’ breath catches as it pulls the leather against his skin, and his cock twitches hard against Erik’s stomach, his nipples tightening at the feel of it, the sensation of being surrounded by Erik’s control.

“You like that?” Erik murmurs, and tugs again; Charles moans, his hips jerking upwards, helplessly turned on.

Erik manhandles him over onto his stomach, reaching for the lube in the bedside table drawer. By the time he has Charles slicked and ready, Charles is immersed in subspace, floating in pleasure and the need to please. Panting into the pillow, his thighs spread and his ass raised off the bed, Charles’ cock is hanging full and heavy between his legs, begging to be touched. He wants it so badly, and when he twists to look over his shoulder at Erik the leash pulls tight and Charles’ eyelids droop again, the stimulus driving him deeper.

“Please.” He arches his back to present himself more fully, taking the trained posture to its full extreme. “Please … ”

Erik’s fingers smooth down his lower spine. “Be good, Charles,” he says, right before he pushes in. Charles’ mouth falls open and he lets out a strangled moan, the aching pleasure of being stretched zinging through him as Erik’s huge cock slides inside his ass; it fills him up, thick and heavy, and he feels -- feels -- caught, pinned in place and surrounded as Erik snugs their hips together, buried balls-deep inside Charles.

How can he best be good? Charles considers it almost dreamily, and then deliberately clenches tight around Erik’s cock, rippling around him. Erik makes a soft, heavy noise and grasps his thighs, holding Charles steady as he starts moving within him, a rhythm that starts off slow but builds. Erik’s mouth lays kisses down Charles’ back and his hands map out Charles’ skin like new territory, running down the outsides of his thighs and then back up the tender insides, teasingly close to Charles’ dangling erection but never touching it. Charles’ eyes squeeze shut and he gasps as Erik thrusts particularly deeply into him; it feels so good, and Charles gets up on his hands, starts rolling his hips back into Erik’s thrusts, fucking himself on Erik even as Erik fucks into him.

Erik comes first, burying Charles’ name against the nape of his neck with the leather collar pulled taut, Erik’s power tugging at the buckle. Afterward he pushes Charles down onto his back and kisses down Charles’ stomach, one arm curled around Charles’ thigh as he takes him into his mouth. It’s unbearably good, and Charles writhes as Erik sucks him, coming with Erik’s fingers sliding into his slick hole and Erik’s tongue drawing the pleasure out of him, working the underside of his cock while Charles shudders and gasps.

When Erik finally draws off Charles is left feeling wrung out and ridden hard and wonderful, reaching for him with both hands to draw Erik up his body to kiss him again, arms pulling Erik down on top of him.

Erik kisses his mouth, lax and languorous now, his thumb tracing the shell of Charles’ ear. “How do you feel?” he asks eventually, his face close enough it’s a surprise his lashes don’t brush Charles’ cheek when he blinks.

Charles hums, sharing his sensations with Erik; the ache between his legs, the warm glow of satiation and his hope that he was good like Erik said, because Charles is happy right now, safe and floating in a sea of contentment. Erik’s mouth brushes his again and then he shifts off to settle at Charles’ side, reaching for the blankets to swaddle the both of them up here in the warmth, Erik’s hand still stroking Charles’ bare skin.

 _Are you happy?_ Charles asks, too drowsy to speak aloud, touching his fingers to Erik’s cuff, warm around his wrist.

“I am,” Erik says. Charles feels the reverberation of those words in Erik’s mind, the warmth and sincerity of them, thrumming down so deep they drown out everything else.

 _Good._ Charles curls into Erik’s side, closing his eyes. He’s still sensitively aware of his collar, and his new ring, the weight of them reassuring as he falls asleep, for now feeling as if everything is okay.

*

_Erik_

It’s strange, waking up next to Charles in the bed they’ve shared for so many months, to listen to Charles’ sleepy grumble at the early hour and kiss his mussed hair, do all that and know no one can ever take this away from him now. He tries not to think about the collar; focusing on it just makes him feel like his own throat’s constricted, old memories making it hard to breathe. Not as bad as they would have once -- but even so, Erik prefers focusing his attention on Charles’ ring instead, the gold on his left hand to match the silver on his right. Even though there was no long engagement, it didn’t feel right to propose to Charles without a ring. 

Erik unhooks the leash from the ring of Charles’ collar so that Charles will know when he wakes he’s allowed to get out of bed, and pushes himself up. The light filtering in from the window falls golden across the lower half of the bed, a warm heat when Erik stretches his hand out into the ray. 

Being married, Erik doesn’t feel all that different from how he felt before. He was already so certain of his decision that making it official hasn’t cemented that further. If anything, he’s grimly afraid for Charles; Erik’s the only one between the two of them who’s consistently faced the media swarm since Charles got arrested, and he can already predict the reactions. The bright side is, all the tabloid papers will have to stop calling Charles Erik’s ‘foster father’ when they talk about him, and have to call him his ‘husband’ instead.

Setting that concern aside for now, Erik creeps out of bed, careful not to wake Charles, and goes down the hall into his old room to change into a new set of clothes. He brought a small duffel back from Raven’s but he’ll have to finish moving the rest today -- and now that everything’s done, he thinks as he brushes his teeth, he might as well clear out this bedroom for good. He can leave some things, simply because a part of him can’t entirely let go of the nostalgia of his teenage bedroom, but there’s no point in keeping all his clothes here anymore. When they move to Boston the extra bedroom in the new house will be exclusively for guests. Done in white and yellow, maybe, for Raven, who always says she looks good in those colors ….

It’s still only just past six-thirty when Erik finishes getting ready, far too early for Charles to emerge, so Erik goes downstairs and makes himself toast with jam and a cup of coffee, eating it at the kitchen table with his latest book held open by the weight of his mug and the edge of his plate.

Eight o’clock Erik starts making breakfast, and right on time at eight thirty Charles shambles into the kitchen, making a beeline for the coffeemaker. His robe is on but it’s not tied, the belt dragging along the ground, longer on one side than the other.

“Good morning,” Erik says to get his attention, smiling a little behind the rim of his coffee cup.

Charles’ head turns, his eyes blinking blearily as his hands automatically move a mug under the spout of the machine and press the start button. After a moment Charles comes over to where Erik is sitting and bends to kiss his cheek, arms draping heavily around Erik’s shoulders. “Morning,” he mumbles.

“Did you sleep well?” Erik asks. It’s so hard to gauge Charles’ mood this early in the morning, impossible to disentangle sleepy irritability from something more diagnostic.

“Mmm,” Charles says, glancing down and seeming to come to some decision, because he shifts his weight -- Erik thinks he’s about to kneel, but before he can react Charles sits down in Erik’s lap, ignoring his hot coffee -- which Erik has to move hurriedly out of the way -- and leans his head onto Erik’s shoulder, a heavy, warm weight on Erik’s thighs. “Hi,” Charles says, and yawns.

After a moment, Erik curls his arm around Charles and keeps him in close, even as he reaches to tug the plate he made up for him closer across the table, to where Charles can reach it. His hair is still messy, uncombed when Erik winds his fingers through it, watching the strands catch the light. “Are you going to eat something?” he asks, not sure how much last night changes about Charles’ condition, if anything.

“I eat.” Charles sounds almost indignant, but he doesn’t lift his head, his pleasure at having his hair played with tangible, the way Erik always feels Charles’ surface emotions. “Mmm. I should get coffee. It’s over there, though.” He gestures vaguely in the direction of the counter.

“You’re the laziest person I’ve ever met.”

“It’s early,” Charles whines, pushing his face into the side of Erik’s neck, and Erik laughs. Charles fits so perfectly in against him, the two of them like old stones run smooth by the river that still remain just halves of a whole. 

“I made you breakfast, and it’s going to get cold.” It’s not really a complaint, though, when he has Charles in his arms. He hasn’t forgotten his anger and his resentment, he’s just … let them go. He still owns them but he doesn’t need them now; he can put them away and let them gather dust.

“Ugh,” Charles says, but he lifts his head anyway and gets to his feet, leaving Erik’s lap cold as he goes over to the coffee maker to pick up his steaming cup. He’s already sipping at it before he even turns back around, bringing it with him as he comes back to sit at the table, in his own chair this time. _What’s for breakfast?_

“It’s the food right in front of your face,” Erik says dryly, gesturing at the plate of eggs, toast, beans, and bratwurst still waiting on the table. “Maybe we should get you on a caffeine patch -- like nicotine, to last you twenty-four hours.”

Charles looks at his plate. “Oh.” He reaches for the fork. “Sounds good to me,” and he looks at Erik and smiles as he moves a forkful of beans to his mouth and starts to eat.

He still isn’t quite right, Erik decides as he finishes his own third cup of coffee -- not because any of this isn’t normal Charles behavior, but perhaps because it is. Charles, playing normal to make Erik believe last night fixed everything, when of course it didn’t, never could. Probably it was foolish of Erik to even hope Charles might … improve, as if Erik were some magic saint come back to cleanse Charles’ soul and offer redemption. “I want you to see a therapist,” he says after Charles has finished the beans and toast and started in on the sausages.

At that Charles frowns, and seems to wake up a little more; his lips pull tight, but he just looks back down at his plate and says, “All right,” his shoulders drawing in towards his ears.

It’s less fight than Erik expected, and he can’t decide if he should be relieved or concerned. Maybe Charles knew he’d been intending to bring it up; Charles hasn’t been well since a few weeks before they actually got caught. “I’ll call around for you this afternoon,” he says, putting down his empty coffee cup and leaning back in his chair, watching Charles cut open one of the eggs. Well, he thinks -- one foot in the door, he might as well go for a home run. 

“Also, I was thinking … we should get a dog.”

“What?” Charles pauses with his fork hovering over the eggs; he looks surprised, eyebrows rising. “Why?”

“I like dogs. Besides, when I’m in class it’d be good for you to have someone to take care of. We can take it out for runs around the neighborhood, too. I’ve never had a pet.” It’s a lot of different reasons, and Erik isn’t sure which one Charles will go for. He shrugs and watches Charles carefully, unsure of his reaction.

Charles puts his fork down entirely, this time, lifting his head to look directly at Erik, confusion written large across his face. “What do you mean, when you’re in class?” he asks, frowning. “You’re going to Harvard, Erik, you can’t exactly commute to take it out to poop.”

Erik raises an eyebrow and says, “I assume you’ll be coming with me to Boston. You didn’t think I meant leave it here?”

“Move?” Charles is almost ostentatiously still now, and his teeth appear, briefly, biting at his lip, before he finally says, “We didn’t … we didn’t talk about that.” 

He looks like he might be getting anxious, the unexpected information catching him unawares and triggering a reaction in Charles that Erik didn’t intend. “It’s all right,” Erik says quickly, reaching out and grasping Charles’ wrist, squeezing. “You can stay here if you want -- I won’t _make_ you.” Though he can’t imagine Charles living here in New York alone, either, caring for himself every day in the way he ought to. Not like he is these days, anyway. “I thought you might rather live with me in Cambridge than stay here on your own.”

“It -- it’s fine, it makes sense.” Charles wraps his fingers around Erik’s wrist in turn, holding tight. “I just -- you surprised me. I’m fine. Really. I’m sure -- I’m sure there would be somewhere in Boston. I might even have a place there already, I don’t know.”

A bit of the old normalcy starts to creep back in, now, Charles’ nerves ebbing and retreating slowly away. Erik exhales silently and ignores the way his stomach still clenches uneasily, knowing that as much as he loves Charles he isn’t entirely prepared to deal with this. “Near campus, preferably,” Erik says. “It doesn’t have to be much. We’ll only need it for four years.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Charles says almost primly, reaching for his coffee cup with his free hand and taking it to his lips, sipping slowly, a deliberate pause. “You’ll scare my accountant if we go around buying new houses willy-nilly the moment we get married.”

Erik smiles a little and reaches over to steal a bite of Charles’ egg, lukewarm and yolky. Maybe, he thinks as he chews, washes the egg down with a sip of cold water, he can persuade Charles to go somewhere with him once the plea agreement is finalized and Charles is allowed to leave the state. After Erik’s graduation later this month he’ll have nothing to do between now and starting college in the fall -- he and Charles could have a honeymoon. Somewhere, like Charles said, far enough away that people don’t know or don’t care who they are.

When Charles finishes breakfast Erik takes his plate away, carrying it along with his coffee cup over to the sink to rinse off and put in the dishwasher. It feels so normal, no different from what he might have done last year after making Charles breakfast, and that no different from the year before that. It eases something inside him and makes him more certain he’s made the right decision; this is everything he wants, now until always. 

“I’ll need to go and get my things from Raven’s,” Erik says when he turns around to face Charles again, leaning back against the counter with his hands braced on the edge of the sink. He doesn’t want to break this moment, but he’d rather get it over with now and have the rest of the day to spend with Charles than have that knowledge tugging at the back of his mind all morning, knowing the quiet can’t last.

Charles winces, and Erik sees the way his cheek dimples, knows he’s biting at it. “I should call her,” he says, glancing towards the den, and the telephone. “Tell her myself. So she doesn’t feel like I’m hiding it from her.”

“Confess, you mean?”

“... Maybe,” Charles says, a sense of worry, of guilt, creeping tangibly from him, spreading across the kitchen. “Yes. She’ll hate me.”

“She should just be happy you aren’t going to prison,” Erik says bluntly, but he does appreciate Raven’s position. He’s well aware how it looks, especially for Charles -- he knows people will say Charles took advantage, again, of Erik’s youth and immaturity to get Erik to marry him and save his skin. 

“She probably will be.” Charles looks back at Erik with a small and awkward smile. “People rarely feel just one thing at once. Still. I think it will be a long time, if ever, before she can forgive me for everything I’ve done.”

“That’s not her job,” Erik says, and he pushes off the counter to come closer to Charles, pulling Charles’ chair back enough to settle straddling Charles’ lap, hands placed firmly on Charles’ shoulders, weighing him down and keeping him there as Erik presses a kiss to his mouth. Charles yields, but doesn’t chase the kiss when Erik pulls back. “I’m the only one who needs to forgive you, and I did it already. Raven’s entitled to be upset, but she doesn’t get to be your judge, jury, and executioner.”

Charles shrugs, placing one hand on Erik’s hips to keep him steady; his fingers are warm, splayed over Erik’s jeans, but it doesn’t stop the strange judder of Erik’s stomach to see Charles’ other hand lifting up to touch his collar, forefinger hooking through the front loop as if looking for reassurance. “I don’t think she sees it that way,” Charles says quietly, giving his collar a tug.

Erik sighs and slips his hands down to Charles’ waist instead, where the robe has trapped Charles’ body heat in close, and Erik slips his fingertips beneath the elastic band of Charles’ boxers, brushing bare skin. He kisses him again, not needing Charles to respond -- just taking it, sucking at his lower lip and teasing the tip of his tongue against Charles’ teeth. Charles tastes like coffee. Sugary coffee. 

“Call her now,” Erik says when he draws back, reaching across the table to get his phone and offer it to Charles. “Put it on speaker. I’ll intervene if she gets out of hand.”

Charles stiffens, this time, when ordered -- normally it calms him, but this time he swallows hard, staring at the phone as if it might bite him. “I … now?”

“Yes, now. The longer you wait, the worse it will seem. And you don’t want her finding out when the paparazzi outside put photos of this --” Erik lifts his wrist, displaying the cuff there “-- all over TMZ.”

Charles takes the phone. Before he dials he closes his eyes, tightly, taking in a shuddering breath, but then he hits the call button and the sound of it dialing echoes in the kitchen.

Ring. Ring.

Raven picks up on the third ring, her voice distracted. “Hey, Erik. What’s up? Everything okay?”

“Hi, Raven, it’s me,” Charles says. His fingers curl more tightly into a fist under his chin, holding close to his collar. “How -- how are you?”

“I’m okay,” Raven answers slowly. There’s the sound of something being put down in the background, of movement. “Why are you using Erik’s phone? Is he there?”

Charles glances up at Erik, still sat in his lap, and Erik nods, though he doesn’t say anything out loud -- Charles needs to do this himself. Erik knows he’s scared, but if Erik has any hope of ever getting him to leave this house again, he’s going to have to face that fear sooner or later.

“He’s here,” Charles says, turning his attention back to the phone. “Raven … we … ”

“Charles -- ”

“We got married last night,” Charles says in a rush, in a voice like he’s being sick, his body tensing and waiting for the blow even though she’s not physically here, shoulders curling in on himself. Erik’s heart clenches, but he makes himself stay quiet, just leaning in to brush his lips against Charles’ brow. “Erik asked me, and I -- I said yes.”

“What?” There’s a long silence on the other end of the line, then Raven says, quietly, fiercely, “Tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m not. Raven, I -- we -- we love each other, and I know that’s not -- ideal, and that you don’t approve, but --

“Don’t approve?” Raven sounds mortified. “Charles, Erik is _eighteen_. How could you do this? You know it’s not good for either of you -- you’ll make each other worse, you know that!”

“I love him,” Charles says again. “He loves me. It’s not -- it’s not good, we know that, but -- but life isn’t always good and right. Sometimes -- things just happen. Things don’t happen for a reason. Things don’t always work out. Otherwise nobody would be murdered or get cancer or lose their jobs unfairly. And then you just have to live with what’s real, and I love Erik even though it’s not -- ideal. It just is. We’re happy together.”

Erik smiles at him and hopes Charles feels the rush of affection he has toward him, Erik’s hands tightening at Charles’ hips. He warms up the metal of both the rings he gave Charles, just in case. No matter what Raven says, Erik doesn’t believe they make each other worse. They make each other better in so many ways -- anyone only has to look at Erik, how he is now compared to how he was, to see the positive effect Charles has had on his life.

“Of course you’re happy, Charles, you have an eighteen-year-old in your bed,” Raven says. “Fucking goddammit Charles, of all the self-destructive, mental things you could do, but why do you have to drag Erik down with you? He was going to get out of this, he could have had his life after this! And now he’s going to be the idiot who married his rapist! Is that what you want for him?”

“No,” Charles protests, “Raven, I never -- ” His hands tremble. “I didn’t. I swear to God.”

“That’s enough, Raven,” Erik interjects swiftly, power grasping onto the metal in his phone even as he doesn’t tug it away from Charles, ready to if he has to. “You’ve said your piece.”

“Erik,” she says. “You’ve fucked him now, you realize that? Charles could have served his time and got out and left it behind him, and now he’s always going to be the man who abused you until you didn’t know right from wrong and got you to marry him for it. He’ll never be able to get past it.” It sounds like she’s crying too, her voice thick and wet. “You’ve destroyed him.”

“I’m hanging up now,” Erik says, fighting himself to keep from crushing the phone into a useless hunk of metal as he uses his power to end the call, pulling the phone out of Charles’ reach as soon as it’s done and sending it sliding back across the table where Charles can’t get at it again. Charles’ freed hand comes up to cover his eyes, hiding their expression, but he can’t cover both his eyes and the twist of his mouth, puckering in the attempt to keep his reaction inside.

Erik takes Charles’ wrist, tugging his other hand down away from his collar to hook his own finger through the front loop instead. He hates it, hates the feeling of that metal pulling against his crooked knuckle, but he pushes that away in favor of tugging the leather taut against Charles’ nape. “Listen to me,” he says, making it an order, strong enough Charles has to obey. “She’s upset, but that doesn’t make her right. What people think right now isn’t what they’ll think forever. When I’m twenty-five, when I’m thirty, and still with you, no one will be able to pretend it isn’t consensual.”

“I hope so.” Charles swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing over the rim of the collar. “And I’m -- not surprised, Erik, I knew she would react like that. I know her. I just … I hate that she hates me now. She’s my sister.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She just doesn’t understand any of this, and she’s hurt, and she’s angry, and that can look a lot like hate. The difference is hurt and anger are temporary. Hate isn’t.” Erik should know. He pulls at the collar again, to make sure Charles doesn’t forget the pressure of it against his spine. “Give her time to come to terms with it.”

“Which of us is the telepath?” Charles asks, but he lets his other hand fall away from his eyes, looking up at Erik. “Do you still -- are you still going over there?”

“I have to get my things,” Erik says, “but … I can do that some other day. Give her time to calm down.” 

He brought his laptop and homework with him, which is the most important part. All that’s left is to manage the media before someone else gets to them first. Erik no longer needs Charles’ permission to have his comments published, which means he can control the tone these stories take. He keeps his hand at Charles’ collar as he kisses Charles’ cheek and says, “But I should go downstairs and talk to the reporters, before they figure it out for themselves. I’ll come back with something special for lunch later. All right?”

“I don’t think you should talk to them.” Charles’ fingers close around Erik’s under his chin, squeezing. “It’s none of their business. Let them wait a little longer before judging us. I don’t want to feel that today.”

Erik’s not convinced they won’t find out with or without his help -- marriage licenses are a matter of public record, after all -- but after a moment he nods, and leans in toward Charles, resting his weight against Charles’ chest and closing his eyes. Charles still smells like shampoo from last night, and a little bit like sex, and Erik breathes that in and lets himself forget about Raven for a little while, and the men and women waiting outside, constricts his world back down to him and Charles and lets that be all he sees.

*

_Charles_

The next day, however, Erik decides that they’ve waited long enough, and tested their luck long enough, that he wants to talk to the press himself before they catch wind of the marriage. The thought alone makes Charles feel ill and uneasy, but he can’t really complain -- after all, it’s not him that has to go down there alone to face the press and tell them what Charles has done now. They’ll find out one way or another.

Charles curls up on the sofa to watch the live news feed, waiting for it to switch to their street as Erik reaches the ground floor. It doesn’t take long for the news anchor to interrupt their current expert and say, “I’m sorry to interrupt you, Jim, but a breaking news story -- Erik Lehnsherr, famous focus of the ongoing sex scandal surrounding his relationship with his foster father, well-known mutant psychologist Dr Charles Xavier, is holding an impromptu press conference on the steps of Dr Xavier’s building! We’re going to our correspondent Shauna, who is there on the ground.”

The image changes to a black woman stood in the middle of a crowd before the doors of their building, and Charles watches, feeling sick, as she says, “Thanks Molly. Erik Lehnsherr is here about to speak, and as far as I can tell nobody even knew he was here. Behind me is the building he calls home, where he’s lived for the past four years with his foster father, accused statutory rapist Charles Xavier. Hopefully he’s going to explain to us what he’s doing here and what’s going on.”

The camera switches to one that’s focused on Erik himself. It’s bizarre to see him on the screen, looking just the same as he did when he left the apartment five minutes ago, wearing the same dark green shirt, when it feels like Charles is watching it happen from a thousand miles away -- not just upstairs.

“Lehnsherr is also known,” the reporter’s voice continues, since Erik obviously isn’t speaking yet, “as the survivor of numerous abuses at the hands of the Hellfire Club. Formerly Sebastian Shaw’s protegé, he was the star witness in the trial that led to their imprisonment and since has been involved in mutant outreach. He was in the news again this December for his actions defending New York against another terrorist attack committed by Hellfire, and is a fashion icon known on social media for his activism-focused Tumblr and Twitter accounts as well as his unusually high 7D DS score.”

The reporter breaks off, though, when Erik starts to speak. He seems to be responding to a question asked by a journalist from another network. “I cannot comment on rumors of any relationship existing between Charles and I historically, as that is part of an ongoing investigation. Instead, I’d like to focus on the future.”

Charles takes a deep breath, gaze glued on the screen as the camera refocuses, coming in tight on Erik’s head and shoulders, his calm expression writ large above the _BREAKING NEWS_ ticker running along the bottom. It’s a polite way of stepping around the issue, though it won’t assuage the crowd’s curiosity.

“On the evening of May 9th, Charles and I were legally married in a small, closed ceremony by a justice of the peace. We ask you to respect our privacy during this very personal time,” Erik says, though he doesn’t get to finish his sentence because a reporter asks, audible even over the crowd --

“Erik -- Erik, aren’t you seventeen?”

Erik meets whomever’s gaze off-screen. “No, I’m eighteen years old.”

A babble of uninterpretable questions, but one phrase comes out clear: “-- your birthday?”

“May 9th.”

God. Charles feels it, the rising tide of disbelief, of incredulity coming from below, like it might flood as high as this penthouse and swallow him whole; his fingers dig into the edge of the sofa cushion as the reporters scramble for a better shot, knocked hither and thither by their colleagues all trying to do the same thing. The reporter whose camera it is, close enough to hear, shouts, “Erik, doesn’t this imply Dr Xavier has been guilty all along?”

Erik gives the crowd a tiny smile. “In the statistical literature on causality, attempting to make reverse causal inferences is generally understood to be fallacious. As I understand it, there’s been a good amount of debate about this in the philosophy of science and logic -- I suggest you look it up. Thank you for your time; no further questions today.”

“Erik! Erik! Mr Lehnsherr!” The reporters are all shouting, trying to get his attention, but Erik ignores them, turning to go back inside; Charles’ heart is in his throat, beating so hard and fast it’s painful.

On screen the woman reporter turns back to her camera. “A shocking twist to this already shocking story as Erik Lehnsherr, who only turned eighteen the day before yesterday, announces he has wed his own foster father, accused of raping him, in a secret ceremony on the day of his eighteenth birthday. What conclusions can we draw from this other than that there is something very wrong in that household? They may not be related by blood, but this surely cannot be considered a simple love match. More on this story as it develops.”

The shot goes back to the studio and the slightly wide-eyed news anchor, who looks directly at the screen, directly at Charles, and says, “As a newscaster it’s my job to try and show all sides of an issue, to be impartial and present the facts, but I have to say, as a parent myself this story makes that job very difficult indeed. I, like the rest of America, will be waiting with bated breath to see what the courts have to say about this development.”

Charles turns off the television, knowing well enough he’s not going to hear anything good about himself. He sits in silence, trying to swallow it all down, until Erik gets back upstairs and opens the door with his power. Charles hears him toeing off his shoes in the gallery, and when Erik pads into the living room he looks tired, limbs heavy, but somehow still younger than his years. Which doesn’t help.

“That went well,” Charles says quietly, picking at the seam of his sweatpants with his thumbnail. “Nobody threw anything.”

“Jackals.” Erik comes to sit next to Charles on the sofa, arm settling over Charles’ shoulders and pulling him in against his side. Charles goes easily enough, tilting his head against Erik’s and closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at the black screen on the wall opposite.

“Maybe I should see a plastic surgeon,” he says, trying to make it a joke. “Get a face change. So they won’t recognize me any more.” The thought is oddly appealing, given the way the mood downstairs is shifting, between disbelief and a sort of strange outrage, undirected at the moment, though he’s sure that will come as they process the news.

“I like your face the way it is,” Erik says, fingertips coming to graze over Charles’ cheekbone. “I like _you._ ”

Charles hears Erik thinking how he wishes they could fast-forward through the rest of this season, past the summer and into fall, where they can escape New York and be somewhere else, somewhere not steeped in this history where they can start over. He’s worried Charles won’t get better, and maybe he’s right, but Charles isn’t convinced he can get better at all. Not this time.

“I suppose you might as well, since you’re stuck with me now.” He turns his head so he can kiss Erik’s fingers, letting out a sigh. “A quick divorce would make an even bigger stink.”

“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” Charles feels him smile, even though he doesn’t see it. “You’re mine now.”

“I am,” Charles acknowledges, and tries to block out the sound of all those reporters downstairs, working up to baying for his blood. He looks at Erik, at his husband, and he’s about to ask him what he wants to do while they hide out when Erik’s cell phone starts ringing in his pocket, a loud and startling sound that makes Charles jump. When Erik pulls it out they see Braden-Newell’s name onscreen and Erik sighs.

“I never did reply to his email,” he says, and after a second pushes himself up to his feet. “I need to take this,” he tells Charles. “Just give me a moment,” and lets his hand linger for a moment on Charles’ shoulder before he walks off in the direction of the gallery.

Charles’ teeth grind, the old anger and frustration catching him like a lit fire. How dare Elias think he has anything to say about this, about anything in Charles’ life? And he’s a little bit annoyed, too, that Erik would take Elias’ call at a time like this, would deem him important enough to answer his call right after announcing their marriage to the world.

“Hello,” Erik’s voice is distantly audible from the other room, Charles’ mind tagging along as he heads upstairs.

“Erik,” Elias says, clear to Charles through Erik’s ears. “I just saw the news.”

“I hope you aren’t calling to tell me what a terrible decision this is.”

“Do I think it’s a mistake? Yes.” It’s matter-of-fact in a way that makes Charles’ heart clench. “But you’re young, you’re bound to make mistakes, Erik. You just have to learn from them. I’m calling to give you some advice. Let this save Charles, the way you obviously mean to, and fuck the human courts. But then cut him loose. Your job will be done, and you can move on to doing what you were always meant to -- making a difference. You won’t do it with a handicap like this.”

“On the contrary,” Erik says, “I’m quite certain I’ll do it either way. But thank you for your input; I’ll take it under advisement.”

“If you mean to ignore my advice, and it’s clear from that answer that you do,” Elias says, “why did you bother to take my call at all? You’ve made a choice between my way and Charles’, is all I can presume. You’ve let him neuter you.”

Charles swallows, hard, hands clenching into fists, and he gets up to his feet to go into the kitchen, snatching up a water glass and filling it too fast from the faucet; upstairs, Erik is irritated and heading fast toward angry. 

“It never was a choice between your way and Charles’ way,” Erik snaps into the phone. “There was only ever _my_ way. If you had any respect for me at all, perhaps you would have realized that sooner.”

“My dear boy -- ”

Erik’s reaction is vivid and visceral. Whether Elias realizes whose words he’s parroting is impossible to say, but their effect surges through Erik’s mind like a briny tide, Erik’s fury plunging into his power and making the metal saucepans rattle even all the way down here, on the kitchen wall.

“ _Don’t_ call me that.” It’s perhaps the strongest Command Charles has ever witnessed from Erik, and even though it’s not directed at him he flinches hard enough that he drops his glass, which shatters in the sink into a hundred gleaming shards. Erik is so angry, he’s burning with it, and Charles turns and runs, making for the stairs and heading for Erik.

“Be reasonable,” Elias says, sounding taken aback. “I only meant -- ”

“You know damn well what you meant. Men like us don’t do anything unintentionally, isn’t that what you said to me?”

The lights in the house are all flickering now, wavering close to too-bright, and Charles runs along the hall towards the bedroom, bursting in as Elias says on the other end, “Erik, you’re overreacting.”

Charles grabs the phone from Erik’s hand and hits the button to end the call, then turns to look at Erik’s face, already reaching for him. Erik’s pale and furious, his eyes too wide and too bright, and Charles takes his face in his hands, holding him there and keeping his gaze. “He’s a dick,” he says, still breathing heavily from his dash up here. “Ignore him. His words mean nothing.”

“He knew what he was saying,” Erik snaps. “He knew.”

“Probably.” Charles strokes his thumbs across Erik’s cheekbones, projecting a soothing feeling as best he can when he’s so unsettled himself. “Elias is a bad person, Erik. He’s self-absorbed and manipulative, and he wants you to be one of his disciples. He misstepped this time. But now you know.”

“He doesn’t want me to be with you.” Erik’s hands lift to grasp Charles’ elbows, holding on tight. “He’s been trying to put a wedge between us since I went to California.”

The words are like a dart in Charles’ side, cutting into him. “I know,” he says, with a small, sad smile. “Why do you think I hate him so much?”

Erik exhales, long and slow, his tight grip finally relaxing somewhat on Charles’ arms. His teeth clench together so hard Charles sees a muscle twitch in his jaw. He’s silent for a long moment, his heartbeat as audible in Charles’ mind as it must be within Erik’s own head.

“I won’t have it,” he says at last. “I won’t tolerate it.”

Impossible not to feel a sense of victory at that, petty as it is -- Charles winning over Elias’ machinations, Erik more in love with Charles than with Elias’ ideology. “Then don’t talk to him anymore,” he says, not wanting to be too obviously pleased. “He lives on the other side of the country. If you don’t listen, he can’t talk to you.”

Erik nods, grimly determined, and Charles tugs him down to lay a kiss on his forehead, pressing it soft and chaste there, over the mind he loves so much. “Then he’s gone.” He flicks his fingers away from Erik’s face, like banishing something. “Let’s forget he even exists.”

“Come with me,” Erik says, and he takes Charles’ other hand, pulling him after as he steps back toward their bed, lying down there with his head on the pillows and tugging Charles into place beside him. Charles turns onto his side, curling towards Erik and watching his face, feeling Erik’s ebbing rage quieting, becoming something else. Up here Charles can almost pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. It’s the urge that leads him to spend so many hours here, sleeping or dozing, ignoring them all.

“Right now, the two of us are the only people who matter to me,” Erik tells him, his hand moving along Charles’ wrist, his arm, down his side to his waist. “Just for today. Only us.”

“All right,” Charles murmurs, and lets Erik rearrange them until they’re tangled up together, no lascivious intent but simply closeness to weather out the storm together.

*


	50. Fifty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, daymarket did an awesome fic of a fic [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4177749) that's a Reddit AMA of the witness at Erik and Charles' wedding last chapter! It's seriously hilarious, I laughed out loud and honestly at the end just wished for more. Check it out!
> 
> no cw this chapter :)

_Charles_

Charles goes to court on a Wednesday, eyes forward behind his sunglasses as he’s escorted to Geoff’s car, not looking at the people crowded to either side trying to get a reaction from him -- some of them reporters, some of them not -- and maintaining a blank expression only by thinking of how much worse it will be if they see him bend, if he gives them even a crack to pry into and break him apart. Erik is still upstairs in the apartment, Geoff having advised that having him in the courtroom would make the judge less likely to be lenient and the crowd more agitated. Charles can’t help but wish, though, that Erik could be with him, selfish as that is. He could do with the support.

Inside the car Geoff gives Charles a small smile, though Charles can feel that he, too, is a bit overwhelmed by the press of people outside. He’s elegantly dressed in a sharp grey suit and green tie, his briefcase resting on the floor by his feet. “How are you doing?” he asks. “We can go over things again if you’d like, before we get there.”

Charles fastens his seatbelt and leans back into the cushions with a huff of relief as the car pulls away from the curb. “That might be a good idea. I still don’t entirely understand the part about Erik’s testimony?” 

Geoff nods. “I can understand that -- it’s a common misconception that spouses don’t have to testify against their spouses, but in cases like this where the spouse is the victim the DA could still have called him -- they have that legal right. However, following your marriage to Erik and the way he’s refused to cooperate with the DA, they’ve decided it would cause too much of a media shitstorm for too little return to try and force him, so they’ve written him off as unreliable. Very good news for us.

“As a result the prosecution have agreed to a plea bargain of criminal sexual act in the third degree, with ten years’ probation and registration on the sex offender register. When our case is called before the judge, the DA will present the plea arrangement to the judge -- it’s really a formality at this point -- I’ll confirm that we’ve agreed to the terms, and the sentence will be passed. It’s quite simple and straightforward. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Charles says, though it’s hard to sound truly positive. He knows it’s better than what he had before -- no prison time, for one thing -- but … still. After today he won’t just be accused, he’ll be a sentenced criminal. It’ll be on his record for all time, and by taking the plea bargain he might as well have come out and publicly admitted to being a sexual predator, at least in the eyes of the world. It doesn’t sting any less for being less than he deserves.

Geoff reaches over to pat Charles on the shoulder. “It’s really not so bad as all that. Regardless of whether or not it was a good idea, and that I really would have preferred to have been consulted first even if just for a pre-nup, marrying Erik has saved you a lot of legal grief and cut through a lot of red tape.”

The collar is already a familiar weight around Charles’ throat, and his hand drifts up to the loop on the front, his finger hooking through it for reassurance as he looks out of the window, the city moving past him for the last time as a non-felon.

When they reach the courthouse there are more people there than were at the apartment, crowding on the sidewalks and barely held back by the police; Geoff opens the car door and it’s like being hit by a tidal wave, staggering Charles as he puts his sunglasses back on to hide the wide stare of his eyes from the photographers’ flashes.

“Come on, in we go,” Geoff says, offering Charles his hand to get out, and together they walk up the steps and through the columned façade of the county court.

It’s scarcely any less intimidating inside, all pale marble and crowded with lawyers and witnesses and other accused criminals. They have to pass through security -- a metal detector and guards to pat them down -- and then check in with a clerk, who directs them down a long hallway where they are led into a courtroom to sit and wait their turn.

The Domme two seats to the right of Charles is accused of manslaughter; the sub to the left of Geoff is accused of solicitation. Charles sits as quietly as he can, not wanting to draw the attention of either of them, and closes his eyes to shut it all out; he opens them when the judge arrives, a severe-looking man in long dark robes who folds his hands upon the top of his desk and says, “Let’s get started, shall we? Court is now in session,” and bangs a gavel to call the first defendant.

It’s a long morning. Charles is nowhere near the first to be called, and so he has to sit and listen to judgment being passed again and again, to others arguing with their lawyer or crying as their sentence is read out, to the judge making the occasional comment or discussing something the the prosecutor, with the defense. He sits through it all with his hands tangled together in his lap, not daring to reach to his collar -- there are court reporters in the room, after all, even if the general press hasn’t been allowed access, quite aside from everyone else who wouldn’t turn down their five minutes of fame if it meant they got to pass on a tidbit about him to the gossipmongers.

Charles takes a deep breath, lets it out. Concentrates on his own breathing instead of everyone else.

Finally the judge calls a number and Geoff stands up, startling Charles, who was so focused he didn’t even notice it was his number; he jerks to his own feet, and follows Geoff nervously to the front of the room, tension in every muscle. He knows how Geoff said it would go, but still he can’t help but be afraid that the judge will turn around and say they’re wrong, then hand out something ten times worse.

“Case number NY038950, People v Charles Xavier, in which Mr Xavier stands accused of a criminal sexual act in the third degree. Ms Johannes?” the judge says, turning to the DA, who has taken her own place on the other side of the aisle. “Please present the case.”

Ms Johannes nods, holding her file in one arm and coming forward from behind her bench. “Your Honor, Dr Xavier was photographed in a compromising position with his foster child one Mr Erik Lehnsherr, and later found to be maintaining an anonymous blog in which he described his relationship with Mr Lehnsherr -- not named, but clear in inference -- as romantic and sexual in nature, and that it had been going on for some months if not years. While it was unclear in the photographs whether or not Dr Xavier and Mr Lehnsherr were entirely unclothed, they were clearly inappropriate. Dr Xavier and Mr Lehnsherr have since married, leading to an inability to thoroughly investigate the case due to Mr Lehnsherr’s intransigence.

“As Mr Lehnsherr, at sixteen, was under the age of the majority at the time and Dr Xavier more than five years his senior, in addition to the fact that Mr Lehnsherr’s position as ward of the State and Mr Xavier’s employ as his foster parent, that Mr Lehnsherr is incapable of providing consent is without argument. We have agreed a plea bargain with the DA, and Dr Xavier will plead guilty to criminal sexual act in the third degree, with the punishment to be ten years of probation and twenty year registration on the sex offender registry with petition for relief in ten. Furthermore Dr Xavier is to be barred from working directly with young people for a minimum of ten years, with petition for relief in five.”

The judge turns to look at Charles then, his mind all sharp distaste and consideration, and he says, coolly, “Given the lack of concrete evidence or testimony, I suppose it will have to do. Mr Carson. How does your client plead?”

“Guilty, your Honor.” Geoff at least sounds unruffled, even as Charles’ heart sinks into the floor, becoming one with the marble and concrete. “We accept the punishment.”

“Very well.” The judge bangs his gavel. “Charles Xavier, I sentence you to ten years of probation and registration on the sex offender registry. You are barred from working directly with young people for a term of five years, which will then be open to review but not lifted until given the permission of this court. Do you have any statement to make?”

“No, your Honor,” Charles says, looking down and away, and then Geoff is taking his arm and directing him out, finally out of the courtroom and into the corridor.

“Your DNA is already on file with the NYPD, but you’ll need to have the photo taken for the register before we go,” Geoff says. “Then you can go home. Your probation officer will be in touch some time in the next few days.”

Won’t that be fun, Charles thinks, staring at the ground as they walk and making sure he at least keeps his feet, doesn’t trip up and make more of a spectacle of himself. “All right. Let’s go get registered.”

*

The Sword of Damocles has been lifted, Charles is -- relatively -- free, and yet nothing is the same. Nothing can be. If he hadn’t promised Erik he would try, then Charles definitely would not be here, sat outside another psychologist’s office waiting for him to finish with his previous patient. He has enough to deal with already without adding this to the pile.

It’s foolish, perhaps, for him to think that there’s nothing Dr Daniels can do to help him -- Charles is a psychologist himself, or at least he was -- but to Charles’ mind that just means he has a better understanding of the profession’s applications and limitations. The fact is that medication isn’t going to work to alleviate his depression, not with the chemical changes in his brain from the telepathy interfering, and frankly there’s very little anyone can do to improve Charles’ general situation, given … the way things are. It’s not fixable.

Erik sits beside him in the small parlour Dr Daniels uses for a waiting room, flipping through one of the flimsy, useless magazines off the side table; he keeps casting glances at Charles as if he thinks Charles might somehow have slunk off while Erik wasn’t paying attention.

“I’m not going to try to escape,” Charles mutters, folding his arms across his chest again and closing his eyes. “I just don’t want to be here.”

Erik reaches over and squeezes his knee. “You’ll be fine.” Then, “Imagine how I felt having to see you for the first time as your patient. Remember, Dr Daniels is a person like anyone else.”

“Non-telepaths can’t hear themselves being analyzed. At least everyone else can pretend their doctor isn’t judging them.” That’s always been the worst part for Charles, always knowing that the doctor was a person just like everyone else -- along with all the attendant hang-ups and distastes.

“Try to tune him out,” Erik says, though even he knows that’s easier said than done. “When I spoke to him on the phone he insisted he would remain objective. That’s the best we can hope for.”

Charles doesn’t get a chance to reply, because that’s when the door opens to Dr. Daniels’ office and he emerges, tugging off wire-rimmed glasses to wipe them clean with a handkerchief. His gaze lands on Charles, then Erik, weak and myopic before he pushes the glasses back up his nose. 

“Charles,” Dr. Daniels says, “if you want to come on back….”

Not really, but if Charles tries to get out of it all Erik will do is make him, so Charles sighs and gets to his feet, following Dr. Daniels into his office.

It’s a good-sized room, the windows large and letting in plenty of sunlight; there are fine drapes covering them to keep people outside from seeing in, which is a relief. One wall is all books, and there’s a desk set over to one side, but the room is dominated by the two couches, one opposite the other, and when Dr. Daniels gestures for Charles to take a seat he does so, resting his hands clasped together in his lap.

“Hi Charles,” Dr Daniels says once they’re settled, extending a hand out across the space between Charles’ couch and where Daniels sits on the opposite. “I’m Mark. I believe it was Erik I spoke with over the phone, so it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Likewise.” It would be terribly bad manners, Charles thinks as he shakes Mark’s hand, to look in this man’s head and make a judgment of him as a psychologist -- not to mention that he knows full well he’s really just looking for excuses to make to Erik not to come back. It could hardly be unbiased. “In the interests of full disclosure, I’m sure Erik told you that I’m reluctant to be here.”

“He did,” Mark says, “which is why I’m glad you’ve decided to at least give it a shot. Of course you know the statistics on talk therapy, and the benefits it provides even to therapists themselves.”

It’s inarguable, really, but it doesn’t make Charles any more enthused about being there. “Be that as it may be,” he says, “I’m here because Erik insists, not for any other reason. Therapy is a considerably different experience for a telepath; most patients can’t hear what the doctor is thinking.”

“Of course,” Mark says blandly, and reaches for his clipboard, tugging it over to rest on his knee. “Well, I hardly need remind you, but I’m required: everything you say in here is confidential. I can’t tell anyone what you tell me, not even Erik. The only exceptions are if I have reason to believe you plan to hurt yourself or to hurt someone else, in which case I can still only tell the appropriate authorities. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

Charles glances over at the bookshelves, trying to determine from his seat which volumes Mark has, and thus what schools of thought he falls into; there are a few texts he recognizes from his own shelves at home, but those are the sorts of generic texts every practicing psychologist should own, and hardly telling. “I have no intention of hurting myself or anyone else,” he says, his gaze moving to examine Mark’s degrees, hung on the wall above the desk. Arizona State; not a bad school, but not prestigious either.

“Well then, with that settled, why don’t you tell me why you came in today?”

Charles can’t help it; the corner of his mouth quirks, wry, and he says, “Because Erik insists I see someone, and won’t take no for an answer.” He’s being difficult, he knows, but it was a poorly worded question to begin with. “If you mean, why does Erik want me to come, then it’s because he’s concerned about my mental state given everything that’s happened recently.” There, that’s bloodless enough.

“Do you think he has good reason to be concerned?” Mark asks, ignoring his clipboard for the time being, which Charles appreciates, because he dislikes therapists who spend the whole time their patients are talking scribbling down notes instead of truly listening.

“I think there’s very little that can be done to alleviate a situation that cannot be alleviated,” Charles says, and he lets himself settle back into the sofa, since he’s due to be here for forty-five minutes; he might as well be comfortable. “I’ve experienced episodes of depression throughout my adult life; they are usually brought on by stress, and pass when the stress passes. There’s not much to do about it, given that medication is contraindicated, and I can’t leave the country.”

“No,” Mark admits, “but surely as a psychologist you know medication is not the only way to treat depression. In fact, it’s not even the best way. Many people never need medication at all, and many people are never helped by medication even if they do take it. If you have never tried therapy because _medication_ doesn’t work for you, then you’re blinding and hobbling yourself on purpose.”

How to put this diplomatically … “Imagine being a psychologist yourself, and so knowing what someone else will say to anything you have to say,” Charles says, trying to keep his face calm and neutral, though inside he’s starting to feel a bit anxious, his uneasiness about being here compounded by Mark’s questioning of his reasons. “Then imagine that you can hear that other person thinking, can hear them judging what you tell them -- no matter how hard they try not to -- and all the other little thoughts people have, like what they want for dinner or their errands list for later on. It’s perfectly normal, everyone does it, but it doesn’t help in a clinical situation to feel that the person meant to be helping you is thinking about whether to have beef or pork instead of about your issues. I’m a strong advocate for talk therapy, but find it unhelpful in my own case.”

“To touch on your points individually,” Mark says, “I am a psychologist, and I see a psychologist myself: so I don’t have to imagine that part. I can’t speak to being a telepath, of course, but I will do my very best not to think about eating while I’m talking to you. As far as the judgment goes, I’ll try not to do that either, and if you catch me at it, you’re more than welcome to call me out. I’ve seen hundreds of patients, Charles, but I have never met a truly _bad_ person. And I’ve never met someone who was untreatable. I very much doubt you’ll be the first.”

It’s affecting, just to hear it put so plainly, and as much as Charles wants to dislike Mark -- to pick holes in his arguments, dismiss his opinion and his professional judgment -- he still feels his gut clench and the corners of his eyes prickle, wishing that could be true. It would be disingenuous of him to argue for the sake of it, he thinks, looking down at his hands, his fingers curling tightly together in his lap.

“My reputation is ruined, my life’s work -- both in psychology and mutant integrationism -- utterly discredited, my family and friends no longer wish to be associated with me, and I cannot leave the apartment without having people on the street hurl abuse at me. Even when they don’t they think it,” he says finally, a lightheaded feeling washing over him, like he’s been cored. “No amount of talking is going to repair that. It is what it is.”

“That’s very fatalistic,” Mark comments, and Charles can tell he’s still looking at him even without glancing up. “It hasn’t been nearly long enough to be sure your reputation and work are permanently discredited. As far as your family and friends go, I recall there’s a young man sitting in the waiting room outside who seems to care for you very much.”

God, if Mark had any idea … 

“Erik is hardly a yardstick for good moral judgment in this case,” Charles says, lowering his chin even further. “It took him years to accept that his upbringing with the Hellfire Club was abusive at all, and I don’t flatter myself to say that I’m nowhere near Sebastian Shaw’s league, but I benefit from Erik’s complete lack of perspective here. He shouldn’t care, even if I’m grateful that he does.”

“Are you more upset, then, because your friends and family are angry with you? Or because you think they’re right to be, and therefore even the people who do care don’t count, because they must be blinded to reality?”

And that -- that _cuts_ him, like being struck with a knife, the words delivered in such a calm voice but with so sharp an edge. “I’m not upset,” Charles says, trying to staunch the wound by pretending it’s not there. “Being upset would imply that I think it’s unfair of them to react this way.”

His knuckles are painful, feel like they're creaking under the strain.

“I think there’s a lot to uncover here, Charles,” Mark says gently, after a beat. “I’ll let you decide which you think you would be a more helpful route to take: are you more interested in discussing how you feel right now, about everything that’s happened and what’s come out in the media, or do you want to talk about why it happened in the first place?”

“I don’t want to talk about it at all,” Charles says. 

His eyes are wet now, nothing he can do to stop them, to stop it from rolling down his cheeks and showing him up as a liar. His throat is burning tight, and he wants so badly to just -- stop everyone, put everyone in this building on pause and get out of here, go home where he doesn’t have to play this game any more, doesn’t have to decide whether to strip himself to the bone to a stranger or pretend everything’s fine when it’s not and it never will be again. He could do it, that’s the worst thing -- he could easily do it, wipe this whole appointment from Mark’s memory and from Erik’s, make everyone stop thinking about it, ever. Charles could do whatever he wanted, if he let himself, and yet what he’s doing is sitting here on a stranger’s sofa and crying with his face in his hands, helpless and stupid.

He just wants it all to stop, and he could do it if he wanted to, could remake the world however he wanted, but he can never undo the things he’s already done.

“We don’t have to,” Mark says, and Charles realizes when the cardboard bumps against his knees that Mark has passed him a kleenex box. “I think we should, eventually, but if you aren’t ready for that, then we don’t need to do it today.”

“I could make everyone forget about it, if I really tried,” Charles says, his voice choked up high in his throat, and he takes a kleenex, pressing it to his eyes to try and soak up the tears that are still spilling down his face. “Imagine that -- having the reset button to hand and never being able to use it. Not without being even more like Shaw and the others.”

“That’s an incredible temptation,” Mark agrees. Charles hears him lean back in his sofa again, though he -- obviously -- doesn’t see it. “I think you must be a very strong person in order to resist it.”

“Erik would say it’s because I like to punish myself too much. He thinks I’m a martyr.”

Mark laughs a little, not unkindly, though Charles doesn’t think it’s funny at all. “Oh yeah? And what do you think?”

“I don’t want to be the sort of person who gets to pretend they didn’t do anything wrong and get away with it, just because I can,” he says into his hands, his whole face feeling swollen and hot. “I’m guilty. There are consequences for my actions and I deserve to be punished for them. I’ve accepted that, even if Erik hasn’t.”

“All right. Well, I agree, if you’ve broken the law then you ought to be punished accordingly. There’s nothing inappropriate or pathological about feeling bad about having hurt someone else. So when you say Erik hasn’t accepted that there are consequences to your actions, what do you mean by that?”

How to even … Charles isn’t sure how to approach that question, not without putting his foot down on a landmine. He’s quiet for a long time, perhaps a minute, Mark waiting patiently for him to speak, before he finally says, “Erik -- he only ended up marrying me to save me from going to trial. He was thinking about leaving, before the photos leaked and everything happened. He had finally understood what I really did to him, and he hated me.” Charles’ breath comes in in a rasp, shivering its way into his lungs, unable to keep itself steady. “But as soon as -- as soon as there were consequences, as soon as other people got to judge us, me, for it, he was indignant that they should have opinions, had to fight back against them. It’s the only reason he changed his mind.”

“Do you want him to leave?” Mark asks.

The words nearly choke Charles on their way out. “He should. It would be better for him if he did.”

“I asked if that’s what you _want._ ”

“I think it’s been firmly established by now that I shouldn’t be allowed to have what I want, when it comes to Erik,” Charles says, and laughs, breathless and bitter, dropping the crumpled, sodden kleenex to the carpet, smothering the awful sound with the heel of his hand, because he sounds -- crazy, hysterical, even to his own ears, but he can’t seem to get it back under control. _In fact, quite the opposite,_ he says silently, unable to breathe steadily enough to say it aloud.

“Well then maybe we shouldn’t be talking about you want, but about what Erik wants. He’s an adult now, so he can make his own decisions and his own mistakes. And at least for the time being, it seems that what he wants … is to be with you.”

 _Erik ‘wants’ whatever he thinks will mean he doesn’t get uprooted again, regardless of whether it’s what he really wants or what is healthy for him._ It’s easier to talk like this now, Charles’ physical voice unreliably shaky. _This whole thing started with him trying to please me, to give me what I want. He’s just better at pretending now, to me and to him. And to you, apparently. What Erik wants is rarely what he really wants. He doesn’t know the difference._

“Do you think, then,” Mark says, and Charles can hear the tap of his pen against the edge of his clipboard, “that you ought to make this decision for him? Because you know what he really wants, regardless of what Erik says he wants?”

 _I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t letting Erik make his own mistakes,_ Charles says sharply, and the implication -- the suggestion that he’s still doing the same thing makes him recoil, snapping back into his own head and clamping down the urge to say anything else when clearly Mark doesn’t understand, thinks Charles hasn’t _learned_ from his mistakes, if he can suggest something like that.

Mark isn’t a telepath, but he must have been able to feel Charles closing up, because he says, “Do you want to bring him in here now for the second half of our meeting? When he called, Erik mentioned he wanted to have some time used for couples’ therapy as well.”

Charles shrugs sullenly; he doesn’t want to be here at all, so if Erik wants to use some of the time they’re paying for he might as well have it, since Charles doesn’t want it. Mark takes that as an acquiescence, and says, “All right, I’ll get him,” and rises up from his sofa, going back out into the waiting room to retrieve Erik. In the short window it gives him, Charles uncurls enough to grab another kleenex and scrub at his face to try and hide the worst of the evidence; there’s nothing to do about how puffy his eyes are, but at the very least his cheeks can be dry.

A few moments later Mark returns, Erik a step behind him, and Charles closes his eyes, tired and relieved despite himself when Erik sits down on the sofa next to him, reaching out a hand to rest it on the back of Charles’ neck, clearly concerned.

 _I’m fine,_ Charles says to Erik alone, knowing it’s rude to exclude Mark from the conversation but not caring.

“Charles,” Mark says, “do you want to tell Erik what we were talking about? Or is there something else you’re interested in discussing?”

“No.”

“Erik?” Mark prods, and Charles feels Erik jerk his attention back to Mark himself, whereas before he’d been analyzing Charles’ swollen face, the redness in his cheeks and his closed eyes, lashes still wet from tears. 

“I want to talk about where we’re going from here,” Erik says after a moment, though his hand stays on Charles’ back, between his shoulder blades. “A lot has happened over the past several weeks, and we haven’t really had a chance to unpack it. Normally I’d want us to handle this on our own, but with Charles in such a bad place, I thought this might be a better idea.”

Oh yes, Charles thinks, wonderful. Let’s talk about how you’ve impulsively married an unemployed sex offender more than a decade your senior, and whom you’re planning to move to Boston to be a hermit in your apartment there instead of in New York, while you start your freshman year of college and he decays.

What he says is, “Erik starts at Harvard in the fall.”

“That’ll be a big change,” Mark says, his attention turning to Erik, whose fingers shift lightly at the nape of Charles’ neck.

“Charles will be coming with me,” Erik says. “I thought perhaps, a change of scenery….”

Yes, that will be fun. Having to re-register as a sex offender in a different state, Charles thinks, aware he isn’t being fair. He wouldn’t want Erik to leave him behind, knows full well that he wouldn’t do well left to his own devices -- but just being here, being probed by Mark, has left him on edge and irritable, oversensitive to everything around him.

“What do you think about it, Charles?” Mark asks.

Oh, for goodness’ sake. What do they think he thinks? 

“It’s a shame Erik is missing out on the experience of living in communal dorms,” Charles says, making his voice very quiet and almost calm, though there’s a quiver in it he can’t quite force out. “It’s a useful social lubricant.”

“Would you rather I live there instead?” Erik says, with his usual disregard for diplomacy.

“... no.” Charles can’t think of anything he can say that isn’t either stupid, pathetic or far too personal. His fingers tighten where they’re laced together in his lap. “It’s just … it’s another thing you don’t get to experience. It’s a shame.”

“Another thing he doesn’t get to experience because of you?” Mark asks, clearly wanting Charles to clarify just how much he really does blame himself for all of this.

“It’s not because of anyone else,” Charles says, and he looks up at last so he can look at the clock on the wall -- there’s still another fifteen minutes yet, not what he was hoping for.

“So what?” Erik says, a bit testily, his hand finally dropping from Charles’ back to rest on the sofa between them. “There are plenty of experiences I’ll never have, and plenty I will. I’m pretty sure I’ll live whether or not I experience the freshman dorms. And there’s a lot of things I do get to experience because of you. For example, I get to be married already, while all my peers will still be worrying they’re going to end up alone forever.”

Charles wants to say, _oh yes, I’m sure they’ll all be incredibly jealous that you married the man accused of raping and molesting you as a child,_ but the words stick in his throat like fishbones, scratching him inside like they’re trying to claw their way out. “So what did you want to talk to Mark about?” he asks instead, turning a little towards Erik but not quite meeting his gaze. “You said about where we go from here?”

“This is exactly the kind of thing I want to talk about. You feel guilty, which is understandable, but I worry that it might … overshadow the good things about where we are _now._ ” A pause, Erik’s fingers twitching on the seat, nearly curling into a fist, but not quite. “We never got a chance to work through everything before the photos got leaked. I don’t want us to go blindly into this and never resolve all of that.”

Charles is quiet for an awkwardly long few seconds, until finally he says, “I don’t know what you want from me. It’s not as if I don’t know you were going to leave me before you came back from California when I was having a bad day. You felt guilty because you thought I was too fragile, and felt sorry for me. I can’t pretend you had some big romantic revelation that you love me too much to leave when I know that’s not true.” He feels sick, exhausted, nausea in his brain and his heart both, as if he could throw them both up and have done with it all at once. “I’m a burden on you.”

Next to him, Erik exhales, the sound soft and tired. “Charles…. When I came back, I thought you might have killed yourself. I didn’t stay because I felt sorry for you, I stayed because I realized if you weren’t in my life, I wouldn’t want to live anymore myself.” 

Charles can tell Erik’s looking at him, see Erik’s face turned his way out of the corner of his eye, but he can’t bring himself to look and see his expression.

“I was thinking about whether I should leave, yes. But I don’t think I would have chosen to leave, in the end. That’s never what I wanted. But I had to consider it. If I didn’t, I’d just be … willfully blind.”

“You would be better off without me,” Charles says, and his voice breaks, his hands curling into fists on his thighs. “I used to be a good person, but now I’m just … ”

“You’re someone I _love_ ,” Erik says, and it’s shocking coming as it does in front of Mark, a stranger, when Erik is usually so private about his feelings. “You’re the best person I know. One mistake doesn’t undo all of the good things you’ve done with your life.”

Charles lets out a shaky breath, trying to think of what to say, but everything’s -- it feels like there’s too much to say and not enough, none of it right, none of it what he really means and none of it something he’s willing to say with Mark right there. _It’s one thing to say that now, when we’re in the middle of a crisis,_ he says finally, just to Erik, _but when things calm down again and you’re not at battle stations then you might feel differently. I love you more than anyone, and that won’t change no matter what, but -- it’s different for me._

 _What do you mean?_ Erik thinks back at him, holding a hand up for Mark's benefit, as if to prevent him from speaking to break the long silence. _What the fuck are you saying, Charles, that you love me more than I love you?_

 _No, not that,_ Charles says. _I know you love me. The difference is that I made our relationship what it is; I did this to you, not vice versa. You felt you had no choice because of me. Even when I tried I couldn’t break it off, not really -- it’s easier to forget about that when you’re caught up in what’s going on now, but you’ll remember it more clearly when you have less on your mind. And that’s okay, that’s normal. But it’s different for me, as the one who got his way._

Erik gives him a faintly incredulous look, ignoring Mark, who clears his throat from the sofa opposite. “Of course this is mostly your fault,” Erik says, though it is out loud this time. “But you’re ignoring something very important, which is the fact that -- regardless of _why_ I started this, or why I felt I had to, I _did._ You made the cliff, but I pushed us over the edge. And you couldn’t break it off sooner because I made that next to impossible to do. You make it sound like you’re some kind of … predator. You aren’t.” 

_We’re both fucked up, and that’s why it happened,_ Erik adds silently, and he’s looking at Charles with unwavering eyes -- Charles can feel how badly Erik wants to reach out and touch him, draw him closer, but doesn’t dare in front of Mark for fear of giving Mark an excuse to think poorly of Charles.

It’s hard to accept what Erik is saying, even if Charles can hear how sincere he is, can hear that Erik really means it, that it’s not just something he’s saying to make Charles feel better. Charles’ eyes are wet again, and he wishes he could turn it off, that there was some faucet he could turn, because this is embarrassing. “I don’t want you to waste more time on me if you’re going to realize later it’s not what you want any more,” he says finally, makes himself say it aloud. “I don’t think I could take it if everything settled down and then it ended all over again.”

“I like to think marriage is rather permanent,” Erik says.

Charles’ hand shifts up of its own accord to touch the collar around his throat, leather warm from body heat, and he hooks his finger through the loop at the front, the solidity of it reassuring despite everything. He doesn’t want to argue with Erik about divorce statistics and intentions and all of that any longer. He’s too tired to keep debating it back and forth, especially when Mark is just sitting there, listening to them like an umpire at a tennis match and weighing their words in his head, coming to his own conclusions.

“What do you think?” he asks Mark after a moment, deciding to confront it head on. “You’ve heard what we think.”

“There’s a lot of backstory here I seem to be missing,” Mark says. “I don’t know how the two of you got together in the first place, for example, or how you tried to end things and how Erik kept you from succeeding. But in the end, it isn’t my opinion that matters. I’m not here to tell you who’s right and who’s wrong, or how you ought to live your lives. I’m here to make sure you can listen to each other and understand what each other is saying and feeling and go from there. Moderation, not arbitration.”

“Understanding the thoughts and feelings of others is not a problem I have,” Charles says, a little dryly.

“No,” Erik cuts in, “ _reading_ them isn’t a problem. But your understanding is no better than anyone else’s, because you filter everything you read through your own bias. You might know _what_ I feel, but you don’t necessarily know why, and you don’t necessarily think I’m right to feel it.”

Affronted, Charles says, “I don’t tell you what to feel about things.”

“No, but you still think you know better than me how I _do_ feel. You already told me how I’ll feel about you ten years from now. Even ten weeks from now, when things calm down. Only, you can’t possibly know that, because you can’t see the future.”

Charles’ instinctive reaction is to say, _yes I can,_ but even he knows that’s ridiculous. “I just know how people work,” he says, curling his finger further through his collar loop, holding on tight. “I don’t want you to make a mistake.”

“I don’t want to make a mistake either. But I also don’t want us to waste our time worrying about what _might_ happen down the road. I want us to enjoy the fact that we _can_ be together. I want to do all the things we weren’t able to do before. I don’t want to keep looking over our shoulders.”

Erik’s frustrated -- frustrated with the situation, being what it is. Frustrated with Charles, for not wanting to _believe_ Erik, for insisting he knows what Erik feels and what Erik is going to do, for always having some excuse or justification for everything Erik tries to say to reassure him instead of just _listening._

Charles isn’t sure what to say to that, torn between disagreeing and his chagrined suspicion that Erik is right; his mouth twists, but before he can say anything Mark leans forward from the other chair. “We’re out of time now, but here’s my prescription: go home and spend some quality time together just doing something you both enjoy, instead of worrying or talking about what’s going on with Charles’ reputation. I suspect you haven’t had much of that lately.”

“Not really,” Charles says, and glances over at Erik. “I’ve been tired a lot lately, too.”

“I’ll make you some coffee,” Erik says, the corner of his mouth tilting up, and Charles manages a little smile for him in return, wishing he could lean over and put his head on Erik’s shoulder.

“All right, then,” Mark says, finally marking something down on his clipboard: through his eyes, Charles sees that it’s a reminder of the suggestion he made for them. “Charles, I’ll see you again on Thursday, and Erik, I’ll see the two of you back here together same time next week. Sound good?”

While Charles can’t exactly say it’s been an enjoyable experience, he knows that saying no won’t actually mean he doesn’t end up back here on Thursday, so he says instead, “Okay,” getting up from the sofa and wiping his palms against his trousers. “Thank you for your time.”

Out in the waiting room, Erik reaches for Charles’ hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing once. He doesn’t seem to care about the way the man in the lobby does a double-take, recognizing them, as he leans in against Charles’ shoulder. “All right?”

“I’m all right,” Charles says, wishing he didn’t know that his face is still rather flushed and a little swollen around the eyes. It’s vain, but he projects a normal appearance over the top, excluding only Erik, who’s already seen him like this and so wouldn’t be fooled. “How about you? Your first non-me psychologist.”

“I like you better,” Erik says, grinning just a little, and Charles snorts and nudges him in the side with his elbow as they take the steps down to the waiting car.

“You say that, but wait until he has you move in for your own good.”

Erik laughs out loud and opens the door to the car with his power before the driver can get to it, gesturing for Charles to enter first. “What now?” he asks once he’s slid onto the cool leather seats next to Charles, the tinted windows shutting them away from the sight of the rest of the world. 

Avoid ever talking about any of this ever again.

“Go home?” Charles really wants to be home right now, in their own space without anyone watching or listening. To decompress, if nothing else. “Maybe we could watch a movie or something. As prescribed.” Even if he’s not keen on therapy, Mark wasn’t wrong that they haven’t spent much relaxation time together lately. Or at least none that was actually relaxing.

Erik nods, and now that they’re unseen he reaches across the car to slide an arm along Charles’ shoulders, tugging him closer where he can press a kiss to Charles’ cheek, then his neck above the collar. “Okay. Anything you want.”

When they get home Charles picks out _The Maltese Falcon_ \-- an old favorite of his, and one he knows well enough that it’s comforting -- and settles down next to Erik on the sofa, tugging the blanket down off the back to cover his legs. He starts out sat beside Erik properly, but after a minute or two Charles shifts, moving over a little so that he can lay down and rest his head on Erik’s thigh, his hand on Erik’s knee.

It’s nice, just to be there like that, curled on his side against Erik. Charles sighs, and Erik settles a hand in his hair, fingers combing back through the thick locks idly as they watch the film -- though Erik’s attention is more on Charles than the screen. It makes Charles drowsy, a prickle of warm tension in his belly from the pleasure of it, and though he can’t help but remember the time before Erik found out how Charles felt, years ago now, when Erik’s fingers had driven Charles to the point of orgasm, now that he’s less touch-starved it’s not as intense as it was back then, when he was primed to notice any touch from Erik. It’s better now, and Charles sets the memory aside, though not without a twinge of guilt.

“I don’t want you to go anywhere,” he says after a while, eyelids drooping and all his muscles relaxed. “I love you. I’m just scared that you’ll change your mind.”

“I know.” Erik’s hand keeps moving, his thumb grazing bare skin. “It’s okay to be scared. But I hope you don’t decide to withdraw now as a preventative measure. Do you remember how it was at Westchester, when we decided to try celibacy? That’s how I want it to be again. Minus the celibacy, of course.”

Charles hums, remembering the way it had felt, to be together and not to be afraid of it. To give in to it, instead of watching himself all the time. “I’d like that, too,” he says, as across the room Sam Spade confronts his Femme Fatale. “Are you sure you don’t want to try celibacy again, though? It worked quite well for a while.” He’s joking, but he keeps his voice serious, inquisitive, so as not to give it away.

“You would never last,” Erik says, trying to sound certain, though Charles -- telepath -- catches the twinge of uncertainty in the back of his mind, pushed away and ignored, but nonetheless Erik can’t entirely convince himself Charles is joking.

“I don’t know about that. I’ve had dry spells before and I lived to tell the tale.”

Erik turns away from the movie entirely now, looking down at Charles with his brows knit together, betraying his concern even as his lips still smile. “That was before you were sleeping with me. I’m irresistible.”

Impossible not to push it a little further, just to see Erik’s face when he realizes. Charles rolls onto his back and looks directly back up at Erik, folding his hands together on his chest. “If you’re not keen on that idea, I could always withdraw as a preventative measure. Though that isn’t a very _effective_ method of contraception. Accidents happen, but for what it’s worth I’ve always thought you’d make a wonderful mother.”

For a moment, Erik just stares at him, confused, a bit flabberghasted -- and then the pieces finally fall into place, almost visibly as his expression shifts and he shoves at Charles with both hands, as if to push him off his knees. “ _Fuck_ you, Charles,” he says, but at least he’s grinning again.

Charles laughs, bracing himself against the arm of the sofa so he doesn’t fall off onto the floor. “Perhaps you prefer the rhythm method?”

"Watch yourself, Xavier," Erik says, but in truth -- in truth, he's just relieved to find Charles joking again, the touch of humor eating away at the edges of some of Erik's darker fears. The pulse of warmth and affection emanating from Erik's mind feels good, and Charles reaches up to touch his fingers to Erik’s cheek.

“If you’re still worried about it, I think I have an educational video somewhere we can watch after the movie,” he says, though his thumb has moved to stroke along the edge of Erik’s lower lip. “Since I am by all accounts partially responsible for your sexual education.”

He catches Erik's brow flick up at that, but it does nothing to ease the smile on Erik's mouth, pressing against Charles' thumb; Erik reaches up to curl his fingers around Charles' wrist to keep him there, turning his face toward the palm of Charles' hand. Charles' wedding ring warns against his skin. 

"You can teach me whatever you want," Erik murmurs.

Charles’ mouth curls. “I have been meaning to show you how the washing machine works,” he says.

Erik makes a face and leans down, finally, to steal a kiss, his grasp tightening briefly around Charles' wrist. 

"I clean everything else," he says when the kiss breaks, his face still close, breath warm on Charles' cheek. "Surely you can manage the laundry on your own at least."

It can’t be comfortable on Erik’s back, curling down like that; Charles sits up slowly, letting Erik shift up as well so they don’t bump into one another, and leans his forehead against Erik’s. “Oh, all right. If you insist.”

He moves so that he’s sat beside Erik, leaning his head onto Erik’s shoulder this time instead, one hand taking Erik’s and clasping it between them, the other going to his collar again, holding it there, under his own chin. It’s reassuring to know Erik means it to be forever, even if Charles still has doubts that those feelings will last. Still, Charles thinks, and looks at Erik’s hand in his own, Erik has no such reassurance on his person, because Charles has never bought him a ring in return. He couldn’t, of course, at the time, given the circumstances -- but now he has no real excuse.

“Maybe we should go ring shopping,” he says, wondering if he can find somewhere that will open early or late for a private session, so they don’t have to deal with any crowds or paparazzi.

Erik glances up at him -- he’d been looking at his hand as well, his gaze tracking Charles’. “Really?” he says. “Are you … I think it would be good for you to go outside. Let the world get used to you, and you to it.”

“You should have a ring,” Charles says, though his gut recoils at the thought of the world ‘getting used to him’ -- the new him, the one with a criminal record who they all hate. Then he has a realization, one that comes with an equal mix of chagrin and relief. “Oh. Unless you’d rather make one yourself, of course.”

“I want to do whatever _you_ want to do. I chose your ring -- what it looked like, where it came from, how it was made -- so you get to choose mine. It’s only fair.”

Now that he’s thought of it, of course, Charles is quite reluctant to part with the idea of Erik making his own ring, of being able to stay here in the apartment and not have to go out for it -- he opens his mouth to say as much, but then he looks at Erik, and he can feel how sharply _hopeful_ Erik is that Charles has even hinted at going out voluntarily, and can’t quite take that away from him. “I’ll see if we can make a private appointment somewhere,” he says instead, and wonders if his name still has enough pull to get one.

Erik smiles and twists his head to kiss him again, so pleased with Charles’ answer that it nearly hurts just to feel it, his arm curling around Charles’ waist to keep him close. They watch the end of the movie cuddled up together like that, and afterwards they cook dinner together, too, Erik directing Charles on what to do.

It’s good, just to spend time this way, not endlessly debating or planning or worrying but instead just enjoying each other’s company again like they used to, and though Charles knows it can’t always be like this, he’s starting to hope a little bit that it might sometimes be like this.

*

The next few weeks are strange. He’s married, and has no work, and is a registered sex offender. Two out of three of those really weren’t where Charles wanted to be at the age of thirty-one, but it’s where he is, and so he tries to live with it as best he can. Which is to say, poorly.

Erik goes back to school and Charles is left to roam the apartment again, feeling a little like a housecat fending for himself and awaiting his owner.

On the day of Erik’s last exam the buzzer sounds for the doorphone while Charles is heating up the lunch Erik left for him. He pauses, caught off guard, and glances towards the front door; the buzzer sounds again, a rattling, unpleasant sound cutting through the still air.

Only the concierge has access to the doorphone lines, which means it’s unlikely to be press or anyone else Charles put on the ‘do not disturb’ list he has on file with the front desk. And yet … he doesn’t want to answer it, but he feels trapped, caught between listless avoidance and the impossibility of ignoring it.

So he looks to see who it is in his mind, stretching his awareness downstairs, only to find someone he can’t read, who is visible only as a blur.

 _What on Earth is Frank doing here?_ Charles wonders, and despite his own better judgment he picks up the phone where it’s ringing on the wall and says, “Hi, Frank. Erik isn’t here right now, he’s at college.”

“I actually came to see you,” Frank says, seemingly unconcerned by Charles’ knowing it was him. “Can I come up? I won’t keep you long, I promise.”

Oh. Well, that’s unexpected. “Uh … ” Charles manages, rather taken aback. He doesn’t want to say yes; allowing Frank in the apartment feels like it would breach the seal, like it would let in the outside world and everyone else into a space Charles has fortified, has made safe from everything that he’s not ready to deal with yet. But it would be terribly rude to say no, and he is, after all, Erik’s best friend.

“I swear it won’t be long, Dr Xavier. I’m sorry if it’s awkward, I know things are tough right now.”

“Okay,” Charles says, finally, and immediately regrets it, but he’s given permission now, and so he has no choice but to track that unreadable mind as Frank is led over to the elevators and the concierge grants him access to the penthouse floor, then steps away so the elevator doors can close and Frank can start to rise through the building, towards Charles.

When Frank reaches the top floor Charles is already waiting in the doorway of the apartment, uncomfortable but trying not to show it; it’s not like he’s ever spent much time talking to the man, after all. “Hello,” he says, lifting his chin.

“Hey,” Frank says, and comes to a stop a respectable distance away from Charles. “May I come in?”

Charles steps out of the way and lets Frank inside, wondering what this could possibly be about, and closes the door behind him.

*

_Erik_

Erik’s the third person to turn in his Thermodynamics exam, briefly nodding to the TA as she takes his sheet and adds it to the stack of others before shouldering his satchel and heading up the sloped aisle of the lecture hall. He checks his phone when he gets out into the foyer, not really expecting Charles to have called but the act reflexive by now, only to find someone else has a text message waiting for him.

> _Come meet me in the library when you’re done? Usual corner, follow the smell of exam sweat and caffeine._

There aren’t that many cameras waiting outside today -- must be something better going on elsewhere in the city, or maybe they’re finally losing interest -- as Erik steps outside and heads down the sidewalk on Amsterdam toward the main library. He buys a coffee before going in, blowing on the hot liquid through the hole in the lid as he swipes his student ID card and goes up to the next floor of Butler, winding through the stacks until he finds Frank sat at a table in the back, books stacked around him and empty cardboard coffee cups scattered all over, pen mark on his cheek. He looks up when Erik approaches, looking at him with tired eyes.

“Hi,” he says, and gestures to the seat across from his.

“How’s it going?” Erik asks, meaning more the studying for Frank’s last final exam -- ever, since Frank graduates this year -- than in general. Frank looks how Erik feels, like someone drained out his lifeblood and replaced it with gasoline: running on fumes.

“Oh, you know,” Frank says, waving an arm at the desk. “Same old, same old. How about you? Anything interesting happen you might want to tell your friend about?”

Shit. Erik forgot to call Frank when it happened -- he’d been so caught up in the plans, and then the fallout, that he couldn’t think about anything else. He didn’t even have time to study for any of his exams before the past couple of days, and is mostly banking on having paid good attention throughout the semester to give him decent scores.

“Right,” Erik says, bracing his head against his hand, elbow propped up on Frank’s table. “I would have called, but things have been … unpredictable.” That’s putting it mildly; Erik’s still angry from his phone call with Braden-Newell the other day. 

“I can imagine,” Frank says, raising an eyebrow, his tone mild but the line of his mouth distinctly sardonic. “Look, far be it from me to judge you, you know that. But not so long ago you weren’t even sure you wanted to stay with Charles at all, and now you’ve collared him. Forgive me for being confused.”

“I had a decision to make,” Erik says, as plainly as he can. He stretches his legs out into the aisle next to the desk, crossing them at the ankles but keeping his torso turned toward Frank, hands on the table. “You said it yourself -- I could talk myself into hating Charles if I felt like that was my only option, but it wouldn’t be how I really feel. I had to decide if the way things happened between Charles and I was something I could get past, and it is. So I’m trying to move on, now.”

“Well, that’s your prerogative,” Frank says, and he shrugs. “Just kinda messed up, you know? I mean, I knew you loved him, but not this much. I don’t know, maybe I’m talking shit, and if I am just tell me. But I figured one day you’d graduate. Like, you went from gangbang victim, to banging everyone, to letting just one guy bang you. I kinda thought you’d move on to something that wasn’t fucked up, follow the curve, you know?”

Frank’s not wrong. The difference is, no matter what kind of relationship Erik’s in, he’ll never not be fucked up. That’s one thing about getting better: realizing that as much as you might change, your experiences don’t. There’s a part of Erik that grieves whomever he might have turned into, if he’d never slept with Charles that first time -- if he’d been able to grow up and recover and find someone else. Maybe that someone would have been Frank, even.

But there’s no use thinking about what might have been -- Erik’s happy now, happier than he ever thought he could be.

“I’m not saying it isn’t fucked up,” Erik tells him. His power fidgets with the buckle on his cuff, with the steel beneath its gold coat. “But I won’t leave him.”

That’s all there is to say.

“Mmm.” Frank shrugs. “I figured that was what you’d say, but good to know for sure. At least he’s got that hot older guy thing going for him.”

Erik manages a tight smile, but a part of him _is_ grateful Frank isn’t making him defend his relationship with Charles more than he already has. Frank is the only person Erik knows willing to trust Erik to make his own decisions, and his own mistakes. After a lifetime of having his decisions made for him by other people, that’s always been refreshing.

“What are you studying?” Erik asks, shifting the subject and pulling one of Frank’s books toward him -- _Stability Theory of Large-Scale Dynamical Systems_ \-- and Frank says, “The Lyapunov matrix-valued functions method. It’s pretty dry, but it’s useful for a whole range of things. You know, building shit.”

“I hear it gets dryer in grad school.”

“That’s ‘cause we learn how to keep the leaks out better,” Frank says, grinning tiredly. “No holes in this ship.”

Erik snorts, dropping the book back onto the table with a loud thump; it’s every bit as thick as the books Erik saw on Tony Stark’s shelves at Stark Industries, and likely as impenetrably dense. “I don’t know. I expect MIT will do its best.”

“Speaking of … ” Frank says, and his voice drops, becoming furtive and almost mischievous, eyes twinkling merrily. “You’ve finished your exams now, right? This is it, done?”

Erik’s seen that look in Frank’s eyes before, and he’s pretty sure it ends with both of them trashed and Frank puking vodka in some building’s flowerbox. “Done. Last bit of high school I’ll ever do,” he confirms, and lifts a brow. “You’re planning something, Frank Holloway. Tell me what it is.”

“Better if I show you,” Frank says, and starts gathering his things, shoving them into his satchel, leaving the empty coffee cups behind. “You trust me, right?”

“To help me kill someone and hide the body? Yes. With my virtue? Never.”

“Cool,” Frank says, getting to his feet. “Remember that, okay? Even if this seems mental, there is method in my madness. I’ll tell you when we get there.”

*


	51. Fifty-one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw at end of chapter
> 
> We're almost done, guys! Final stretch. :)

_Erik_

‘There,’ apparently, is across the river in Queens. They take the bus like they’re heading toward the airport, stuffed into the tiny plastic seats alongside tourists with their shopping bags and tired-looking businessmen bearing wheeled carry-ons, Frank taking up a good one and a half seats and Erik crammed in between him and the wall. 

A homeless man mutters to himself across from Frank, and there’s a woman with a screaming baby sitting down near the door. Erik glances sidelong at Frank and murmurs, “When I said I wanted to go to Jamaica some day, I meant the island, not the neighborhood.”

Frank grins, nudging Erik with his elbow. “We’re not going to Jamaica. Just wait and see like a good boy.”

Erik never was very good at being good, though. A tiny, overly imaginative part of him wonders if Frank has bought them tickets somewhere and plans to fly them out to, say, Boston, move them into student housing overnight. That’s the only thing at the end of this line: Laguardia airport. Erik likes planes -- how can he not, with all that metal? -- but not _that_ much.

“How much further do we have to go?” Erik says at last.

“Stop fishing.” Frank rolls his eyes. “We’re nearly there. Just keep your shirt on and don’t offend the natives.”

Erik doesn’t like surprises either, not the way most people define them, so he sits uncomfortably in his seat the remainder of the ride, fiddling with his phone, switching the screen on and off and off and on. They finally get off on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, Frank grabbing Erik’s arm and tugging him off the bus, Frank having to tip his head down a little to keep it from hitting the ceiling as he steps down the stairs and out onto concrete, Erik following a second after. 

“This way,” Frank says, and nudges him across the street onto the sidewalk. All the road signs are for LGA -- the commercial airport, the Marines, shuttle parking services, and Erik’s disbelief only grows when Frank leads him through a crop of trees and into the parking lot of a rent-a-car place.

“Are you serious?” he says, glancing sidelong. “Are we going on a trip down Long Island or something?”

“Not quite.” Frank fishes a key out of his pocket, then presses the button. A mid-range family car beeps and flashes its lights as it unlocks. “Get in and I’ll explain.”

Erik gets in as Frank rounds the car to get in on the driver’s side, though as he shuts the door behind him he pulls his phone out of his back pocket and shoots a text message to Charles -- _Out with F., apparently renting a car for surprise trip? Back tonight._ Charles doesn’t immediately respond, which is unsurprising. He’s probably either asleep or watching one of his reality shows with his phone buried under the laundry basket, which is where Erik found it yesterday, the clothes dampening the vibration as the media called and called.

“Well?” Erik prompts, buckling his seatbelt and glancing to Frank.

“Now you need to dial the number on the screen,” Frank says, and takes an unfamiliar phone out of his jacket pocket. He turns it on, handing it to Erik. His face is eerily calm and bland for such a weird instruction, and Erik frowns down at the phone -- it’s a burner, obviously, plastic outside with a relatively basic processor within, the kind of motherboard Erik hasn’t sensed since 2010. That’s … odd. He fiddles with it with his power, stripping as much information as he can, but it’s one thing to get an electromagnetic sense of it and another to interpret that data qualitatively. 

“Who am I calling?” Erik asks when he finally looks up. Frank’s Frank, and he’s involved in a lot Erik doesn’t know about, but this is a little shady even for him. Erik’s mind immediately, reflexively, jumps back to that night at the safe house: Frank on another phone, speaking to someone -- saying, _Erik doesn’t know._

“You’ll find out,” Frank says, shrugging. “The drama wasn’t my idea, by the way. I’m just the messenger.”

Erik can’t quite put his finger on it, the way unease builds in the pit of his stomach, an aura of suspicion that has been unusual for him in the past few years. He trusts that feeling, even if he doesn’t always understand it -- but he also trusts Frank (or he thinks he does; lately, he isn’t so sure). Failing that, he trusts his mutation can get him out of pretty much any predicament.

He glances one last time at Frank, out the corner of his eye -- Frank’s expression is unchanged, neutral, calm eyes watching Erik. He can’t just press the button. Calling strange numbers on burner phones is all too reminiscent of … well, radio detonators. Not that Erik senses any nearby, but even so ….

“Let me guess,” Erik says, trying to sound like he’s joking, “I press this button, some plane at LGA blows sky high?”

But Frank just rolls his eyes again, his mouth mildly amused. “Do you really think I’m the sort of guy who’d give you a bomb phone? Seriously, we’re not moving until you’ve made the phone call, so you’re just going to have to trust me. Okay?”

“Fine,” Erik mutters, even if it’s not fine, even if this is too likely to end in blood -- thinks, _fuck it_ , and presses the button.

He feels the electric signal go out, become a radio wave, an instant before he hears the first ring tone. He lifts the phone up to his ear and waits, still watching Frank, as it rings twice, three times, then four, before it clicks and the line connects.

“Erik,” a voice says on the other end of the line, one Erik recognizes. “I hope you’re well.”

It’s the last thing Erik expected, blinking against the sunlight reflecting off the rear-view mirror. He has no emotional response that isn’t some variation of confusion -- _what the fuck, what does he want, why Frank, why now, why the secrecy_ \-- and the tumultuous clamber of questions in his head is too much, too distracting, so he shuts them down and focuses on simply the words that come out of his mouth when he says, 

“What is this about?”

A sigh, then Braden-Newell says, “Oh, Erik. You used to be more polite than this. I know we’ve had a falling out, but that’s really no excuse for rudeness. Charles must have taught you better than this; he’s always had beautiful manners.”

The evasion’s even more suspect than everything else up to this point, and Erik frowns, skepticism and disgust warring for dominance. He reaches his power into his trouser pocket, closing it around the three steel ball bearings he keeps there always, just-in-case. “I’m not interested in playing charades. Tell me what you want or I’ll hang up this phone.”

“Well,” Braden-Newell says, with obvious satisfaction, his voice round and pleased. “I have your husband here with me, drugged into unconsciousness, so you may want to stay on the line. It’s rather overdoing it, I know, but it seemed sensible given how closely he keeps an eye on you and his proclivity for interfering.”

No. No, not possible.

Erik’s stomach lurches horribly, and his power clenches around steel like a fist -- he has to fight his reflexes, which urge him to destroy the phone, destroy the car, destroy anything within his ability’s reach. The adrenaline’s immediate; there’s nothing Erik can do about his pulse racing, his skin heating with rage, but he’s been trained how to ignore it. How to be angry, to _use_ that anger without letting it blind him to the threats right in front of him.

And, first things first.

“I don’t believe you. Prove it.”

“How can I if he’s unconscious? Do play fair, Erik. Why don’t you try and reach his mind? Surely he’ll hear you and respond if he’s not here with me.”

Erik complies, thinking Charles’ name as loudly as he knows how, but in the very next breath he also says, voice as cold as he feels in his gut, “Send me a video through to my cell phone. I want to see his face and body, a newspaper with today’s date, and some kind of movement. In addition, proof that he’s still alive -- a live heart rate monitor will do. Or did you miss Kidnapping 101?”

“I’m not sure,” Braden-Newell says, delicately, “that Victor is quite the person you want working to provide such evidence. He’s not really nurse material. However, if you ask Frank, Charles was certainly alive when he brought him to me.”

Erik is sick down to his bones, thinking of Victor Creed alone with Charles, Victor’s hands touching him, Victor’s sharp teeth bared in a grin. He never should have trusted Frank. He never should have trusted anyone. Not everything Hellfire taught him was worthless. Now they’re stuck in _this_ , and Erik has to resort to violence to get them out of it.

“Hmm,” Erik says, and in the blink of an eye Frank’s seatbelt is undone, the metal buckle melted and drawn into a rope Erik wraps around Frank’s throat once -- twice -- then _squeezes_ \-- Frank jerks, hands leaping up to grab at the belt, his face turning red -- until he feels Frank’s windpipe starting to bend under the pressure, Frank’s breath entirely cut off.

Frank lets go of the seatbelt at his throat and smacks his open hand desperately against his thigh, clearly trying to signal something, though what is hard to tell when his eyes are bulging like they might pop out of his head.

“Let’s see,” Erik says, keeping the phone at his ear as he reaches out with one hand to tilt Frank’s face toward him -- really, the metal’s doing most of the work, Erik only needs to touch Frank to make sure Frank can’t forget, even momentarily, who it is holding his life in the balance. Frank’s starting to go a bit white around the mouth, will go blue if Erik waits long enough. 

“Was Charles alive when you brought him to Braden-Newell? Blink once for yes, blink twice for no.”

“Don’t break him, Erik,” Braden-Newell says. “He’s a loaner.”

Frank blinks once, hard and deliberate, then stares at Erik until his eyes water. Erik doesn’t release him, just draws the steel tighter, tighter, Frank’s throat convulsing against the metal.

“Since I assume he’s done his part, I’ll be getting rid of him now,” Erik tells Braden-Newell. “Say good-bye.”

“If you kill Frank, then Charles dies too. I assume that’s not what you want.”

Erik scowls, anger spiking through his blood all over again. But he relaxes the metal just enough for Frank to breathe -- Frank heaves in a gasp of air, wheezing and coughing -- though he keeps it around Frank’s neck just in case, smoothing out the rough edges until it’s molded into a facsimile of a submissive’s collar. A weapon he can still use, if he needs to.

“You still haven’t told me what you want,” he makes himself spit out once he’s certain he can speak without screaming in frustration, ignoring the hoarse, wheezing noises Frank’s making from the driver’s seat.

Braden-Newell sighs again, sounding very put-upon. “You really aren’t as clever as I thought you were, Erik. Tell me, where are you right now?”

The airport. But no, they wouldn’t put him on a plane, wouldn’t risk it, not with all that metal, and an attack on a plane directly would be better-served at JFK. LaGuardia -- North Queens … Astoria … 

… Riker’s Island. Shit. _Shit_.

“Let me rephrase,” Erik says. It’s a miracle his voice doesn’t shake when everything else inside him has suddenly turned to water. “What do you want with _him?_ ”

He can practically feel Braden-Newell’s satisfaction wafting across the phone line, coiling sickly in the air.

“Oh, it’s nothing to do with me. Other than the obvious. It’s far more to do with what _he_ wants from _you_.”

Erik is going to kill him. All of them. He feels it in his bones, pounding like a second heartbeat, the certain knowledge of it -- that they, none of them, can be allowed to live. He’ll start with Frank, then with Braden-Newell, then Creed, and move down the line, one at a time, until he reaches _him_. He’ll make it slow. He’ll make it hurt. 

The ball bearings hover next to Erik’s left temple, static electricity sparking between them, just-barely under Erik’s control.

“Tell me what to do,” Erik says stiffly, as if by rote. 

There’s a sound of shifting on the other end, Braden-Newell resettling himself before he says, “Assuming Frank is conscious, he’ll drive you to the Island once the others arrive at your location -- they will be collecting a second vehicle. _As quietly as possible,_ you need to get around the guard posts and reach the prison. Our particular friends are in the Gordon H. Johnson Correctional Facility, Frank knows where that is. Once inside, you’re to free Shaw and the others and leave to come back here to my location. I’d give you more details, but I’m sure you like to improvise.”

How the _fuck_ Braden-Newell thinks there’s any quiet way to kill all the guards while breaking into Riker’s Island on a Tuesday afternoon is utterly beyond Erik.

“I understand you’re new to this,” Erik snaps, “but the police will be onto you within five minutes of us getting past the first guard. It’s the middle of the fucking day.”

“Onto me? It’s a Tuesday, Erik -- there are no visitors on a Tuesday, which means the only witnesses are people you’re going to have to take out to get in anyway. The quiet part is merely to reduce the number of casualties so you can move swiftly. I’m well-aware of the difficulties, hence the careful timing. And I’m perfectly safe here, along with Charles, provided you do your job. Don’t worry about that.”

Jesus Christ, this isn’t going to end well. At least Erik will be able to say he was coerced. He ignores the nausea curdling at the back of his throat, and the heat that surges through him every time he thinks about Charles -- it’ll make him lose focus, and if he loses focus, Charles dies.

He takes in an uneven breath, well aware of Frank watching him again from the other seat and the heat of Frank’s skin against that metal. He can do this. He’ll survive it in court, because Braden-Newell and Frank forced him, because _Hellfire_ forced him -- Charles will testify to that, as long as Erik is able to get him out alive -- which seems like a flaw in Braden-Newell’s plan, to let them get away, but Erik will deal with that when he has to. And it gives him the chance to do something he’s wanted to do for a very, very long time. 

“Is that it?” he says at last.

“Do you want more? I’m sure I can think of something.”

Erik clenches his jaw, hard enough he hears the joint click. A fresh spark of electricity sizzles between the ball bearings, copper-tasting in the air. “You should have chosen someone else.” 

Because in choosing Erik, every one of them just signed their death sentence.

Erik hangs up before Braden-Newell can reply, dropping the phone onto the seat next to him and letting his hands curl into fists. He wants to scream until his throat is ripped raw, to tear apart the chassis of this car, to crush Frank under that metal. Instead, he exhales, nice and slow, and looks back to Frank, who is watching him, his expression tentative now, his throat bruising already from the force of Erik’s attack.

“So,” Frank says, his voice a grinding, awful sound. “Now we wait.”

“No,” Erik says, turning to face him more fully. He sends one of the ball bearings forward to rest against the center of Frank’s brow, pressing there just hard enough to be sure Frank feels the threat. “Now you tell me who you are, and why you’re doing this, and I decide if I let you live.”

“My voice isn’t so good right now,” Frank says, but it’s not a refusal. He glances up at the ball bearing, his eyes almost crossing. “That’s not necessary. You know me well enough to know I don’t beat around the bush.”

Erik lifts a brow, and keeps the ball bearing where it is.

Frank sighs, settling into the seat, turned towards Erik. “My name is Frank Holloway. I study engineering at Columbia University. I’m the president of the local chapter of the MLA, and in my free time I do some work off the books for related organizations. I’m also your friend, which is not always a barrel of laughs.”

If it’s meant to be a joke, Erik’s not amused. He pushes harder against Frank’s brow. “How long have you been Hellfire?”

“Around ten, eleven years.”

“I think I’d have known about it if I wasn’t the only twelve-year-old allowed in.”

At that Frank’s mouth quirks up at the corner, and he says, with a snort, “Erik, I’m twenty-eight. Nice to know I look six years younger, though.”

It’s almost too much to swallow. This entire time, Frank let Erik believe he was the same age you’d expect from a college student -- that he was not much older than Erik. That he was a separatist but not supremacist. That he hated Shaw and all the rest of them. That he hated what they’d done to Erik, and the person Erik still fought so hard not to be. But -- but none of that was true, it never was. 

The ball bearing drops, falling like a weight and then rolling through the air back into Erik’s waiting hand. The metal’s cold when his palm closes around it, pressing the steel hard against his skin. Erik feels like he’s been cut off, unanchored and cast out at sea without a compass. The silence of his world without Charles’ voice has never been more difficult to bear.

He can’t bring himself to open his mouth and ask Frank if he … knows him. If he _knew_ him. He doesn’t want to hear what Frank might say.

“You told me you hated Hellfire.” It comes out like an accusation.

“I did, and I wasn’t lying,” Frank says, the words coming out like they’ve passed through a cheese grater first. “I joined up as a young dumb punk and tried not to think about it too hard. Couldn’t have left if I wanted to. Besides, mostly I was training. Shaw put me in a lot of different posts, learning stuff -- I enrolled in the FBI academy, NYPD, I worked at Google for a while … faked my death to get out of them. Then the raid happened, Hellfire came down, and … well, I wasn’t in any more. I could be out.”

Erik rolls the ball bearing in his hand, the pain of his short nails digging into his own flesh as he clenches his fist red-hot. “But you aren’t out.”

“Not any more. It’s not really the kind of club you cancel your subscription to.” Frank exhales, long and slow. “I was out. I looked you up because I heard you were 7D, and I wanted to see if you still had sympathies for the cause, if maybe you might lend your talents to some of the people I met through the MLA on the underground. But then we met Braden-Newell after that talk. I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known he was a member -- it put me on his radar, and after that … I didn’t have the right to conscientiously object. I was just conscripted again.”

Erik looks away, back out the front windshield, the sky dark with the sun starting to slowly set at their backs. He can almost feel Shaw, this close, like the slick stain of oil atop the water of the world. 

“Braden-Newell’s Solomon, then,” Erik concludes, though that much was obvious from the moment he heard his voice on the other end of the line. New power in town was just Shaw’s lackey after all. He flicks a brow up, not really for Frank’s benefit. “He wasn’t Hellfire, before. Or if he was, no one important -- but I doubt he was at all, because Hellfire doesn’t take subs. Shaw isn’t going to change his mind on that just because a sub lets him out of prison.”

“I know that,” Frank says, “and you know that. It’s why I figured it was safe to try and meet him, because there was no way he was going to be able to drag me back in -- except he was and he did, because he knew I was Hellfire and saw me as his ticket into power. When Solomon wanted in, well, he’s an academic. So he bargained. And now Shaw will do what Shaw does and we’ll see what the fallout is, but for now you and I are just pawns.”

It feels like coming full circle, walking so far away from Shaw only to learn that every step away has been one step back to where he started. Erik practically expects to look down at his hands and see the marionette strings. 

Erik draws the other two ball bearings out of his pocket, but not to threaten Frank -- he just lets them orbit around each other in front of him, lazy circles, holding their magnetic charges constant. It’s hypnotic, and Erik wants so badly to let himself sink down into a mindless haze and just … _obey._ Give in and slip back under the waters of Shaw’s control; give up and embrace his fate.

But he’s come too fucking far.

“What,” he says, “is to stop me from killing Creed and the rest of them, and forcing you to take me to Charles?”

“You could try it,” Frank says, shrugging. “I might give it up, I might not. Depends how determined you are and how shit scared I am of whoever else Solomon’s got with him at the safehouse, and whether you think you’re good enough to fake the check-ins that I’m supposed to log on a regular basis. The thing is, Erik, you don’t know all the variables. Solomon means it when he says he’ll give Charles back if you complete the job. But if you mess with his plan … I’m not trying to be an asshole here, I’m just practical. Sometimes you can’t swim against the tide.”

It’s nearly enough to make Erik want to do just that, just to prove to Frank that he’s strong enough to do it even if Frank isn’t. But -- but, Frank isn’t wrong. 

And more importantly, Erik thinks, the ball bearings orbiting faster now, their steel curves reflecting the red light of the setting sun -- more importantly, he wants Shaw. He _wants_ Shaw in his grasp, somewhere Erik can see him, touch him, kill him. If Solomon wants him to bring Shaw to him, to Charles, then Erik will do that. And then everyone whose blood he wants will be in the same place, at the same time.

A shiver of anticipation rolls through the pit of his stomach and Erik holds out his hand, letting the ball bearings drop down into his palm.

“Fine,” he says, looking back to Frank. “I’ll do it.”

“I really am sorry, you know,” Frank says, with a look on his face that suggests real feeling behind it, though Erik’s not much inclined to trust that right now. “I tried to suggest we do this without you, put forward loads of ideas, but Shaw is dead set on it being you. Mostly to feed his own ego and put you down again, far as I can tell.”

Erik can’t say he finds that surprising, and he loathes the way his flash of disgust is accompanied by a lesser flare of _want_ \-- old, childish parts of Erik still so desperate for Shaw to love him clinging to this scrap of affection. 

“I can’t believe you were stupid enough to get involved in this,” he mutters. He doesn’t want to talk about himself anymore, or about Shaw’s sick and eternal obsession with breaking him.

“I know. I told you. I was young, and stupid, and I joined up with stars in my eyes,” Frank says, starting the car with a low grumble as the engine rolls over. “Consider me better educated nowadays, but it doesn’t mean I have much choice in the matter. You get the call, you take the call. Simple as.”

“You always have a choice.”

“Well forgive me if my preferred choice wasn’t ‘die screaming’,” Frank says, a little snottily, and pulls out of the space. His shoulders are tense and bulked with muscle, the line of his mouth pursed, crinkling -- defensive, and pissed off, too. “Yeah, I had a choice. I chose to keep all of my limbs attached to my body the way they’re supposed to be. I’m sorry if that doesn’t meet your high moral standards.”

“I thought you were practical,” Erik snaps. “I don’t see much practical about saving your own skin just to watch Shaw burn the whole world to the ground.”

They’ve talked about that before, after all. Frank says he doesn’t like Shaw, doesn’t like his methods and doesn’t want him out of prison, but apparently he values himself more than the lives of the millions Shaw will kill. Than Erik’s own life, if Shaw gets what he wants.

“Which of us was the first to suggest breaking him out of jail and killing him?” Frank asks, as they join the main road -- another car is coming up behind them, and when Erik looks in the mirror he sees Victor Creed and another mutant he doesn’t recognize sitting inside it, as if they were all going for a road trip. “I said trust me, Erik. Just hold on and don’t shit your pants.”

They turn at the intersection, past the sign that reads ‘US Department of Justice, United States Federal Penitentiary, Riker’s Island,’ and then start down the long road toward the bridge, Erik too suddenly and acutely aware of all the metal in the vicinity, every bit of it calling out for him to use it to kill the people in the car just behind them. To tear the prison to the ground. 

“Phone,” Frank says, holding out his hand -- and reluctantly, Erik passes his personal cell over. In an instant Frank’s crushed it in his fist, tossing the wreckage out the window to rattle down the tarmac after them, the metal circuits still sparking miserably as it disappears into the distance.

‘Federal Prison,’ the next sign reads. ‘Do not stop for hitchhikers.’

Once upon a time, ADX Florence was the United States’ most secure federal prison. That was before what they called the ‘mutant genesis,’ and the DOJ’s takeover of New York’s city prison to transform it into a supermaximum security mutant-only penitentiary, complete with suppressor technology built into the walls, cameras that leave no angle unfilmed, high-voltage electric fencing. Erik read about it when the Hellfire officers got sent here -- they’re housed in a building all on their own, in permanent solitary confinement, not allowed to speak to each other or to anyone but the guards whose only access to their cells is the slit in the door through which they slide food trays and medication. Those doors are never opened.

The UN complained for a while about the ethics of imprisoning anyone in such conditions, but when it was Hellfire, even their arguments seemed half-hearted and intended to fail. So the United States got Shaw and all the rest of them, and permission to do with them as they wished, within the restraints of the judge’s sentence. Erik wonders how long it would have taken for someone to find a way to see them all ‘accidentally’ dead. Americans do like the death penalty.

Soon, Erik can see the large security gate blocking off the bridge to the island, the small hut containing two guards whose sole job it is to make sure no one goes across without permission. There’s a parking lot to the right -- empty now, a white and blue corrections bus parked next to the road but equally empty, a shell that during visiting hours would be stuffed full of forty people and their sounds and smells.

“They’re yours,” Erik says, meaning the security guards.

“Nah,” Frank says, and keeps driving, though he pulls conspicuously over to one side, out of the path of the other car, which pulls up alongside them; the guards take notice almost immediately, lifting their guns, but they don’t reach them in time.

The other mutant, the one Erik doesn’t recognize, is standing with her upper body sticking out of the sun roof, and she claps her hands, once.

There’s a strange second of utter silence before the _BOOM_ of the shockwave, rippling out and away from her; the walls to either side of the bridge crack and break, and the guards are thrown off their feet as their little booth just … collapses, like the Big Bad Wolf just blew it down.

“Because that’s quiet,” Erik says dryly.

One of the guards is still alive. Erik feels his heart beating against his wristwatch, sluggish but there. He keeps that knowledge to himself, of course; Victor Creed is looking at the carnage with a wild grin on his face, and when he turns to look at Erik he presses his fingers to his lips and blows him a kiss, eyes dark and animal.

Erik grasps onto the security gate with his power, in the same moment as he destroys the security cameras within reach and fries the hard drives buried under the wreckage of the booth. His pulse is too loud in his ears, too fast, but the only way out is through.

“Drive,” Erik tells Frank, and opens the gates.

For once Frank is silent as he does what Erik says, driving through the gap left by the gates and across the long bridge, into the prison complex itself. There are other guards coming now, drawn by the sonic boom, but Frank drives around them too fast to catch and keeps accelerating; he obviously knows where he’s going, because he doesn’t hesitate, taking corners at high speed and trusting to the other car to follow, never looking back.

“You’re leaving witnesses,” Erik comments, and Frank says, “What, you’d rather I kill them all?”

Erik almost reminds Frank of Solomon’s orders about keeping this on the down-low, but he’s not interested in helping Hellfire, and it’s obvious Frank doesn’t seem to care what Solomon said. The COs will be calling for backup by now, probably the US military -- Erik can handle them, with their metal bullets, though maybe he can arrange for Creed’s partner to take one between the eyes before they go.

There are guards popping up on the roofs of the buildings they’re passing, taking aim and firing at the cars, trying to hit the drivers or, failing that, the engines; Erik has to think fast to deflect them all, smashing the bullets aside into the walls on either side, doing much the same job as the woman still creating shockwaves with her hands, this time directed at the guards specifically.

“The buildings are suppressed,” Erik says as they drive down a narrow alley between two of them. He can feel the electricity buzzing in the walls, this technology even better than that which they used to capture the Brooklyn safehouse. “Two layers of it -- in the walls, and then the prisoners are in wristbands.”

Frank glances sideways at Erik for a moment before turning his eyes back to the road. “Yeah, I figured you could help with that. Can you fry the building suppressors so they won’t affect us?”

“Tell me which building you want, and yes.”

“That one,” Frank says, pointing dead ahead, and Erik swallows down the bile that rises up in the back of his throat when he thinks too closely about what he’s doing. Who he’ll be helping, if he fails to kill them. 

Erik closes his eyes, blocking out the sight of the scenery whizzing past and the distracting glare of the searchlights overhead -- though he can’t block out the wailing siren or his sense of the bullets hailing down on them from the submachine guns in the watchtowers and the snipers on the roofs. He has to keep half his attention occupied with deflecting the bullets and shutting down cameras as he senses them, and it’s too much to focus on while trying to identify the suppressor tech at the same time -- fed up, Erik gives in and simply crushes all the guns he senses above, knocking the snipers out with the hilts of their own weapons.

“That’s better,” he murmurs when they have a blessed, though certainly temporary, respite from being shot at.

Now he delves his power deep into the walls of the building ahead, marking the wires in his memory as electrical -- fiber optic -- and there, that’s the suppressor. He can feel its conduit into the transformer and the wires that split off underground to envelop the building like an electric spiderweb. It’s simplicity itself to interrupt that electric current with a pulse of electromagnetism -- Erik feels the hum of it in his mind as the current dies off, down to the nearly-inaudible sizzle of baseline EMF. 

“It’s off,” he tells Frank. “Now what?”

“Now,” Frank says, pulling up to the front of the building with a screech of tires, “We bust in and capture the flag.”

Frank shoves the car door open and runs for the front doors of the building; Erik senses two guards on the other side, getting ready to fire, but Frank doesn’t stop. He keeps running at it, shoulder down, and slams into the locked doors, tearing them from their hinges and knocking them down onto the waiting guards; he doesn’t so much as pause, running on into the building over the top of them, closely followed by Victor. 

Erik opens the car door and gets out, hesitating even as his power melts the barrels of seventeen approaching guns, looking after the gaping maw in the side of the building. The open tunnel that leads to Shaw.

“I’ll handle it,” the woman shouts, gesturing wildly at him to go on.

It’s enough to snap him back to reality and Erik breaks into a run, chasing after Frank and Victor Creed. The guards under the doors are already dead as Erik passes over them, their bodies making the steel door tremble, unbalanced, under Erik’s feet. 

Inside, the building’s lit up with fluorescence, and Erik counts seven cameras just in the first hall. Their lenses crack as he sends a burst of his power up to destroy them. 

Dimly, as if from a great distance away, he’s aware of the army arriving, of the helicopter overhead and -- yes, that’s three fighter jets incoming, loaded with ammo and each with a warhead that has Riker’s name on it. Fuck. Erik doesn’t pause to think -- just reacts, tearing the bombs out of the planes and sending them flying back out over the ocean to plunge down into cold briny water and explode far out of reach. The damage is enough to send one plane into a tailspin; the pilot’s stuck there, not ejecting -- shit -- Erik spares enough energy to break the release and feels the chair shoot out away from the wreckage just in time.

For a moment, all he can do is hunch over, there, grasping onto his own knees as he struggles to breathe in, dizzy with the rush of … of so much _everything_ , the press of old memories swelling on all sides, old training and muscle memory, the battlefield too closely tied to remembering what happened _after_ battle. Self-pity’s a fatal flaw, though, so Erik forces himself to straighten up and launch back into his run, pretending these halls aren’t claustrophobic -- pretending he can’t smell the stench of Shaw’s evil permeating the prison like stagnant air: polluted, rotten, suffocating.

He catches up with Frank and Victor at the intersection of three narrow hallways, locked in battle with what must be a dozen armored guards, their guns already destroyed by Erik’s power. And this -- if Erik thought Frank was intimidating when he saw him tear apart Zane’s corpse like it was paper, like this he’s terrifying, every blow he strikes smashing guards away, down and out for the count, only quick feet saving a couple of them from being knocked to the ground. Victor looks like he’s loving it, grinning wildly as he tears at the humans with his claws, heedless and hedonistic in the blood spatter. Frank’s hits, at least, are clean -- some of those men will live -- but Victor enjoys killing too much for finesse.

“This way,” Frank shouts when the guards are down, and takes off again, pounding away down the corridor.

“Just like old times, kitten,” Victor says instead of following, bloody-mouthed and licking his lips. “Maybe later you can suck me off, too.”

“Not if you want your cock to remain attached to your body,” Erik snaps, and Victor laughs out loud before turning to follow Frank, stalking after him like he’s on the hunt.

Erik lingers back, just long enough to search through the pile of limp and groaning bodies for a pistol that’s mildly less ruined than the rest, yanking it free from the dead hand holding it and smoothing out the crushed interior. The plastic feels too familiar in his grasp, metal trigger warm against his forefinger -- God, it’s a Ruger P-89 9mm, the first gun he ever learned to shoot.

“Come on!” Frank’s voice echoes back down the hall, and at last Erik turns and chases after him and Creed again, tucking the gun into the back of his jeans where it’s hidden under the tail of his shirt. 

He catches up to find Frank standing outside a door checking something written on his hand; when then he looks up he punches the electronic keypad next to it, tearing into it with his fist and pulling it out of the wall, ripping it out as the thing sparks and dies and the door _clunks_. Next to him Creed smiles, anticipation sparking off of him like static.

Erik knows what this is. He doesn’t need Frank to say it out loud. The air seems thicker here, harder to breathe, humid in Erik’s lungs. _Don’t_ lies dead in his throat, decaying. The seconds seem to stretch out interminably before them, and yet they fall away too quickly at the same time, like rocks tumbling down a landslide.

“Door number one,” Frank says, and he finally sounds nervous as he opens it.

Sebastian Shaw steps out.

By all rights, months of solitary confinement and years of suppression should have turned Shaw ancient and shriveled, dry like a corpse. Erik knows by now, though, that when it comes to Shaw nothing is ever fair. He looks -- both the same as Erik remembers him, and different, too, older, a bit more wrinkled, his hair grayer, a little oily. And yet his eyes are the same, cold and self-satisfied, his mouth stretching into a wide and victorious grin.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he says, and turns his head to look directly at Erik. “Ah, my boy. How good of you to visit your dear Papa.”

The sickness in Erik’s veins is more fear than venom, welling up so hot and fast nothing he can do will tamp it back down again. He hardly dares move -- his body feels as if it’s turned to bone, his chest clenching hard around his lungs and heart. Words fail him, all the sharp and biting things he thought he’d say like dead leaves in his mouth.

All he can do is stare at Shaw, frozen there like a child, waiting for instruction -- or for the harsh hand of punishment to fall down on his shoulders.

“Kneel, my boy, do remember your manners,” Shaw says casually, and gestures at Erik with one hand even as he waves Creed forward with the other. Erik obeys as if bending beneath Shaw’s own touch, sinking down to his knees in a single well-practiced movement. What else is there to do? The floor is cold and hard beneath him, his head bent down to expose the back of his neck and his whole body shaking because -- this isn’t right, he knows this isn’t right, but he can’t -- 

\-- he just can’t. 

He senses it when Victor’s fingers pinch in around Shaw’s suppression bracelets before snapping them open, forcing the pins apart and freeing him entirely. Quietly, hoping not to be noticed, Erik looks up at the rest of them from beneath his lashes, watching in silence.

“Wonderful,” Shaw says, smiling, and sticks his hand into the open hole Frank left in the wall, taking hold of an electrical wire and breathing in.

His face smoothes out almost immediately, his hair darkening; even the circles under his eyes vanish, filling in as if they were never there. It’s like watching a timelapse film in reverse, and Shaw looks so … satisfied.

Frank, on the other hand, has so bland an expression on his face, his body in a neutral, empty posture, that Erik, who knows him better, he thinks, than anyone, knows he’s just as shit scared as Erik.

Erik doesn’t dare keep looking. His gaze drops back to the floor and he isn’t here, he’s years ago, he’s waiting at the end of a mission to be told he did good -- good boy, so obedient, so …. Erik doesn’t recognize the tight sound he makes in the back of his throat, hands curling into fists against his thighs.

“Do be quiet, Erik,” Shaw says. “We have the others to free yet before the crying can begin.”

His feet turn and walk along the hall towards the next door, and Erik thinks -- surely there must be other guards, someone else must come -- but nobody does, and Shaw does the same thing to the next door that Frank did to the first, tearing the lock out of the wall with his bare hand.

A murmur, then a female voice saying, “What took so long?”

Emma Frost. Two out of six, and Erik feels something in him snap. He can’t do this anymore.

When Erik inhales the cold air rushes into his lungs, flooding them -- him -- with a sudden and dizzying rush of purpose. He needs action, he needs to do something, do _anything_ , whether it works or not. He pushes up to his feet on quivering legs and before Creed can react -- before any of them can react -- the gun is in his hand, metal cold against his palm as he sights Shaw, letting out that breath as he pulls the trigger and puts two bullets in the back of Shaw’s head.

Or -- not quite. They fall away the moment they touch Shaw’s skin, and Shaw turns to look at Erik with disapproving eyes, his mouth a frown that Erik knows too well, sees in every nightmare. “That was not good behavior, Erik,” Shaw says, and looks at Victor. “Hold him. Erik, if you even squirm, you will regret it.”

It doesn’t matter. Erik knew the shots wouldn’t kill him. He’s shot Shaw before, has sent dozens of bullets flying at him, none of them ever piercing his skin. But it’s done what Erik needed it to do -- Shaw must know now that Erik won’t go quietly. That after all these years, he isn’t Shaw’s _boy_ anymore.

Victor’s hands clamp around Erik’s shoulders, holding him painfully, fingers digging in hard, the nails piercing through his shirt and into his skin; Erik flinches and the motion just drives those sharp points in deeper, and even as he reaches up to grasp Victor’s arms, trying to tear him away Shaw steps up in front of him and grabs Erik’s wristband, the one Charles put on him at their wedding, and he -- he --

\-- breaks it, the buckle snapping in half as he yanks it from Erik’s wrist and snaps something else there instead, mirroring it on the other side, something metal --

\-- it’s the suppressor bands, the ones Shaw was wearing before. Erik feels the world collapse around him all at once, metal and electricity and magnetism dropping under the weight of dead silence. 

It’s like going blind, or deaf, and Erik hates the shuddering sound of his own gasp, body quivering in Victor’s hands. The bands are so much stronger than the ones he himself has worn before, different -- to contain Shaw, of course they would be stronger, nobody wants him loose. The emptiness echoes around him: his connection to Charles broken, snapped like a twig, replaced by Shaw: Shaw’s control, Shaw’s presence, Shaw’s love. Erik shakes, a horrible tremor that starts in his hands and spreads to his gut.

“There now,” Shaw says. “Isn’t that better? Now you can’t make any foolish decisions.”

Shaw gestures for Frank to pick up the gun on the floor -- it fell there, when Erik lost his power, the shock of it making his fingers slip from the grip. Frank holds it like he knows what to do with it, checking the slide before tucking it into the waistband of his jeans, at the small of his back.

“Azazel next,” Shaw says, and indicates that they should all follow.

Somehow while they’re moving the few feet, Emma falls into step alongside Erik, her long hair tied back in a ponytail and her usually fashion-clad body hidden under an ugly jumpsuit. “Long time,” she says in a drawl, glancing at Erik.

He can feel her mind in his now, flitting through memories, catching herself up on the four and a half years they’ve been apart. He doesn’t get a sense for her reactions to any of it -- just an awareness that she sees it, sees the very heart of Erik and who he has become. If she notices Charles’ fingerprints inside his mind, she doesn’t say anything.

It doesn’t take long for them to free Azazel too, his tall form stepping out into the corridor and looking at all of them in turn, silent except for a small grunt when Victor tugs his suppressors free and his skin darkens to scarlet once more.

“The others?” Emma asks, and Shaw says, “No. Quested and Essex were both weak; they tried to sell our secrets. I taught them better, of course, before we were separated, but still. We have no further need of them. Wyngarde is too old to be of use to anyone now, his mind has rotted. A shame. Azazel? Let’s go. You know where.”

Azazel nods, and finally opens his mouth to say, in a dry, creaking voice, “Everyone stand together. Hold on.”

The army are in the building -- Erik feels their guns, hears the sound of their feet on the floor. But they’re too late. Too late. Erik steps forward with the rest of them and reaches out, grasping Azazel’s wrist next to Emma’s smaller hand; Frank moves in and takes Erik’s other hand, squeezing it once, gently, before Victor muscles in and takes hold of both their shoulders. And then --

\-- they’re somewhere else.

As soon as Erik is steady, has stopped gagging on the sulfuric cloud that swirls around them the moment their feet are on new ground, he releases Azazel’s arm and looks away, desperate to find some avenue of escape. 

They’re in some kind of warehouse, dark, high-ceilinged and large: the kind of place he wouldn’t expect to find in the middle of Manhattan, where empty buildings get filled again all too soon. But there are signs of construction work: buckets of paint, ladders, someone’s abandoned power drill. Erik takes careful note of all of it, because he can’t rely on his power to tell him until he gets the suppressors off -- he has to simply _see_. And because there, in the center of the room, waits Solomon. Elias. Professor Braden-Newell, MS, PhD, PhD. Terrorist scholar and all-around asshole.

“Good afternoon,” he says, his hands folded neatly in front of him, his expression as hard to read as ever with his odd face -- Erik thinks he sees vindication, pleasure, and a kind of eagerness he’s never seen on Braden-Newell before. “I see things went well, if rather less quietly than I’d hoped. It’s all over the news already.”

“There’s no quiet way to break into supermax,” Frank says, bluntly, letting his hand slide slowly free from Erik’s, though it lingers a little, not quite as efficient as it could be. “We got them out, that’s the important part.”

Erik keeps cataloging metal, even as Braden-Newell takes a step forward like he wants to approach -- then stops, presumably out of respect, or fear, of Shaw. There’s the ball bearings in Erik’s pocket. If he gets the suppressors off -- which seems more of an unknown than Erik would like, with their unusual strength -- then he can use those to kill Emma and Braden-Newell, possibly Azazel if he stands still long enough, but never Shaw or Creed.

Where’s Charles? Erik doesn’t see him, but that means nothing; he could be in another room. Or … the pit drops out of Erik’s stomach. Or, he was never here at all. He could be anywhere, waiting for Shaw and the others to escape, where Erik can’t guarantee his safety.

“In any case, making it as loud and splashy as possible only feeds into our mystique,” Shaw says, sounding just as smug as Erik would have imagined he would. “It was well-organized, Elias. It’s good to see that mind of yours working in a useful direction.”

It comes out slippery, patronizing, and Erik can’t help feeling a small curl of gratification in his own right, seeing Braden-Newell put in his place. The punctured look on Braden-Newell’s face just makes it all the more rewarding -- not that Erik can really appreciate it, not now, when every part of him screams out for Charles.

“I did what you wanted,” Erik finds himself saying, pushing past Azazel to step up between Shaw and Solomon. He makes it an order, lacing each syllable with Command and trying not to think about the terrified part of him that wants to pull the words back into his mouth and beg forgiveness. “Give me Charles.”

Neither of them so much as move -- then Shaw just _laughs_ , loud and ringing in the enormous hollow shell of the warehouse. “Do you need your security blanket, poor baby Erik? A binky, perhaps?”

Erik’s cheeks flush, anger losing out to chagrin. He turns toward Shaw, planning on -- apologizing, or spitting in his face, it’s unclear which -- and that’s when his gaze falls on Charles.

Charles is laying against a row of crates behind where they appeared when Azazel teleported them in, which explains why Erik didn’t see him before -- he’s facing away from them, on his side, his head tipped forward so the back of his neck is exposed under the curling ends of his too-long hair, the blue leather of his collar peeking up from under his t-shirt. He’s only wearing his usual lounging clothes, sweatpants and a light cotton shirt, his feet bare. It takes a few seconds for Erik to be sure he’s breathing, he’s so still.

“By the way, my dear boy,” Shaw says, drawls, really, snapping Erik’s attention back to him like prey watching the predator, “Professor Braden-Newell is unoriented. You needn’t waste your time trying to order him any more than you would try it on me.”

Erik blinks, confused. He’s never heard of such a thing as being unoriented, either naturally or by mutation; the ramifications must be enormous, but he pushes that down, away, because there’s no time to wonder about it right now. He wants to go to Charles -- gather him up in his arms, check his pulse, make sure he’s still … _in_ there. But doing that will expose him too much in front of the Hellfire officers and show them his weakness. 

He needs to play along. He needs to play along, and he needs to get these damn bands off his wrists.

“I’m sorry, sir,” he murmurs, moving closer to Shaw as if to offer himself for Shaw’s sentencing: affection, or punishment. But he doesn’t lose Shaw’s gaze -- he refuses to bow his head. Not anymore. “Tell me what I need to do.”

The corner of Shaw’s mouth curls, pleased, but instead of answering Erik’s question he says, “Caliban. Go rouse Sleeping Beauty, we’re going to move on before we’re tracked down. Solomon, has the Prague safehouse been compromised?”

“No, it’s still clear and unknown to the authorities,” Braden-Newell says, even as Frank -- _Frank_ , of all people -- moves back to go and crouch beside Charles, lays a hand on his shoulder. It shouldn’t be dumbfounding, but it is. _Frank_ was the one behind the underground fugitive plans, Frank wrote those elegant letters forgiving Erik for killing Zane, Frank _drugged Charles_ and now he has his hands on him.

Erik bites down, hard, on the inside of his cheek. It hurts like hell, but it’s enough to keep him from snapping at him -- Frank, at least, Erik knows will obey his orders.

“Azazel,” Shaw says. “Go to Prague and check the house is empty, then come back here to collect the rest of us.”

On the floor Charles groans, soft and low. Victor responds to the sound like he’s heard prey, his ears pricking up and his head slowly turning to look at him and Frank. Erik wants to vomit, can feel it climbing up the back of his throat already.

Azazel vanishes in a burst of smoke and sulfur. It’s only now that Erik looks at Emma -- _really_ looks, and sees her watching Frank and Charles as well, her eyes narrowed slightly and her lips pursed like she’s displeased. Erik, too close to Shaw for comfort, finally steps back again -- and he hopes he manages to make it look accidental, the way he backs himself right up into Victor Creed’s broad chest.

“Watch it,” Victor says, and gives Erik a little shove, baring one pointed canine.

“Now, now,” Shaw says. “Play nice, Victor. Erik is our youngest, after all.”

But Creed’s attention is focused on Erik now, at least, too busy showing his teeth to make any plans for Charles. Erik never thought he’d be so glad to be the center of Victor Creed’s terrifying little world. He doesn’t let himself imagine what might happen when they vanish from here -- they’ll be out of the country, far outside the reach of the CIA or the US Army. Somewhere so secure no one can find it, where the entry is every bit as locked-down as that of the second New York safehouse Caliban -- Frank -- used to entrap Erik.

If he doesn’t get the suppressors off in time …. 

It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Charles groans again, and this time when Erik looks he’s sitting up, leaning heavily against Frank, clearly unable to fully support himself; he turns to look over his shoulder and pales, his already greenish face whitening as he sees who’s behind him. His hand lifts shakily to his brow, and the suppressor band there, which has metal loops around his ears to keep it on unless it’s unlocked. His eyes meet Erik’s and they’re wide, not entirely lucid, still out of it from whatever it was Frank gave him.

Erik doesn’t dare speak and draw attention back to Charles -- he only hopes Charles can see in his expression how much he loves him, how determined he is to save them both. It’s motivation to start trying to pick at his suppressor bands -- what’s starting to seem more and more an impossible feat. The last time he was in these, Erik had some sense of his power, a dull, muted awareness of metal and electromagnetism. This time it’s like trying to see a color in infrared, to hear a song in ultrasonic. He knows it must be there, but he can’t feel it at all. 

“I tried to separate the two of them,” Braden-Newell tells Shaw, speaking to fill the silence, apparently. He gestures between Charles and Erik with one clawed, lizard-like hand. “Very nearly succeeded, from my reports …. But you’ll have your work cut out for you with young Erik. Xavier has his claws in deep. I quite literally arranged for Erik to be at the scene of a Hellfire mission and he tried to _kill_ m -- your men.”

“Yes,” Shaw says slowly, unblinking as he looks at Braden-Newell. “I saw that on the news. They do let us watch the news in prison, you know.”

He doesn’t speak further, but Erik, keenly attuned to all Shaw’s emotions after his childhood, gets the distinct sense that Shaw’s annoyed … but with Braden-Newell, not with Erik. Erik could have told Braden-Newell better than to imply he knew how Shaw ought to be handling what Shaw considers his property. 

Azazel reappears just as his first smoke cloud had finally dissipated, a fresh expulsion of air battering them all with the sulfur smell of wherever it is he goes when he teleports. “The house is empty,” he reports, and Shaw looks pleased.

“Good,” he says, and makes an imperious gesture at everyone else. “Come along now, time to move on.”

Emma steps up beside Shaw immediately, taking his arm, and Victor stalks over to take Azazel’s free hand, his own huge paw clamped around Erik’s wrist and dragging him along too. Frank, however, is struggling with a Charles who can’t support himself, his legs wavering, and so in the end Frank bends and hoists Charles over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, Charles struggling weakly against his hold.

Erik meets Shaw’s gaze, unintentionally, across their little circle and Shaw gives him a small, unpleasant smile, one that shudders down his spine to draw up old memories: failures and the bones Shaw broke for them, a misspoken word and Shaw’s cigarette put out on his back. Erik’s looks away, to Azazel instead, who gives Erik a small nod, then says, “Now,” as the world falls away again.

Darkness for a heartbeat, two, and then --

\-- Erik coughs and splutters as they re-emerge in a cloud. The greater distance is more disorienting than the last teleportation. Erik had almost forgotten about that -- but then again, he used to be used to it. This time, he’d fall to his knees, legs gone boneless, if it weren’t for Victor Creed’s hand latching onto his waist and keeping him upright, half-leaning against Creed’s huge bulk out of sick necessity with one hand twisted around a grasp of Creed’s shirt.

Creed snorts, nudging Erik with his knee between Erik’s thighs, holding him there. “Changed your tune, haven’t you?” he says, his hand sliding down from Erik’s waist and over his hip. Nausea convulses in Erik’s throat, but his only choice is to reach up and hold onto Creed’s shoulder, using that grip to drag himself upright on shaking knees -- but that only leaves him clinging to Creed with both hands, a position far too vulnerable.

Erik is only half-certain he can trust his legs to hold him, but he’d rather fall than stay like this. He pushes Creed away forcefully, stumbling back, though Creed barely moves at all.

“Erik, what are you doing?” Shaw asks, frowning at him. “A little decorum, please.”

“It hardly matters if he’s acting properly when we’re dressed in these,” Emma interjects suddenly, plucking at her jumpsuit. “I suggest we change first and insist on propriety later.”

Shaw looks at her, and for a moment Erik’s sure he’ll be angry with her for interrupting -- but then he simply nods and says, “Quite, my dear. Let’s get out of these clothes and move things along, shall we?”

It’s only now that Erik is able to properly look at where they are. The elegant patterned wallpaper and elm drapes palely contrast with the white doors and molding, the dusty rosewood table and white cloth coverings on the furniture, a study in shades of shell and bark. He knows this home as well as he knows all his childhood homes. The old bronze key that fits in that lock, croissants and berries for breakfast, a blue checked tablecloth and seats near the open window. The officers watching the news on the flatscreen television just there while Erik laid on his stomach on the tile floor and read his book. That whitewashed radiator, replaced after Erik hurled the old one at Victor Creed’s head. 

He watches his own reality fracture and doesn’t lift a finger to stop it. One eye sees this place as it is now, Charles gagging and trying to catch his breath with one hand grasping the back of the sofa, the dull shades of Emma’s jumpsuit, and the other eye seeing through the lens of the past. He feels himself tilting, being drawn in, slowly and inexorably. Being drawn back.

“Victor, Caliban, you keep the doctor and the professor company while Emma, Azazel, and I change,” Shaw says, flicking his fingers dismissively towards Charles and Braden-Newell, who hovers uncertainly, unsure of where he should place himself. “Erik, come along. You and I need to have a talk.”

It should be a cue to fight, but instead Erik finds himself following after Shaw as if in a dream, his legs moving and his gaze floating along overhead, watching him go. His body looks wrong. He should be smaller. Younger. Why is he so tall?

He’s not unaware, either, of what he’s leaving behind when he obeys: Charles, alone with the man who drugged him, the man who would eat him alive, and the man who made his days and nights of graduate school a living hell. He needs to get Charles away from here, a voice in his head screams, but the Erik that’s on the ground barely hears it at all. Just keeps walking, past the counter Essex bent him over and fucked him on, past the bathroom with its white tile and dark emerald floor where he went to rinse his shame away, down the pale hallway and then left, Shaw’s hand closing around the door handle and turning it, sliding open the first of the double doors.

Shaw’s bedroom here is sparse, by his tastes. More reminiscent of Emma’s influence, really -- Erik dimly recalls her doing the entire house, claiming this city for her own and banishing Shaw’s ostentatious style to the other safehouses. The large bed has a white duvet and sheets, a blue throw tossed across its foot. The windows are both open, letting in a cool breeze and casting natural sunlight over the two white shelves of books and the single Kupka painting hung over the bed.

Erik doesn’t want to remember waking up in this bed one of the times Shaw kept him close all night. Doesn’t want to remember the terror of realizing he was alone and Shaw left him here -- that he was a stain in the white fabric of Shaw’s territory and had no right to breathe there without permission. Or Shaw returning, and beating him senseless for letting Shaw’s come leak out of him and onto the clean sheets.

Shaw closes the doors behind them, Erik still standing dumb in the middle of the wood floor, and instead of touching him, or adjusting him, or doing anything to him, Shaw crosses over to the wardrobe and opens the doors, looking inside and making a considering noise.

“So, Erik,” he says, reaching in to push some of the hangers along the rail. “It’s been awhile since we last met in court. How have things been with you?”

The abrupt transition from English to German startles him -- German was always the language Shaw spoke with Erik, but he hasn’t heard it in so long that the words themselves feel foreign and frightening. Erik stares at him, temporarily struck silent, watching as Shaw selects a fine linen suit in a pale steel gray along with a crisp white shirt, and only manages to get his tongue to cooperate when he’s been mute so long that Shaw glances back over at him. 

“Fine.” An uneasy ocean rocks in Erik’s stomach, little waves of fear washing up against the shore. 

“Good, good,” Shaw says, still just as genial, almost fatherly in his appraisal. “I’m told you’ve shown great promise with your powers and your Dominance, though I must say I was disappointed to hear you’d used them against our own people. That doctor’s influence, I assume. He’s done wonders for you in some ways, but in others … less than an ideal replacement for myself. We’ll have to decide how to proceed on that front.”

Erik feels ill. He watches as Shaw strips off the ugly grey jumpsuit from before and reaches for his trousers and shirt -- he looks the same. Erik has every inch of that body memorized -- there’s no point in closing his eyes, though strangely, he wants to. 

“I fought against Creed and the others because of what you did to me,” Erik says baldly. It isn’t the whole story, but it’s a far sight better than admitting Charles has done enough ‘damage’ to Erik to warrant Erik’s execution. He stares at the line of Shaw’s spine, the shift of muscles in his back as Shaw draws his shirt onto one arm. “I would have killed him.”

“Because of what I did to you? Whatever do you mean, my boy?” Shaw asks, stepping into the trousers and tugging them up to his waist, fingers working at the fly and then the button. “I hardly see how anything I did was relevant to a Hellfire operation now, when I’d been in custody for four years.”

“You let them hurt me.”

“When?”

Erik’s fingers curl into fists, the only part -- he hopes -- of his body to betray him. “Always. My entire life. Ever since I was a baby. I don’t even remember a time you didn’t let them hurt me.”

Shaw stops tucking in his shirt to frown at Erik, mildly disapproving. He’s not angry, not yet, though Erik can see the consideration in his eyes, calculating his next move. “My dear boy, you know full well that we spent your whole life training you,” he says, in a tone of great disappointment. “We spent years making you strong, letting you understand and overcome pain and injury so that you could act even in the most dire of circumstances. You are my greatest accomplishment. Don’t make this some petty tale, painting yourself as the poor babe abused, like the latest trash on some midmorning confessions show.”

The heat that rises in Erik’s cheeks is undoubtedly visible, coloring him red with humiliation down to his very bones. He can’t hold Shaw’s gaze; his eyes slip away, down to the floor and the foot of Shaw’s bed, fighting to try to keep himself steady and certain and _here_. 

He should leave it there, shouldn’t push harder or speak further, and he’s horrified with himself when he opens his mouth again every bit as much as he thinks: he _has_ to know. He has to know the truth, finally and for sure, from Shaw’s own mouth. So when he dares look up again, back to Shaw’s colorless eyes, his body shakes even as he says: “That’s why you hit me. That’s not why you fucked me.”

Shaw sighs like he’s been deeply aggrieved, and finishes tucking in his shirt, reaching for his tie. “They were part and parcel of the same thing, Erik. Teaching you to be the best member of Hellfire that you could be. How could I have relied on you if I didn’t know, through and through, that you knew your place?”

The heat in his face pricks at the backs of his eyes now and he clenches his eyes shut for a moment, fighting the urge to let tears slip free. His arms end up curled around his middle, grasping his sides as if to hold himself together by physical force. It’s what Charles said. It’s _exactly_ why Charles said he did it, and the horror and relief beat at him in equal measure, pounding in him louder than his own heartbeat. 

And in the same moment he hates himself for being like this. Weak. Submissive. So easily broken under Shaw’s hand.

Furious with it, he opens his eyes, not caring at all if Shaw sees as he pushes the tears away from his cheeks with both hands. It means he can look clearly at Shaw, brazen, without them blurring his vision. He can _see_ him. He can be here in this room with him and not be destroyed by it.

“You wondered why I tried to kill them. I told you why. If your training program backfired on you, that’s your own damn fault.”

Shaw shakes his head, snugging the knot of his tie up to his throat. “Ahh, Erik. You’ve had too long to dwell on things, and it’s let you get yourself worked up. Nobody is trying to dispute that you’re strong now, and that you’ve come into your Dominance. As I said to you last time we met, you’ve graduated; it’s time for you to take your rightful spot as one of Hellfire’s officers. You’ll simply have to remember how you fit here, after so long being coddled by Xavier.” He pulls on his jacket, fastening the buttons from the bottom up. “I expect it’ll be like riding a bicycle, once you get started.”

Erik takes in a shallow, hitching breath, and says nothing. Once upon a time, being an officer would be everything Erik ever wanted. Never mind if they all still saw him as lesser-than. Never mind if he let Shaw put him on his back every night. The worst of it is, Shaw’s probably right -- if he were forced to stay here, it wouldn’t take long for him to find some new identity to crawl into. Force himself to accept some compromise between what he’d been as a child under Shaw and what he’d been to Charles in order to live with himself. 

But no one here knows that Erik’s too strong now for any suppressor technology, that sooner or later he’ll find his way around these steel bands and destroy them one by one. 

“Of course, we’ll have to decide what to do with Xavier,” Shaw says, taking the empty hangers back to the wardrobe to place them back on the rail. “I must confess to being rather torn; his mutation is spectacular, especially his strength, but he’s not exactly Hellfire material. I dislike having to babysit submissives to get them to perform. You clearly have a rapport with him, especially given your sexual relationship -- do you think him biddable enough to be worth keeping?”

It’s a trick question, Erik knows, even as his stomach clenches and twists painfully. If Erik says no, Shaw will certainly try and keep Charles, expecting Erik to be lying to save him. If he says yes, Shaw might kill him. Or, he might let him go … but that’s risky, leaving someone on the outside for Erik to fight for. Risky keeping him, too; Shaw may be planning on killing him either way.

No matter what Erik says, it will be a gamble, but what he needs right now is to buy them some time.

“Charles is only a -5S when suppressed,” he says, heart in his throat. “Without the suppressors, he’s barely submissive at all -- more like Solomon, practically unoriented. His telepathy interferes with Command.” And here’s the lie. “I’ve been able to Command him before, but only if he’s allowing it. I’ve never been able to put him in subspace, and he’s disregarded orders he didn’t approve of. Charles is … “ Erik attempts a small smile, trying to look bittersweet. “He’s very idealistic.”

“Hmm,” Shaw says, closing the wardrobe doors. “And you married him? A submissive that can’t submit is like a teapot with no spout, Erik. Utterly useless. I do question your taste.”

“Really?” Erik says. “I should think you’d be quite well-acquainted with my tastes, considering they’re the same as yours.” He clasps his hands behind his back so Shaw won’t see the way they tremble. “I’ve never liked subs. Charles is an exception. I like being Dominant, but I don’t like submissiveness. Just like you, I imagine, because no matter what you pretended to the others you knew I was 7D all along. Whether my preference is natural or just product of your … training … I have no idea.” He shrugs and tilts his head toward the other room. “Ask Caliban. He knows me intimately.”

“Oh, I’m well aware of that,” Shaw says, and gives Erik a thin, vicious smile. “I have the act on video to prove it.”

Erik’s blood turns to ice with those simple words. He wishes he didn’t know what Shaw means -- but he does. He knows exactly what he means. And it’s no use pretending Shaw’s lying … Erik … that flashback, in the safehouse, when Frank pulled him down and comforted him. It wasn’t a flashback at all. It was -- place-memory. It was Erik, lying in the bed where he was raped, with the man who raped him.

“What?” Erik croaks out all the same, his mouth several paces behind his brain.

“Caliban is no different from any other member of Hellfire,” Shaw says, still just as calm, just as self-satisfied, his eyes as cold as ice. “He’s had his cock up your ass before, taking advantage of the amenities of membership. Didn’t he mention it?”

Erik wants to wipe that memory from his mind. No -- no, he wants to go back in time, to when it was happening, to disobey Shaw and lift his hands to the blindfold, take it off to see the face of the man above him, inside him. So many men like that, faceless ones, Erik would never have thought to suspect if it weren’t … if it weren’t …. 

Frank swore he was different. Fuck -- fuck, and Erik almost … he _believed_ him. God, he must be desperate, to listen to anything that comes out of a Hellfire rat’s mouth.

Erik finds himself sitting down on the edge of Shaw’s bed, too dizzy to keep standing, stunned into utter silence. His hands are sweaty where they grasp the edge of the sheets, holding on like letting go will mean losing everything he knows.

He hears footsteps coming closer, and then there’s a hand in his hair, stroking it back from his brow, almost gentle in its touch. “There now,” Shaw says, even his voice softer. “It hurts at this moment, but you understand now, don’t you? You’ve always been my creature, and everything in your life -- your friends, your skills -- comes from me. I care for you, Erik. I provide for you. Don’t you want that back?”

Erik makes a hateful sound, one far too close to being a sob. It wouldn’t hurt nearly so much if Shaw weren’t right. He was so proud when he got into college, for example, but he was accepted only because Shaw’s accelerated academic instruction put him ahead of his peers. Because the skills Shaw taught him made him notorious. Because the way Shaw hurt him made him sympathetic. He’d always thought, back when things weren’t going well with Charles, that if it ended he might try and work something out with Frank -- but that too would have been embracing Shaw’s legacy every bit as much as what he already did with Charles. As far as Charles goes … Shaw’s fingerprints on that relationship are everywhere.

“It’s all right to admit it,” Shaw says, his hand still moving over Erik’s hair. “Just think what we can accomplish together, now that you’ve accepted the truth.”

For every part of Erik that wants to kill Shaw, there’s an equal part, a child inside him, that wants this so much more than Erik could possibly say. That wants to turn his face into Shaw’s thigh like a baby and hold on, never let go, take every scrap of affection Shaw spares for him and use it as bandages for the rest.

Erik doesn’t answer. He can’t bring himself to say ‘yes’ for all the obvious reasons, a list reaching out for miles and stretching toward the sun. But -- he can’t say ‘no,’ either, a hard stone caught in his throat and keeping his mouth from moving.

Shaw makes a displeased sound, but all he does is let go of Erik’s hair and take a step back, then snaps his fingers, pointing at the floor. “Come along now, Erik. We still have much to do today, and the others will be expecting us.”

Erik complies, just as silent as before; he doesn’t even flinch when Shaw’s hand comes to grasp his shoulder this time, leading him back out into the hall and toward the living room. Azazel is already there, talking to Victor; Solomon stands at the window, like the moron he is, making himself visible to passersby, and Frank --

\-- Frank is talking to Charles, who is sat on the end of the sofa, hands folded away in his lap, skin still pale and his eyes only halfway back to normal. Erik wants to go to him but he’s trapped under Shaw’s hold, as usual. 

Maybe this is how life works, Erik wonders. Maybe nothing ever really changes.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: references to child sexual abuse/rape/physical abuse, creepy Victor Creed, creepy Shaw, the excuses abusers make for abuse


	52. Fifty-two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw notes at the end of the chapter -- bewarned, they contain major spoilers

_Charles_

Being here, wearing the suppressor, makes everything feel surreal, like it’s not really happening; it took a long while for Charles to be sure he wasn’t in one of Erik’s nightmares, unable to hear anyone thinking and surrounded by the people Erik fears the most. Whatever it was Frank dosed him with, it’s certainly doing its job. Charles is lightheaded and weak, his limbs refusing to coordinate properly -- not, of course, that there’s anywhere for him to go.

He’s spent the last … quarter of an hour? Two hours? It’s hard to tell … worrying about Erik, off with Shaw doing who knows what to him, out of Charles’ sight and leaving Charles himself here with three of his least favorite people. Hoping and praying that he’s wrong, that this is a nightmare and that sooner or later Charles will remember how to make them both _wake up_. But when Shaw swans back in, all effervescent self-satisfaction in his smart suit, Erik trailing miserably at his side, Charles doesn’t feel any better at all.

“Well now, this is an improvement,” Shaw says, smiling at them one at a time, turning his teeth towards each person in the room. “Elias, do come away from the window. There are a few too few little green men in this city for you to blend in.”

Elias, that bastard, lifts his chin, as if to mark his own agency as he moves away under Shaw’s orders, going to stand near the television instead. Charles notices Victor Creed staring after Elias with a strange glint in his eye -- Creed, like an animal, always has his sights out for the weakest in a room.

“Emma will be out soon,” Azazel says. His tail cuts idle swaths through the air; he makes for an intimidating figure in his simple dark suit, the collar high like a mockery of a cleric’s uniform, scars marking his cheeks. “She is putting on her face, she says.”

Shaw laughs, a sound that makes Charles want to throw up. “War paint,” he says, coming further inside to stand behind the other sofa, his hands resting on the back, like he’s standing at a lectern. “Very well, I won’t wait for her; so. To business. Erik, sit down on this couch where I can see you without craning my neck. You’ve shot up like a weed these past few years.”

Charles expects something sharp and angry to come out of Erik’s mouth, but to his dismay Erik simply obeys, crossing over to settle himself down on the cushions, leaning back and tilting his head -- presumably to keep both Shaw and Charles in his line of sight at the same time. At least he doesn’t kneel on the floor. It’s horrifying and sad to see him like this, even though Charles knows it’s the best course for now -- to see Erik submitting to Shaw again makes Charles feel deeply sick, swallowing bile.

“Victor,” Shaw says, nodding to him where he’s stood over near the tiny kitchen, “good work. You will be rewarded for your loyalty. Azazel, as you know I appreciate your devotion, too, in keeping your mouth shut, unlike Quested and Essex, neither of whom could manage something so simple. Caliban -- a pleasure, as always, to work with such a professional.”

Frank flushes a little, high in his cheeks, and -- God. At least he has the decency to look a little embarrassed, but it doesn’t keep Charles from wanting to kill him for betraying Erik this way, for leading him on all along as if they were really friends. It must be worse for Erik; he looks as angry as Charles has ever seen him, his fury scarcely restrained in the line of his back and the curl of his fists against the sofa. He glares at Frank across the room, looking at him as if he’d enjoy nothing better than to put one of his steel ball bearings through Frank’s throat.

“However,” Shaw says, still looking at Frank with a small frown on his face, “why are you wearing a collar? It’s in rather poor taste.”

“It wasn’t a choice,” Frank says. His voice is a little raspy. “Erik decided I needed to accessorize.”

From the sofa, Erik smirks, the first real sign of personality he’s shown all evening. Shaw makes a considering sound and smacks Erik in the back of the head saying, “Bad form, Erik,” before crossing the room and coming to a halt right in front of Frank -- right in front of Charles too, where he can almost smell the man, the light fragrance of lavender coming from his clothes -- probably from being kept in long storage -- as Shaw reaches forward and takes hold of the collar, snapping it from Frank’s neck with his bare hands.

“There,” he says, tossing the pieces aside. “Much better. Erik will have to be reminded of his manners.”

But Erik doesn’t look like he intends to let the reminders take; behind Shaw’s back Charles catches him staring at the latch of one of his suppressor bracelets, wrist tilted up on his knee almost-casually -- it’s only because he’s paying attention that Charles notices the way his gaze keeps flicking down to it. Charles’ heart leaps into his throat; Erik’s broken out of such things before, maybe he’s about to do it again?

Across the room Shaw straightens his cuffs, tugging gently at the ends of his sleeves to keep a careful quarter inch of shirt showing at the wrists; Charles’ mother would have approved. 

“Now, Elias,” Shaw says, turning to face the man, staying where he is right in front of Charles, so that Charles has to keep his eyes low to avoid catching his gaze, “You, too, have served us well over the past few years. You’ll have your reward; it’ll be transferred to your offshore account tonight. Azazel will take you home.”

It’s a rare event indeed, a non-violent offer from Sebastian Shaw -- letting Elias leave with what he knows, alive and unharmed, is practically unprecedented from what Charles has learnt of Shaw’s methods, via Erik. But if Elias knows that, he doesn’t seem to care. Charles spent enough years as his student to recognize the anger in the shift of Elias’ scales, tiny cues of dissatisfaction.

“That wasn’t our agreement,” Elias says.

Shaw lets out a short huff of air, amused, and raises an eyebrow. “You’re hardly built for Hellfire, though, are you? Only a visible mutation and some minor telekinesis, nothing useful, and not even a Dominant. What could you possibly have to offer, save for your mind, which, while impressive, is not needed? No, Elias, I’m not going to make you an officer. You have nothing to offer that would be useful to us now.”

“I orchestrated your escape,” Elias argues, but his tone isn’t nearly as cold as it should be. “I brought you the _child._ To date, that makes me one of the only people to successfully trick someone from the inner circle of Hellfire and use them toward my own devices. Think who else I could bring to you.”

Charles can tell from the way his nostrils flare that Elias is getting worked up, is losing his much-vaunted self-control, and he thinks, viciously, _good, at least now you’ll see what all of your fanboying gets you from these people._ He tries to glance over at Erik again, but Shaw is in the way, and so Charles lowers his eyes again, not wanting to get caught staring and start something worse.

“I hardly think tricking a teenager is worthy of a gold star,” Shaw drawls, amused. “Erik is intelligent for the most part, true, but then he also married his foster father.”

Ouch.

“On the bright side,” Erik says from across the room, voice clear enough to be heard, “at least I’m not a pedophile.”

It’s a risk, one Charles wants to think Erik knows the boundaries of, but he can’t quite trust anything Erik says and does right now -- can’t know what Shaw said to him to make him react like this, if it’s a calculated move or just the kneejerk reaction of a traumatized boy thrown back into his own past.

Shaw pauses for a moment, then, without turning around, says, “Erik, recall that I am standing right in front of your husband, who by your definition, most certainly _is_.”

Charles swallows hard, shame and fear running through him at once -- if Shaw decides to hurt him to prove a point to Erik, there’s nothing Charles can do in this state. He can’t even coordinate enough to get up, let alone to run -- as if that would make a difference, when Shaw could just turn energy against him -- but thankfully Erik’s smart enough to keep his mouth shut at that.

“If you would like to lodge a complaint with the management,” Shaw says, returning his attention to Elias fully, “I’m all ears. Perhaps you would like to prove to me that you would be useful beyond acting as a substitute while I myself was unable to fill my role? Or perhaps you have become too accustomed to wielding my power. For a smart man, you are remarkably stupid. We cannot both occupy the same shoes at the same time, and you must know I am not terribly good at sharing.”

Someone’s hand comes to rest on Charles’ shoulder and he jerks, only just keeping back a yelp by biting his tongue hard enough it hurts -- it’s Emma Frost, who emerged so silently from her bedroom that Charles, without his telepathy, had no idea she was approaching. She looks far more like the woman from Erik’s memories now, with her hair in elegant pale curls, her dark lashes and blood-red lips the only color on her otherwise all-white form.

By the television, Elias struggles to invent a job for himself -- and fails, as it’s as perfectly clear to Charles as he knows it must be to Elias himself that he has no place here.

“Do stop playing with your food, Sebastian,” Emma says coolly, without letting go of Charles’ shoulder.

Shaw laughs, and leans over Charles’ head to press a kiss to Emma’s cheek; Charles feels the way her fingers flex on his shoulder, tightening, as if she’s displeased by the gesture, though she accepts it gracefully enough. “You look lovely, my dear,” Shaw says, leaning back. “Professor, be satisfied I am leaving you your life. Further attempts to defy me will not be met so kindly. Azazel, please take Elias home now. He’s had a long day.”

“ _Da, konechno_ ,” Azazel says, then: “With pleasure.”

Before Elias can protest Azazel is already at his side, teleporting across the short distance between them. He and Elias vanish in a curl of smoke -- and then Azazel reappears a split second later, empty-handed.

One down, Charles thinks, five to go. If only those five weren’t the ones he’s most certain will kill them if he or Erik make a wrong move.

His thoughts are still sluggish, but Charles racks his brains trying to think of what to do, how to get out of this -- without getting the suppressor off he’s weak, pitted against mutants with big advantages over standard human bodies. Erik, too, is suppressed and not strong enough to face them with only his fists for weapons. The only way they’re going to get out of this is to somehow free themselves, and that means Erik getting out of his bracelets -- either through persuasion or guile. And that means the best thing Charles can do is keep his head down and stall for time, trying not to draw the wrong kind of attention.

No. The best thing to do right now is to be exactly what Shaw and the others expect him to be -- soft, malleable and submissive. Someone they can control, who will play ball. Who will behave.

“Might I please have a glass of water?” he murmurs to Frank, and right on cue Shaw looks down, hearing his voice, his hand coming to take hold of Charles’ chin and tip his head up. Charles keeps his eyes low, not wanting to be seen as challenging him.

“What was that, Dr Xavier?” Shaw asks.

“I wondered if I might have some water,” Charles says, not letting himself tremble, though he wants to. “My mouth is very dry.”

Shaw hums, considering it, before finally saying, “Erik. Fetch your darling husband a glass of water.”

Erik looks livid -- Charles catches a glimpse of his face as he stands -- but he does go into the kitchen without complaint, long body tall enough to reach the top cabinets without stretching, drawing down a glass that he fills at the sink. When he returns, Shaw takes the glass from him and offers it to Charles -- but not to his hands, to his mouth, leaning the glass there and starting to tip. “Open,” he orders, and Charles, feeling sick, wanting to refuse, has no choice but to obey, parting his lips and letting Shaw pour water into his mouth, slightly too much so that he sputters and coughs.

Charles can’t pull away from Shaw’s restraining hand on his chin, and he struggles weakly against it, thinking -- oh, God --

“I think you’re too soft on him, Erik,” Shaw says pleasantly, and pours more water into Charles’ mouth before he’s entirely swallowed the first mouthful, choking him, taking pleasure from the way Charles gurgles. “He’s quite obedient if you order him properly, see?”

Shaw tilts his wrist to pour more, but Erik gets there first, knocking the glass out of Shaw’s hand so it shatters on the floor, a cold surge of water flooding the floorboards and wetting the bare bottoms of Charles’ feet. Shaw snarls and backhands Erik across the face, sending him crashing back onto the coffee table while Charles splutters and gasps, water coming painfully up his nose. Erik, on the ground, doesn’t even seem conscious of the large red flare on his skin that will be bruised by evening, or the broken glass under his hand as he pushes himself up, even though it’s still stuck in his palm -- blood cutting fast down Erik’s skin and staining the edge of his sleeve before he’s even back on his feet. 

“If you touch him,” Erik hisses, low and threatening, every word reeking of Command as he grabs onto Shaw’s elegant suit jacket with his injured hand, glass shards visibly sinking deeper into his flesh, “I will _never_ obey you again.”

The order’s shaky in its foundations, though, even Charles can tell that. Shaw just reaches up and takes hold of Erik’s wrist, squeezing until his fingers have to let go, and drags Erik’s hand away, tutting at him. “If you keep behaving like this, I will have no choice but to kill him,” Shaw says, so blasé about it it makes Charles’ body run cold, cringing away reflexively into the sofa cushions. “I was thinking of keeping him, letting you have your comfort blanket in exchange for good behavior, but it seems I can’t rely on that, now can I?”

“It’s okay,” Charles says, terrified that Erik is going to get himself hurt, certain at this point that Erik isn’t all there, not really, not enough to be able to protect himself. “Erik, please, I’m all right.”

But if anything, that only seems to make Erik angrier -- Charles knows what he’s going to do an instant before he does it, sees it in his eyes and the twist of his mouth right before Erik spits in Shaw’s face.

Shaw rears back, truly angry now, and _shakes_ Erik back and forth with violent force; Charles jumps to his feet as he sees Erik’s head snap back, hears Victor Creed’s cold chuckle; he clutches at Shaw’s shoulder, saying, “Please stop, please don’t hurt him!”

“Dr Xavier, _sit down_ ,” Shaw shouts, and Charles’ legs collapse like straws under him to land him hard and jarringly on the floor, paralyzed and horrified at his own inability to help. He clutches at Shaw’s trouser leg, pleading without speaking, but Shaw just continues, “Azazel, take Erik into the other room and remind him what bad behavior earns him before I really lose my temper.”

Shaw pushes Erik back one last, forceful time, but this time Azazel’s there to catch Erik’s shoulders and prevent him from falling, those red hands vivid against Erik’s black shirt. Erik looks dazed, and Charles wouldn’t be surprised if the shock of it was enough to give him a concussion.

“Come on, _malchik_ ,” Azazel murmurs in Erik’s ear, and Charles has no choice but to watch Azazel leading Erik away, the order sticking him to the floor as Shaw brushes imaginary dust off his jacket and tugs at the cuffs, says, entirely calm, “Now, where were we?”

*

_Erik_

The aftermath of the pain is a black daze, the pain in Erik’s head battling the throb in the palm of his hand as he stumbles over his own feet. Only Azazel’s careful hands on his arms keep him from falling down. He fights to blink the fog out of his eyes as they go down the narrow hallway -- he can’t hear anything behind them now, none of the others’ voices -- just the sound of his own breathing and Azazel’s footsteps.

“Long time since we were here,” Azazel says in Russian, reaching past Erik and pushing at something -- a door. “Still looks the same. Here you are, _malchik_.” And he pushes Erik inside, then closes the door behind them.

When the fog lifts Erik sees: he’s in his old room. One of many old rooms -- the full-sized bed with simple white sheets, his books still on the shelves, and … God, a child’s pair of Chuck Taylors smaller than Erik’s own hand, shoelaces untied, on the floor near the closet as if Erik kicked them off just yesterday.

There’s metal, too: so much metal, all the little sculptures Erik used to like to make out of paperclips and unused cutlery lining the windowsill and the bedside table. A calculus book sits on his desk, next to a battered copy of _Brat’ya Karamazovy_. Dazed, Erik sways a bit, held upright mostly by Azazel’s steadying grasp on his shoulder. Time unspools, a thread that tangles up at his feet.

He needs to get the suppressors off. He needs to get them off _right now._

“You know better than to talk to Shaw like that,” Azazel says, sounding honestly disappointed as he guides Erik over to sit down on the side of the bed, then hovering over him, his arms folding across his chest as he looks down at Erik with a disapproving frown. It feels for all the world as if Erik is twelve years old, not quite old enough to be rescued -- only old enough to know better, to have all the submissive gestures perfectly practiced and easy at hand. To rebel, and immediately feel guilty for doing so. “It will always cause trouble. You set a poor example for your husband, too.”

“Charles,” Erik says, the bits and pieces of the last few minutes coming back to him in fragmented shards; shit, he needs -- he launches up off the bed before Azazel catches his shoulders again, pushing him firmly back down. “Charles, I have to get back to --”

Azazel shakes his head. “ _Nyet_. That is even worse. If you keep misbehaving for him then Shaw will follow through on his threat and kill him to get rid of the bad influence. You must stay here and prove you can be good again.”

This time the tears that prick at Erik’s eyes are all frustration. The number of options he has is dwindling fast, and he still can’t even _sense_ the suppressors, never mind remove them. It’s galling, it’s utterly -- humiliating, the impotent rage building up and building up inside him but, having nowhere to go, dissipating into useless smoke. It’s enough to make him want to crawl into himself and give up: but that isn’t an option, of course, and Erik cuts it off before he can even finish the thought.

Time. Dammit, he needs time. He swore he’d never play these games again, but he _needs_ ….

Gritting his teeth, Erik looks back up at Azazel and says, “I’m not a submissive, Azazel.”

“I know that,” Azazel says, tail flicking behind him, “and so do you. And yet you still must show Shaw you are not a liability. That he can rely on you to do as you’re told instead of arguing. That is how a team works, yes? And some of that is swallowing your pride and doing what you must to show willing.”

No way out. Nowhere to go but down. Go through hell to find the exit.

And if Erik can figure out how to get these suppressors off in the next, say, thirty minutes? Then he’ll have not one, but two less problems he has to worry about.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t trust what will come out of his mouth, not yet, as he rises slowly to his feet. Azazel is taller, even now, Erik’s gaze only coming to the bridge of his nose when he stands at his fullest height -- and that dips further as Erik toes off both his shoes. His hands don’t shake when he lifts them to Azazel’s chest and presses the uninjured palm there, above his sternum, feeling the resistance of muscle against his touch as he smooths it down toward Azazel’s waist and lifts up onto his toes. That last bit of rebellion in Erik makes him hesitate, but it’s only for a second -- then he rests his bloody wrist on Azazel’s shoulder, closes his eyes, and kisses him. Azazel’s lips are cool and dry, and he takes a moment to respond before finally moving against Erik, kissing him back.

Erik can’t remember, now, why he kissed him. He has a sense that it was meant _for_ something, something that … that wasn’t sex, but when he really thinks about it Erik can’t imagine this going anywhere else. God, his head hurts -- it throbs in the bone of his skull and the meat of his brain, like crushed glass glinting in the sun, bright and painful. After a moment he forgets even to worry about what he’s forgetting: it slips away and leaves him standing there, tasting Azazel’s breath.

Before Erik can push the kiss any deeper Azazel makes a considering noise and pulls back to look at Erik’s face. “We take out the glass first, I think,” he says, a hint of humor coming into his voice. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Mmm,” Erik hums, tilting his head against Azazel’s shoulder. Here, in this room, with this man, his old habits drape over him easily, like a cloak. He looks at the crimson glass sticking out of his palm, pushed in so deep it’s a surprise it doesn’t come out the other side, three shards of it. His skin looks red as Azazel’s. “Are you going to fuck me to punish me, like Shaw told you to do?” He glances up, through his lashes, at Azazel, and lets his voice go a fraction lower. “Or are you going to fuck me because you like it?”

“Erik, _malchik_ ...” Azazel says, frowning. “Now is not the time for your flirtations. Let me look at your hand.”

Erik drops his wrist down into Azazel’s waiting grasp, watching through half-lidded eyes as Azazel pinches the largest shard between his red fingers. He doesn’t give warning before he tugs it out, but Erik doesn’t so much as flinch. The physical pain, like the pain in his head, is already so omnipresent in his sense of the world that a little more of it hardly makes a difference. His injured vein produces another wet puddle of blood to replace the missing glass, dripping off the edge of Erik’s palm and splattering the floor as Azazel rips out the second, and then the third shards as well, slipping them into the pocket of his black trousers. 

Without them, Erik’s hand is a mangled mess of tissue and blood, but Erik’s spread too thin to care. Azazel tuts at the state of him and says, “If I remember … ” before turning to the nightstand and opening the drawer. He comes back with a first aid kit in hand, nodding approvingly. “I thought as much. Hold the hand flat.”

Erik complies, and Azazel opens the kit, fishing through its contents. He takes out a gauze pad, tearing open the sterile package, and uses it to wipe Erik’s hand clean, though it’s a losing fight -- he just keeps bleeding. 

“Don’t sew it up,” Erik murmurs, head still resting against Azazel’s shoulder -- and he turns his face more toward him now, enough to brush his lips against Azazel’s neck. If he weren’t suppressed, he could feel the iron in Azazel’s blood, beating steadily through his carotid just beneath the tip of Erik’s nose. “I don’t trust any of you with needles.”

Azazel rolls his eyes. “Who taught you to sew, hmm? It certainly was not Emma,” he says, and sets the bloody gauze aside and takes out another, pressing this one into Erik’s palm and holding it there with his thumb. The pressure on Erik’s wounds hurts, but Azazel doesn’t let up, reaching for a roll of tape and tearing off pieces to stick it down. “Don’t fuss, _malchik_. You should not have provoked Shaw.”

Erik sighs audibly, intentionally -- the very picture of teenage petulance -- and hooks one finger through Azazel’s back belt loop. “But he’s so easy to _provoke_.”

“Yes, the genius of youth, risking the mobility of your hand to score points against your parent.”

Erik watches blood well up beneath the gauze bandage, staining it red. Everything feels slow, so far underwater. He doesn’t fight the tide. Instead, he tries moving his fingers, just bending the tips -- even that is enough to send pain lancing down his tendons, screaming all the way up into his wrist. “Is there an aspirin in there?”

“ _Da_. Here,” Azazel says, and hands Erik the blister pack. He takes a roll of bandages, as well, and holding the end in place he starts wrapping it in a figure-eight around Erik’s fingers and thumb, tugging it tight to keep the gauze in place. Erik pops a pill out of the blister pack against his teeth, swallowing it dry.

“There,” Azazel says, tying off the bandage and looking at it with approval. “You are setting a better example now, too -- you have calmed down.”

Erik lifts his gaze back up to Azazel’s face -- or what he can see of it like this, tucked in close against him, his mind taking a second to flip through the recent past and remember -- _oh._

Charles. The suppressor bands….

Erik fumbles mentally to reclaim that semblance of a plan he’d once had, something about winning a chance to get these suppressors off. He can’t remember why that had to involve sleeping with Azazel. 

Oh, right. That wasn’t his decision. Fighting is useless, though, without his power, and Erik has better things to focus his energy on. Namely, these steel bands around his wrists. If he can get them off quickly then there’s no need to go through with this -- he can be back in the living room in the blink of an eye, can kill them all one by one, can save Charles.

“I want you to tell me about prison,” Erik says, hoping the subject offers enough interest Azazel will take the bait and let himself be distracted.

But Azazel just shakes his head. “I have only just left there, I do not wish to talk about it already. Have a little mercy, _malchik._ In any case, now that your hand is bandaged, you must take your medicine.” Azazel cups his palm around the side of Erik’s head. “Bad boys are punished for talking back, you know this. Take off your clothes and get on the bed.”

So much for that idea -- and Erik can’t come up with a better one quickly enough to respond. His stomach is a pit of frozen water, but he steps away from Azazel and strips his shirt off over his head all the same, exposing every scar Hellfire ever etched into his skin, the evidence of all those broken bones and surgeries, cigarette burns laced between his ribs and Creed’s work the most recent red slash on his abdomen. Erik’s breath comes shallower now, his chest tight as he reaches down to undo his jeans by hand. His bandaged fingers are clumsy on the senseless metal but he gets it done, pushing them down along with his boxers and leaving himself bare, exposed to Azazel’s gaze.

The eyes that rake over Erik’s naked body are hot, like coals being dragged across his skin; Azazel doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. The flex of his fingers towards Erik’s hips says enough.

Erik fixates every ounce of his attention on those bands around his wrists as he gets up onto the bed, dragging a pillow down to rest beneath his head. He lies down on his back, spread out and waiting for Azazel to come for him. It’s old aesthetics, well-learned through trial and vicious error -- Erik, as always, knows exactly what Azazel wants.

Azazel strips off with quick efficiency. That, too, is weird, so long since Erik’s last visible mutation -- his body scarlet all over, thick black hair covering Azazel’s chest and striping him down from his navel to forest thickly around his hardening cock. He climbs onto the bed after Erik, settling easily between his thighs and looking down at him, reaching out to touch Erik’s chest.

“You have grown up, _malchik_ ,” he says, sounding almost surprised.

“Do you like it?” Erik asks -- he remembers Azazel telling him, the first time Erik offered, five years old and meekly wondering if Azazel wanted to have him, _I don’t fuck little boys_ , and how long that lasted. Which is to say, not long.

“It is strange,” Azazel says, stroking down towards Erik’s belly. “Like blinking and here you are, almost a man. When a moment ago you were a little boy begging for candy.”

Erik tries to make himself smile, but can’t quite manage it -- it seems the only one of his old tricks that’s beyond him today is pretending he’s happy when God knows what is happening to Charles in the other room. 

Instead, he smooths his hands up Azazel’s muscular arms and around to his back, trailing fingertips light down his spine. Like this, he can only-just see the suppressor bands over the rise of Azazel’s shoulders. Having the visual contact helps: it means he can reach for where his metal-sense used to be and try to target it _at_ someplace. After all, suppressor technology wouldn’t remove his mutation, just deactivate it. 

The suppressors work on electromagnetic technology. And Erik is an omega-class master of electromagnetism.

“I’ve learned a lot of things while I was gone,” Erik says softly, gaze shifting back to meet Azazel’s black eyes as he hitches one leg up higher, wrapping his knee around Azazel’s waist. As if summoned, Azazel’s tail follows just after, curling around Erik’s thigh and holding it there. “Do you want me to show you?”

“If you like,” Azazel says, with a snort. “This is supposed to be punishment, but have your way if you please.”

Erik does please. He shifts, reaching his uninjured hand down between the press of their bodies. It’s easy to find Azazel’s cock, fully-hard now and twitching a little when Erik curls his hand around its base. Erik forgot -- four and a half years in prison, and Azazel hasn’t had sex that entire time. The last time Azazel fucked anyone at all it was Erik himself, at two in the morning in the Brooklyn safehouse. He crept in and told Erik, _ssh, malchik, no need to get up_ , then fucked him from behind while Erik half-dozed, finishing in his ass half an hour before the CIA and FBI showed up and tore them all out of their beds. Azazel’s come was still inside Erik when he was being examined at CIA headquarters, splayed open on a doctor’s table with a speculum in his hole.

Four and a half years means he might not last as long as Erik needs. Well. Erik will just have to make do.

He pulls a few firm strokes up Azazel’s shaft, marking the quiver low in Azazel’s stomach when his thumb grazes over the frenulum, Azazel’s lips parting with a soft exhale.

“Ah, _malchik,_ ” Azazel breathes, stroking a hand over Erik’s hair, disturbingly reminiscent of Shaw’s, earlier. “You always remember what I like.”

Erik closes his eyes, just briefly, trying to steady the part of him that’s twisting with a new nausea. He doesn’t feel like himself. He doesn’t feel like it’s been so many years -- how can he, when there’s no way to disentangle this from his childhood? All those days blur together, blur into this one, as if his life with Charles was the dream.

He lifts his head and kisses Azazel again just to stop him talking. Maybe he can pretend it’s Charles. No. No, he can’t dirty Charles with this. Maybe he can pretend it’s … someone else. Some Dom Erik met somewhere, charming and attractive. But even a fantasy is impossible when reality presses down on all sides like the weight of the world.

Azazel kisses him back, deep and cloying, his hand smoothing down Erik’s back and taking a grip of his asscheek, squeezing it. His sharp nails dig in a little, and Erik -- fractures, that careful motivation he’d built for himself breaking even as he fights so hard to keep hold of it. He twists his head away roughly, forcing Azazel’s mouth to fall to his jaw and lets go of his cock, pushing instead at Azazel’s body with both hands.

“Stop. I can’t.”

But the hands on Erik’s body just tighten, fingers tangled in his hair pulling on it now, keeping him in place. “Erik,” Azazel says, his tone disapproving now. “This is not an indulgence. This is punishment for bad behavior. Perhaps I did not keep those lines clear enough.” Erik can feel Azazel’s muscles tense for a moment before he moves his hand from Erik’s ass to the inside of his thigh, pressing it upwards, spreading him further open. “I am going to fuck you. It is up to you how nicely I do it; I will not tell Shaw if you cooperate enough to make it better instead of forcing me to hurt you.”

A light flutter of panic starts below Erik’s breastbone. He’s pushed this too far already. He can’t -- he needs to end this, by any means possible. He takes in a sharp breath and forces Command into his voice, orders, “Let me --”

“ _Nyet_ ,” Azazel says, and he jabs the heel of his hand into the underside of Erik’s jaw, snapping his mouth painfully closed and jarring his head. Erik reels for a few seconds, disoriented, and it’s long enough for Azazel to grab a sock from the floor with his tail and bring it up to force into Erik’s mouth, shoving it in and pinching his lips shut, scowling at him now, all playfulness gone.

“You know better than this,” he says, holding the pinch. “Do not make this worse for yourself, Erik. I might not be Shaw, but you know what I will do. _Da_?”

Erik sucks in several gasps of air through his nose, fighting the instinct to hyperventilate, to scream for help -- but all screaming would do is alert Charles, whose reaction will only make things worse. His decision made for him, heart racing, Erik’s best choice now is -- God, is to go along with it. He can still get those suppressor bands off, he _knows_ he can, he **has** to.

He nods several times, clutching at Azazel’s shoulders with both hands as if to prove -- Look, I won’t try to take the gag out, I’ll be good, I’ll obey. I promise.

“Good,” Azazel says, and sits back, looking down at Erik, before reaching for the nightstand again and opening the top drawer. When he comes back he has a bottle of lube in hand, likely left there from the last time they lived here -- who knows how old it is now. Erik catches himself wondering, ridiculously, whether lube can go off, if it’ll still be okay.

Azazel pours some slick onto his fingers and reaches down between Erik’s legs without further preamble, rubbing it over Erik’s twitching, reluctant hole. “Should be easier now you’re bigger,” he says, as if this is supposed to be comforting.

Erik wants to wake up. He wants to die. He -- shouldn’t be here, but he has to be here, because he has to _focus_.

He tilts his head back, trying to think through the waves of red pain that pulse through his brain, his head and face both still throbbing from Shaw’s attack earlier. The suppressors. His power -- find it, find it now, before Azazel can push his fingers inside --

His body aches, hole stretching to accommodate the first two slicked digits and Erik, horrified, desperate, thinks -- _now_ , then. Now, before he can do another. Before he can do more, before it’s his cock. He strains against his own metal emptiness, pulling at that place in his mind even as it sends shockwaves of agony crashing against his skull, over and over again.

But Azazel doesn’t stop, unaware of Erik’s inner struggle, pumping his fingers a little and stretching Erik, scissoring them inside him. Erik should be able to take this, he’s hardly out of practice, and yet his body is resisting so hard that he’s tensed all through, the stretch painful against his arguing muscles.

“Relax,” Azazel says disapprovingly, and pushes a third finger inside.

It’s impossible to obey. Erik’s urge to cooperate until he can get his suppressors off is too high-level, too much a product of cold cognition, whereas his body only operates on the terror of old lessons learned. He tries to breathe deeper for his own sake but it’s difficult with the cloth blocking his mouth, his nose still swollen and stuffy from crying before, with Shaw. Despite himself he finds his hands clutching at Azazel, nails digging in, holding on like they can anchor him enough to allow this.

_Use. Your. Power._

Azazel pulls his fingers out with a wet noise, wiping them off on Erik’s thigh, and his hands move to the undersides of Erik’s knees, raising them higher as he muscles in-between Erik’s splayed legs, lifting his ass off the bed as he lines himself up. “Relax,” he says again, and the blunt head of his cock probes at Erik’s slicked hole, then slips off, returning a moment later to try again, pushing at the tight muscle and then slowly making it start to pucker open around it.

It’s too much -- the pain, the tide of fear -- Erik makes a tight, anxious sound against the gag and clenches his eyes shut, nails scraping at Azazel’s skin as Azazel pushes inexorably forward, sliding inside and letting out a low groan. Once he’s in he fucks into Erik in several hard thrusts, each one jolting Erik a little up the bed, each one worse than the last until he plunges forward one final time, bottoming out. And at the same moment, Erik --

He nearly swears he imagined it. That brief thread of light, a flash of steel through the panic. Gone, now, as Azazel leans over him again, tangling a hand in his hair. Erik shudders, his hole clenching down around Azazel’s dick and reminding him too keenly of his own fullness, his body stretched wide and stuffed, the smell of this bed and this man in this house -- 

_There_! Unmistakable this time, Erik’s pain laced with the distant -- God, almost astronomically distant, but the nonetheless palpable sense of _metal._

Azazel groans again and starts to thrust, kissing and biting at the side of Erik’s neck while he rocks between Erik’s legs, thick cock pumping in and out of Erik’s clenching channel -- no finesse, no effort to make it good for Erik. Azazel just uses him, like a living sexdoll, something to stick his cock into. Gone the uncle-like affection, the attempt at caring -- when Erik refuses to play along, Azazel stops playing along, too. It hurts more than it has any right to. Erik remembers, once upon a time, being so accustomed to this that he forgot the pain. Or maybe it’s just now that he can’t help _remembering_ it, all those times he was fucked just like this, so young his body could barely stretch enough to fit the head of a cock, how it felt like being split in half, hurt far worse than the pain after surgery when the anesthesia wore off. Azazel thrusts and Erik makes a series of tight, pained sounds he tries to swallow but which tear out of his chest nonetheless, childish, embarrassing.

Not that it matters now -- Azazel could do anything, anything, and Erik wouldn’t care, because …. Metal! He could cry with relief. He hadn’t admitted it to himself, how certain he was becoming that this was it, that this would be his life again, forever. 

Recklessly Erik reaches to tear the gag out of his mouth, thighs gripping Azazel’s hips, but Azazel grabs Erik’s hand before he can get hold of it, pinning it to the bed, right before Erik feels a sharp pain on his outer thigh that stings like a knife blade; Azazel has cut him with the tip of his tail, the diamond shape flicking away a drop of blood. Erik yelps and Azazel presses his free hand down against Erik’s throat, nearly crushing his windpipe.

“Do not misbehave,” Azazel snaps, fucking him harder. “You are making this difficult for yourself, Erik.”

Fine, then -- fine, let Azazel do what he wants, let him fuck Erik raw. It doesn’t matter, not if Erik manages to get these off. He’ll get them off eventually, he’s certain of that now. But if he gets them off _soon_ …. If he can get free before Azazel finishes with him, then for one moment, he knows where Azazel will be. He knows Azazel won’t teleport away, and so Erik has a very certain means to keep Azazel in one place just long enough to kill him.

Because Azazel has to die. He has to die first, in fact, before any of the others, or they’ll all escape. He has to die first because he’s the one who has his cock in Erik’s ass, and as far as Erik’s concerned right now that’s a capital crime.

Erik attacks his goal with renewed vengeance, hands coming back up to smooth down Azazel’s long spine as Erik’s body finally starts playing its part -- his hips undulating up to meet Azazel’s thrusts, fingers grasping thick handfuls of Azazel’s buttocks as if to pull him in deeper, harder. And all the while Erik’s power finds and slips into the barely-perceptible curve of his suppressor bands. Azazel makes an approving sound low in his throat, and his tension softens as his focus shifts back to fucking, though he keeps an eye on Erik, not entirely trusting. His cock moves inside Erik, a wet slip of flesh-on-flesh, and eventually he dips his head to go back to biting Erik’s neck.

It gives Erik the perfect view down his back to his own hands, the whole and the bandaged one holding onto Azazel’s ass, his thighs spread wide with one knee turned in, like he’s trying to keep Azazel close. It doesn’t take much thought to let his body keep moving, fucking along with Azazel’s rhythm, his hole clenching and unclenching. Make it good for him and maybe Azazel will forget himself, lose his guard and just remember Erik the sub, Erik the child who only ever hurt anyone in fear or on Shaw’s orders. Their skin is hot, Azazel’s a little sweaty as it slides against Erik, his nipples hard against Erik’s chest.

Erik’s power scrapes and scatters at his sense of the suppressors, clumsy, like a child’s. His hole hurts, his body too tense when Azazel started, but Erik works through that. If anything, the pain makes his senses sharper. He can feel the pins now, little electric sparks in the suppressor tech. All it will take now is to disrupt them -- just get one band off and he can do the other with ease. His ball bearings are in his jeans pocket on the floor, it’ll take half a second to get to one --

Azazel groans and his hips jerk, hard, as he comes inside Erik, squirting him full of semen; his fingers dig into Erik’s flesh as he fucks him through it, spasmodic thrusts while he drives his come deeper into Erik’s hole. His teeth dig into the side of Erik’s neck, a flash of pain that accompanies the sudden, crystalline clarity of the electromagnetic world exploding into existence all around Erik as his suppressor bands fall open.

Azazel doesn’t even have time to react. Erik isn’t even sure he notices, before Erik has the ball bearing in his power’s grasp and twists his own head roughly aside, out of the bullet’s way as he shoots it through Azazel’s skull and sprays blood and brain matter across the pillow. The projectile buries itself somewhere in the mattress and Azazel slumps forward, one leg twitching erratically before it goes still.

Even the blood, Erik tastes like iron in the humming magnetic air.

The body on top of him is much heavier without Azazel’s own musculature holding it up, but Erik just … _lies_ there, for a moment, reaching with one hand to tug the gag from his mouth and then just breathing, short gasps of air that flood his lungs and clear his mind. Azazel’s cock is still inside him, still hard, even, as Erik’s hands uncurl from his body and drop, limp, to the bed.

He hears the door opening before he can react, and then Frank’s voice says, “Holy shit.”

“ _Close the door,_ ” Erik hisses, the spike of terrified adrenaline giving him the strength he needs to finally grasp Azazel’s shoulders and lever his body off him and out of him, pushing him to the side. The cock slides out of him with a sickening wet glide. Frank obeys, coming properly inside and shutting the door behind himself; when Erik looks up at him Frank’s eyes are a little wide, his whole posture tense.

“Well, this is a clusterfuck,” Frank says, staring at Azazel’s naked corpse. “Jesus, Erik. What if I’d been Shaw?”

“Then I’d be dead right now,” Erik says. It’s only after he’s pushed himself upright, weight balanced on trembling arms that he remembers … Frank’s no better than the rest of them. If he could, he’d probably get up on Erik next and pick up where Azazel left off -- the memory catches like acid on his tongue and anger surges up like fire in its wake, burning everything it touches. His gaze sharpens and he snaps the second ball bearing to his grasp, says: 

“You’re next.”

Frank blinks, but doesn’t so much as shift, just stays where he is, as if he’s trying not to make any sudden movements. “Well, that wouldn’t help you get out of here, would it? It would seriously fuck up us killing Shaw, that’s for damn certain, and I’ve worked too damn hard to get to this point for you to screw it up now.”

What? Good fucking god, Erik is sick of Frank’s cryptic bullshit. 

The whole goddamn room smells like Azazel’s come, and if Erik closes his eyes he can still see Azazel on top of him, can still feel Frank inside of him. Now that he knows Frank’s a fucking liar, it isn’t hard to imagine he got back into Hellfire not because he had to, but because he tried Erik once when Erik was a child then decided he’d come back for another taste.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” he spits out, viciously ignoring the hot trickle of Azazel’s come out of his ass and onto the sheets beneath him.

“Tell you what,” Frank says, and holds up his hands in a pacifying gesture. “You promise not to explode my head like you’re apparently so fond of doing, at least until I’m done explaining, and I’ll explain. Then you can decide if you want to redecorate or not. Deal?”

Erik’s patience is thin enough already without listening to Frank blather on about his excuse du jour. “You raped me when I was _nine_ ,” he snarls instead, static sparking between his hand and the ball bearing as it leaps into the air between them.

Frank winces, a very convincing look of shame coming over his face, some of the strength dropping out of his posture. “Ah. That. Shaw told you?”

“Yes, that,” Erik says mockingly, and he resists the strange urge to grab at the bedsheets and pull them up to cover his nakedness from Frank’s view. “Amazing how easily it slips your memory. I guess I didn’t perform well enough to make an impression on you.”

“What was I supposed to do? Introduce myself and say ‘by the way’?” Frank asks, spreading his hands. “I’m not going to make excuses for it, Erik, I’m not proud of it and I didn’t forget about it, but I swear I’m trying to make it up to you now. I’m sorry. You’re going to want to hear what I have to say, and you can always kill me after, okay, but you can’t unkill me, so have a little patience and let me explain?”

Fuck it. Maybe Erik will drag it out nice and slow, make it hurt. He melts the lock on the door and says, “Speak fast.”

Frank takes a deep breath, lets it out, then says, “I’m working with Emma. She’s been planning to kill Shaw this whole time, and the plan needs you to help with it. She made contact with me to get you here so you could get your revenge for all the shit he put you through -- Emma wants you back on-side and in a position of power and influence. I’m the messenger-slash-organizer getting all the parts into place, including making sure Charles comes out of this okay. She’s not your enemy, she wants to be your mentor.”

It’s perhaps the exact opposite of what Erik expected to hear -- which was some bullshit about how Frank hated Shaw, hated Hellfire, wanted out, that this was their way to escape together and run off into the sunset. 

Erik’s loathe to trust Emma Frost, and he isn’t about to permanently align himself with her, but he has a very limited amount of time before Shaw sends someone else looking for him and Azazel and finds Azazel dead. He’s half tempted to take care of Frank the way he took care of Azazel; if Emma really wants to give Erik his revenge, then she’ll let him take it on everyone who ever laid a finger on him, and that includes Frank, or Caliban, or whatever he’s calling himself. The thought of watching Frank walk away from this makes Erik feel sick, but by the same coin Frank’s a powerful mutant. Erik will need powerful mutants on his side if he has a hope of taking down both Creed and Shaw.

So, he makes the decision that comes with the best odds of him and Charles living to tell about it.

“Fine.” The ball bearing snaps back into his grasp and Erik pushes himself properly out of bed, getting to his feet and crossing to Frank in two quick steps, heedless of his own nakedness and Azazel’s marks on his body. He presses two fingers hard against the center of Frank’s chest and says, “But don’t make the mistake of thinking I’ve forgiven you. I need your help, so I am _tolerating_ your continued existence. You’re strong, but you aren’t stronger than my mutation _or_ my Dominance, never mind both. You answer to me. Understand?”

Frank nods. “Yeah, okay.” 

“And give me back my gun.”

Frank tosses the pistol toward Erik, who catches it and drops it onto the bed behind him. “Look, Erik -- “ Frank says, his face doing something complicated. “I’m sorry, I really am. I could tell you a hundred times that I didn’t want to, that I was nineteen and that Shaw coerced me, and that’d be true, but it doesn’t change the essential facts. I’m sorry.” He sighs, then straightens, pushing away the remorse until his face is calm again. “Now, you’d better get dressed while I lay out the play-by-play.”

Erik glares at him a moment longer, not at all moved, but he does need to put his clothes on -- so he leaves the ball bearing hanging in the air there near Frank, an implicit threat while he gathers up his clothes and starts pulling them on, retrieving the bloody ball bearing from inside the mattress and slipping it back into his pocket with its mate. “I can take off Charles’ suppressor,” he says as he does up his jeans. “He’ll freeze Shaw. The one I’m worried about is Creed. I’ll need to get these on him,” he gestures toward the empty suppressor bands next to Azazel’s body.

“I wouldn’t count on Charles to be able to,” Frank says, leaning back against the doorframe. “He’ll still be affected by the drugs we knocked him out with, so his powers will probably be up and down. Emma’s going to do it; she’s strong enough, and she’s not been pumped full of heroin. I can take on Creed long enough for you to band him; I’m stronger than he is.”

Another excellent reason to kill Frank: he drugged Charles. It’s incredible, how long that list is getting.

“Fine.” Erik reaches for the suppressors and latches them back around his wrists -- though this time he only lets the electrical current connect between two of the pins, far too little suppression to contain his power. He hates the sight of them on his wrists, as if they still belong there, but he’s done much worse things tonight in the name of revenge. “On her signal, then.”

“Charles was fine when I left him in there, for what it’s worth. And -- afterwards we can see how things shake out, okay?” Frank says, and puts his hand on the door handle, giving Erik a long look. “You ready?”

Relief courses through Erik, the emotion so strong it just -- it’s exhausting, in its own way, after everything else Erik’s already been through. But he has to stay strong just a little while longer. Soon, this will be over. Don’t trust Frank. Don’t trust Emma. Don’t trust anyone. 

Just end this.

He nods, and Frank opens the door.

*

_Charles_

Just sitting here is torture enough, but Charles -- he can’t stop listening, desperate for some sign of life, feeling his own chest tight and his heart throbbing in his chest with fear and helpless fury. The silence now is far worse after Erik’s muffled cries and Azazel’s grunting, the thin walls having done nothing to quiet the sound of Erik, Charles’ Erik, being raped, being hurt. Charles wants to -- he isn’t sure what he’d do if he were free and unsuppressed, but surely Emma can see it in his head, the way he wants to hurt them all, destroy everything to get to Erik.

It feels like it’s been hours since Shaw sent Frank to go and see what’s taking Azazel so long, though Charles knows his perception of time is skewed right now -- whether from the fear of being alone with Shaw and Emma Frost and Victor Creed, or from the drugs still pulsing through his veins, sickening him and making him weak. He’s still sat on the floor by the sofa, surrounded by broken glass and trying not to be noticed -- staying very still, and very quiet, his hands tangled together in his lap and his breathing harsh but as shallow as he can make it. His face feels cold, sweat prickling across his brow.

Across the room Shaw is talking to Emma Frost, sat at the table with glasses of cold chardonnay in front of them, celebrating; Victor Creed haunts the corner by the window, watching the street from the side of the frame where he can’t be seen -- or shot by a sniper.

“First things first, we need to call back everyone who wasn’t taken by the raid,” Shaw is saying, his fingers sketching shapes in the air like he’s drawing out his intentions -- and maybe he is, if Emma is watching inside his mind. “Gather our forces and assess our situation. I have some thoughts on how we should proceed, but they will depend what we have to work with.”

Even just that little is frightening to hear, the consequences too terrible to contemplate. Charles has to come up with a plan. There has to be something he can do, some way out of this -- he knows all too well just from what he’s overheard what’s happening to Erik in the other room, how he’s being ‘punished’. Charles is heartsick and scared to death for him, trying not to picture Erik being raped, being hurt by Azazel the way Erik swore he would never be again. Trying not to imagine that it’s taking Frank so long because he’s joined in.

God. This is -- it’s everything Charles has ever been most afraid of, being trapped with these people and sucked back into Erik’s old life, into what Charles has tried so hard to free Erik from. He failed at turning Erik away from separatism; failed at protecting him from sexual advances he wasn’t old enough to be exposed to; and now he’s failed even to keep him safe from Hellfire, the one thing Charles thought the legal system would help him to do. They were tried, and sentenced, and imprisoned, and yet here they all are again, raping Erik all over again.

He’s utterly helpless, toothless tied up and without his telepathy, and Charles thinks that if he had his powers he might take out half a city without meaning to, rattling with rage and an impotent need for retribution that nobody but Erik can stir up in him.

If he thought it would make a difference Charles would offer himself instead, but the look on Shaw’s face as he had sent Erik off with Azazel to be raped was clear enough for Charles to need no telepathy to read it. Shaw wants to break a 7D to heel. He could care less about Charles, save as a tool to either further his own agenda or to use against Erik.

Carefully controlling himself, Charles shifts just a tiny bit, trying to avoid the glass, and pulls his knees up to his chest, drawing in tighter on himself to take up less space, make himself even less noticeable. He needs to form objectives, then tasks to complete to achieve those objectives.

One. Get Erik. That he has no control over this is a setback, but it’s the most important part.

Two. Somehow distract the others, or take them out of the game so that they can’t interfere with the escape. Difficult, without telepathy, but if John McClane can do it in a wifebeater and socks crawling around in the air ducts, so can Charles. Maybe.

Three. Get the hell out of there and alert the authorities. Or possibly alert the authorities and let them get them out of there. Or just disable them all and leave them here. Charles isn’t picky. They shouldn’t have touched Erik.

A three-step plan seems manageable, he thinks, ignoring the fact he has no idea how to achieve any of those goals. He has a plan, now he just needs to … flesh it out.

A door closes down the corridor, and Charles perks up, then immediately regrets it when Creed chuckles, amused and winking at him; nonetheless Charles’ heart is in his mouth until he sees Erik coming back into the main room behind Frank, looking … oh, he looks -- a little wild-eyed, his throat all bruised on one side, and Shaw says,

“Azazel fall asleep after fucking you, did he?”

Charles feels his lip draw back from his teeth in a snarl, and he can barely keep from screaming.

When Erik responds his voice is surprisingly strong, even as his hands both curl into fists beneath the gleaming silver suppressor bands still on his wrists. “He teleported. He didn’t say to where.”

“Probably to get a cigarette,” Creed says, and Shaw laughs appreciatively, waving one hand. “Come in, boys, and sit down. Erik, I trust you understand now where you fit in this family?”

Charles wants to throw up, nausea flooding him from head to foot, even his toes feeling sick -- and it’s that which makes him think for a moment that he’s imagining the needle sliding back out from under the skin of his temple, the suppressor band becoming inert around his head and a sudden influx of loud, almost overwhelming voices flooding in --

 _Don’t react,_ Erik’s voice says in Erik’s own head, louder than the rest. 

“I understand,” Erik’s voice says out loud, too flat to be truly subservient. He approaches Shaw’s table, sitting down on the seat just next to him, close enough that his arm brushes Shaw’s. It’s -- _too_ close, Erik would never put himself in Shaw’s space like that if he didn’t have his power back in his own hands.

Charles struggles to get things back under control, thinking -- God, Emma must be able to sense it, must _know_ \-- it’s like someone has their hand on the volume dial and is turning things up and down, up and down, the moment Charles tries to listen everything fading away, and as soon as he tries to ignore it everything dialling up to eleven. It’s awful, and he grits his teeth, trying not to show it outwardly.

It’s difficult, too, not to react to it when Creed straightens from his watchpost and walks over to where the rest of them are sitting, standing far too near to Erik -- Charles wants to hurl himself at him, to get between them, and yet he’s still -- fuck, he’s still stuck here at Shaw’s order, though he can start to chip away at it now he’s no longer functioning as a -5S. He starts rocking from side to side, muscles straining to move as if he’s tied by invisible ropes, letting out a small noise of frustration that goes unnoticed by the others.

“Rasputin clearly fucked you good, you reek,” Creed says to Erik, making a show of bending down to sniff at him from just behind Erik, out of his line of sight. “Come, and blood, and … ”

He pauses, sniffs again. “What the fuck did you do?”

A second stretches out, taut. Erik’s lips slice into a quick, harsh grin. 

“I blew Azazel’s fucking brains out.”

 _Oh my God_ \-- Charles’ insides lurch the second before Shaw bursts into action, grabbing for Erik, who dodges Shaw’s hand only to be grabbed by Creed; then all of a sudden Frank is there, tearing Creed off Erik and throwing him across the room to smash into the wall behind Charles, who can’t help but shout, his hands covering his own head. Frank comes after Creed, pounding across the floorboards while across the room Shaw growls, “Come here, Erik, before I make this even less pleasant,” and an obvious ball of glowing energy starts to gather in his cupped palm.

Charles has to do something. He can’t just -- he can’t just sit here and do nothing! He’s terrified, trapped and angry, and he shouts, “Leave him alone!” His hands fly up to the sofa and he tries to push him to his feet -- his thighs burn with the disobedience, like having carbonic acid poured over them, and it hurts, but Charles concentrates instead on scrabbling at Shaw’s mind, trying to grab a good enough hold to incapacitate him, put him to sleep, _something_. His control is still shaky, and his grip slips, only to meet Emma Frost’s mind attempting the same thing and being deflected by Charles’ fumbling.

 _Stop getting in my way,_ she snarls silently, but by then it’s too late. Shaw says, “Bitch!” and backhands her across the face before Emma can react, kicking her when she falls to the floor, catching her in the side.

Emma isn’t moving, and Erik is all too aware of it -- Charles keeps struggling even as Erik tries to choose between using his suppressors on Creed or Shaw. And Erik chooses Creed, yelling out, “Frank!” as he sends the suppressor bands flying off his own wrists, across the room and closing onto Creed’s instead.

“Thanks,” Frank shouts back, grappling Creed down to the floor through brute force, then punches him in the head, knocking Creed down -- and out, his mutation unable to keep him awake.

Shaw grabs Erik, those few precious seconds enough for him to close the distance and close his hand around Erik’s throat, lifting him onto his tiptoes and snarling, “I will break you, boy, I will snap you like a twig and have you grovelling at my feet until you beg to die. How dare you?”

Erik sends metal flying at Shaw, chairs and ball bearings and coins, but all are repulsed by Shaw’s mutation and drop, useless, to the floor the moment they touch him. Erik’s hands scrabble at Shaw’s around his throat, his breath rattling as he gasps for air, and Frank gets up -- something Charles can’t do, fuck, _fuck_ , he can’t even -- it hurts so much he wants to die, trying to lever himself up -- Frank sprints across the room only for Shaw to _flick_ him away with two fingers, smashing Frank to the carpet where he lies, groaning, as Charles totally fails to do anything useful at all.

“We’re leaving,” Shaw snaps at Erik, and drags him out of the room by his throat, leaving the fallen behind as Charles fights to get up and fails, utterly, screaming after them,

_“Erik!”_

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: references to past child sexual abuse/rape and child physical abuse, contemporary physical abuse, violence, rape. If you want to skip the rape, stop at "So much for that idea -- and Erik can’t come up with a better one quickly enough to respond" and resume at "... doesn’t even have time to react."


	53. Fifty-three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As we come up to the story finale Spicedpiano has [made a playlist for this fic](http://spicedpiano.tumblr.com/post/123913361194/but-for-now-perhaps-its-all-right-an-all-the) \- go give it a listen!

_Erik_

Erik’s power has torn down the Golden Gate Bridge. It has reached into an atom and adjusted the charge of a single electron. It has felt the geomagnetic field, and sensed the frequency of radio waves, and turned the iron from blood into a weapon. 

The one thing Erik’s power cannot do is kill Sebastian Shaw.

It’s a lesson Erik learns with each step they take, Shaw dragging him down the staircase of the building and Erik’s power latching onto anything -- everything -- to try and fight him off. He doesn’t know if Charles can even hear him but he keeps screaming in his head all the same, _Freeze him, Charles! Stop him! **Do something!**_ but Charles does nothing, can do nothing. 

Shaw is nightmare given shape, horrific and terrible and, worst of all, unstoppable.

“Stop fighting me,” Shaw growls through gritted teeth, moving inexorably down towards the ground floor. “You always _insist_ on making it worse for yourself -- ”

Shaw reaches for the door handle and Erik melts the latch, sinks his power into the metal pipes wound throughout the building and holds on tight, pulling him nearly out of Shaw’s grasp as his body strains to magnetize itself to all the metal it can reach.

“Ridiculous boy!” Shaw punches Erik in the side, just over his kidney, hard enough that Erik’s mouth falls open on a breathless gasp of pain, his mind blanking out with it; by the time he’s doing more than just breathing through it they’re out on the street, and Shaw is still dragging him, though who the hell knows where he means for them to go.

Outside the range of Charles’ telepathic influence. Emma’s influence. That’s Shaw’s best option right now, Erik realizes through the red haze of his throbbing side and aching head. To get as far away as possible, a straight shot through as many streets and human lives as he has to destroy before he has what he wants. He has no idea how far that will be or how long it’ll take to get them there; the ex-terrorist in him tries drawing up all the options, each more violent than the last. Erik himself claws again at Shaw’s hand, which has grasped onto his arm instead of his throat now they’re out in public, but no less painful for it.

They aren’t going unnoticed, either -- someone spots them, recognizes Erik, or Shaw. Or both -- people are screaming now, running away, an empty space exploding around them like a blast radius.

“All this work,” Shaw says, without so much as flinching, just walking them directly down the street, ignoring the chaos all around them as he drags Erik past a bakery and a corner store. “Years of effort, taking you in, raising you, training you, and for what, so you can throw it in my face? You kill Azazel, who was another parent to you, like some common street thug rather than the king I made you? You are an ungrateful disgrace, and I should kill you to be rid of you!”

 _Charles!_ Erik yells in his mind as loud as he can. It’s like shouting into a void.

He sends a burst of electricity out into the air, into Shaw’s skin, which absorbs it. It’s not even intentional now -- his body reacting every way it can to try to escape. “Let me go!” he orders, or tries to. His toe catches on a loose cobblestone and he trips -- would fall on his face if it weren’t for the way Shaw’s holding him up, Erik’s own legs all but useless.

“I should have killed you as soon as I knew you were 7D,” Shaw continues, as if Erik hasn’t spoken at all. “But I was too soft! I thought, just fuck it out of him, he’ll get the picture, children are intelligent enough for that. And yet look at you. An utter waste of eighteen years of work. I’m ashamed to say I raised you.”

Erik outright ignores the terrified part of him that wants to grab onto Shaw’s waist with both arms and plead for his forgiveness, insist he’ll do better, try harder, be whatever Shaw needs. Never mind that nothing he did was ever good enough. That even at his most submissive, Shaw found flaws.

“Kill me then,” Erik snarls out through his raw throat.

“Oh, no,” Shaw says, and now he sounds almost jubilant, satisfied in a way that sends chills through Erik’s whole body. “I have better things in mind for you.”

*

_Charles_

Charles fights harder than he’s ever fought anything, his mind feeling almost as if it’s going to burst from the pressure of trying to break the order; his hands scrabble at the suppressor, trying to get its physical band off, and in his head he’s still grappling for Shaw’s mind, the drugs still making it impossible to _use_ his telepathy, though he can hear every vile thing that man is thinking, every awful intention --

“Here,” Frank says from behind him, and then there are hands on Charles’ head and the suppressor band snaps in half, Frank’s fingers breaking it and tossing it aside. “Charles, can you stop him? He’s getting away, and Emma is still out cold.”

“I can’t even get up, Shaw ordered me down while I was suppressed and it got in my head,” Charles snaps, wishing he could afford to tell Frank to go fuck himself but knowing he’s still trapped with the man. “Go after them!”

“It won’t make a difference, he’s too strong,” Frank says, coming around in front of Charles. “How’s this -- _get up, Charles_.”

It’s not -- if Charles wanted to he could easily ignore the order, there’s no imperative there the way there would be if it were Erik. And yet it’s enough to let him finally break Shaw’s order and scramble to his feet, breathing hard and feeling as wobbly as a newborn, his legs shaking still, weak and uncoordinated.

“Thanks,” he says, grudgingly, and turns for the door, stumbling towards it -- if he can’t do anything telepathically he can at least find someone with a telephone to call the police -- when he hears a sudden movement and a loud grunt of surprise from behind him that makes him spin on his heel to stare, aghast, at Victor Creed stood over a fallen Frank, with a broken table leg in his hand ready to impale him --

\-- No time to think. No time to speak. Charles just shouts and throws out his hand, and his mind responds like a typhoon, far stronger than he meant it to, one moment absent and the next there in full force, wiping Creed’s mind away and destroying him in a split-second, like deleting a file.

He can see Creed’s eyes go blank, emptied of their contents, before he crumples to the floor over Frank, who stares at Charles like he’s seen the devil before stuttering back into life.

“Go!” Frank says, shoving Creed’s body aside.

Charles can’t spend the time or the energy to be horrified, to feel sick and guilty over what he just did -- Creed _deserved it_ , and Charles’ power is ebbing and flowing now, not responding to his emotions but perhaps to surges of cleaner blood to his mind; he turns and runs on clumsy feet, clattering down the stairs afraid at every moment that he’s going to fall and break his neck and not be able to save Erik, to get there in time.

When Charles bursts out onto the street there are people shouting and crying and pointing to the left, so that’s the way he goes, his feet slapping loudly on the cobbles as he hopes and prays for another surge, for the chance to --

\-- he feels Shaw. He feels Erik, too, and Charles’ heart leaps into his throat, hearing Erik’s voice as he says, gravelly and half-choked, “You don’t even know what the word _revolutionary_ means.”

“Don’t you talk back to me,” Shaw snaps, as Charles turns the corner and sees them up ahead, almost at the end of the alleyway. “Playing house with your integrationist sub, ignoring everything I ever taught you -- ”

Charles is running so fast now, and he shouts, his breath harsh and fast, “Stop, don’t you dare go any further!”

Shaw spins to stare at him, a violent look on his face that would normally make Charles fear for his life, but he’s looking at Erik, who has gone white as bone, every part of Erik certain that this is it, that Shaw will kill Charles right in front of him.

“Charles,” Erik croaks out, “No --”

But Charles is riding it, now, cresting the wave of his own mind, and he flings all that power forward, colliding bodily into Shaw at the same moment that he freezes the man’s mind, grasping it tightly in his mental fist and doing all he can not to -- not to wipe him the way he did Creed, even if he deserves it more, because that would be _too good for him_. Shaw’s head bounces off the cobblestones when they hit the ground, and Charles is sprawled on top of him, pinning him down with his own weight, winded and so afraid that he’s furious, hands in fists that he clenches in Shaw’s shirt and uses to lift him from the ground and slam him back down, again and again, can hear a strange unearthly scream rattling from his throat as he beats Shaw against the cobblestones.

Next to him, Erik is on his knees on the street, gasping for air with his hands splayed on the cobbles. The bandage on his right hand has already bled through, leaving red stains on the stones beneath when Erik pushes himself roughly up again, Charles’ sense of his mind wild and unanchored.

“Get off him,” Erik says, and when Charles doesn’t immediately obey he grabs Charles’ shoulders, but even with Erik’s height he isn’t stronger than Charles, can’t pull him off as Charles keeps hitting Shaw, and hitting him. Charles can’t seem to stop, though his knuckles are bloody now from punching Shaw in the mouth -- and so Erik insists, makes it an order: “Charles, get _off_ him!”

The best he can do is sort of roll backwards off of Shaw, still holding him frozen and staring at the sky, praying that he’ll keep enough control of his telepathy to maintain it; somewhere behind them he can feel people watching, staring, some of them stupid enough to be _filming_ this, to be so close to a known mass-murderer -- 

“He hurt you,” he says, furious, wishing Erik hadn’t made him stop; his hands are still in fists, his eyes slitted. “He let them hurt you -- ”

“Which is why I’m the only one who gets to kill him.”

Charles pushes himself up to sitting, panting, and looks at Shaw, prone and helpless on the cobbles where Charles is holding him down with telepathy. Shaw’s mind is racing, though, struggling under Charles’ hold in the same way a man might struggle to breathe in the void of space -- pointlessly. Now that Charles has stopped hitting him it’s harder to know what to do, what to think -- he feels fuzzy and detached, like the drugs cut something loose inside him that hasn’t fully reconnected yet. “There are people watching,” Charles says, since this, at least, is a statement and doesn’t require him to decide on an opinion.

Erik doesn’t say anything. Can’t, perhaps. He just pushes himself up to his feet -- Charles is close enough to see the way Erik’s legs are unsteady under his own weight, from adrenaline, or from what Azazel did to him. Erik doesn’t hesitate before he reaches back, tugging up the hem of his shirt Charles sees the grip of the black gun sticking out of the waist of his jeans.

“He’s not dead yet,” Erik murmurs at last, drawing out the gun and taking careful aim down at the ground, right at Shaw’s face. Unlike his legs, his hand doesn’t shake.

God -- Charles doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, or say, now, but -- can he just let Erik do this? A part of him says _absolutely Shaw deserves to die_ , but -- it’s -- he’s afraid of that part of himself, and that says a lot.

Charles gets up, his mind twitching around Shaw’s -- still fluctuating, his power far from under control. “They’ll put you in jail,” he says, his hand coming to rest carefully on Erik’s raised forearm, not pushing it down but trying to make him stop.

Erik looks at him, and Charles doesn’t think he’s ever seen Erik’s eyes so empty, as if this day has reached inside him and carved the light out the same way Charles did Victor Creed. 

“They’ll have to catch me first,” Erik says. He clicks off the safety, but doesn’t shoot. Not yet. Charles only has time to take in a quick breath before Erik’s kissing him, his free hand curling round the nape of Charles’ neck and keeping him there even as his gun arm, tense under Charles’ touch, doesn’t move. The kiss is utterly disarming, and Charles hesitates --

\-- and slips.

Shaw doesn’t waste a second. He jerks himself up off the ground, hand outstretched towards Charles with fingers clawed and sparking, lips pulled back in a snarl -- Charles draws in a sharp breath, horror and fear exploding inside him as he tries to get out of the way of that deadly hand, grabbing hold of Shaw’s mind again and pinning him in place --

\-- and the gun goes off, a bullet piercing Shaw’s forehead and exploding out the back of his skull.

Charles reels, the sound and the pain of being shot in the head -- it’s not Charles’ head but it feels like it, feels like being sucked down into an abyss as the light dies, and he’s -- making some kind of noise, distantly aware of the sound of Shaw’s body hitting the ground and then Erik’s hands on him, grasping both of Charles’ arms -- keeping him upright, because Charles can’t anymore, he can’t, Erik’s voice is coming from very far away as he says Charles’ name, over and over.

“Aaaah,” Charles says, letting his head fall forward and rolling it from side to side against Erik’s collarbone, his breathing fast and heavy. “Fuck, it hurts -- ”

“You’re okay -- you’re all right, Charles, I’ve got you --”

“Fuck,” Charles says again, struggling against that dark tide with hands that clench into fists, then release, then clench again, fighting against the insubstantial. He lets his weight lean more heavily against Erik, concentrating on his mind instead of his physical body. “A-are you o-okay?”

Erik doesn’t get a chance to answer. 

\-- “To je policie! Stůj!”

Charles turns at the sound of running feet to find five uniformed policemen coming towards them, each of them armed with their own handguns; they feel determined, and afraid, and angry, too, all of their emotions rioting to Charles’ oversensitive telepathy, and he swallows hard but manages to say, “Please -- this is Sebastian Shaw, he kidnapped us!”

“Drop the gun, Lehnsherr!” someone shouts, and Charles flings up a hand to stop them, freezing them all in place, because he doesn’t want them any closer than this, not until he can be sure he and Erik are safe from the cops just as much as from Shaw.

“Charles, it’s Moira,” the voice shouts again from behind the officers caught in Charles’ control, and -- yes, he can feel her when he looks for her, it’s really her. “It’s all right, let them go.”

He relaxes very, very carefully, and the released officers stare warily at him and move in more slowly as soon as Erik has tossed his pistol somewhere off to the side, the police coming around to surround on Shaw’s body and block it off from Charles and Erik. 

Next to him, Erik has his hands in the air, resignation coloring his every thought; after all this time, after everything he’s done trying to save those children when Hellfire attacked New York, after killing Shaw in self-defense, he still expects the human police to put him under arrest.

Moira comes forward after the first group of police have started looking at Shaw’s body, taking the two of them in with pursed lips, her arms folded across her chest. She doesn’t approve of him and Erik’s relationship either, isn’t happy with Charles at all, but she’s a professional, and so out loud she says, “I heard Shaw was here in Prague after the break-out and grabbed a teleporter to get here, but I didn’t expect to find you both.” She had suspected she might find Erik, she’s thinking -- but not in the position of Shaw’s executioner. “Are you both all right?”

“I’m okay,” Charles says, because the truth is too long and complicated for now.

Someone collects the gun -- Charles feels Erik’s attention turn toward it, the reflexive spike of anger in his mind that nearly turns into action, Erik reaching for the gun with his power. Nearly, but doesn’t. 

He lowers his arms instead, now that it’s clear no one’s planning to arrest him, and holds out a hand for Charles even as he looks over his shoulder to where the police are waving for a tent to be brought in to cover Shaw’s corpse. Charles doesn’t want to hear any more. Instead he takes Erik’s hand and lets himself be pulled up, looking at Moira and saying, quietly, “There are two dead Hellfire agents in their safehouse, if you didn’t find them yet. Azazel Rasputin and Victor Creed. Well -- Victor isn’t -- he’s braindead. It’s more or less the same thing. There might be two living agents still there.”

Erik’s gaze snaps back to Charles, almost disbelieving, and Charles tries not to meet his eyes, too sickened to want to talk about it.

“Which agents?” Moira asks, going for her radio. “Powers?”

“Emma Frost, telepath,” Charles says, “and Frank Holloway. Enhanced physical performance -- he’s strong and fast. Mutant tracking. Telepathy resistance, too, though … though, that might have been Frost.”

Moira relays the information over her radio and Erik watches her with narrowed eyes, some part of him still not able to accept that it’s over -- that they’re safe, that Shaw is dead. His mind is loud as he turns over the possibility of going after Frost again, and Frank, that particular wound still fresh and bleeding from the betrayal. Charles reaches out and tucks his hand into the crook of Erik’s elbow, stepping in against his side, not saying anything or trying to dissuade him -- just being present, and hoping that’s enough.

“Come on,” Moira says after a tense couple of minutes of conference on the radio. “Let’s take you two somewhere with fewer gawkers and you can tell me what happened.”

Exhausted and still twitchy and fumbling from the drugs, Charles tugs Erik after her, and together they make their way to Moira’s borrowed police car and the local station.

*

It’s a long time later when Moira delivers Charles and Erik to the hotel room that’s been requisitioned for them. There are two guards standing outside in the hallway and more within other parts of the hotel -- Charles can feel a whole slew of international agents staying in the rooms all around their own, surrounding them with law enforcement officers. They’re taking no chances with their two star witnesses, and it’s probably the safest place to be in the whole city. Yet. Charles knows that’s how he should feel, but right now he just feels worn out, worn thin, exhausted and running on fumes. Erik looks tired, too, but there’s an energy about him, a restless anger that has yet to really simmer down.

“I really want to have a bath,” Charles says to break the silence, feeling grimy all over. “Do you want to share? I can wait, but … it might be nice.”

“No,” Erik says, and he stalks off to the bathroom without waiting for Charles to say anything else. It’s hard not to feel stung, rejected, as he hears Erik turn the lock, then the sound of water on tile as the shower turns on, not even a pause for Erik to remove his clothes. It’s not as if … Charles knows why, of course. It’s not … not personal, not really. Erik is just angry at everything, and everyone, right now. It’s not about Charles.

Still, snubbed, Charles can’t stand here forever in the middle of the room, and so he walks over to the bed and starts tugging off his own clothes, so at least he isn’t stewing in them and his own old fear sweat.

It’s not a big room -- a double bed dominates the space, a dresser across from it with an old rayon-tube television sat on top of it and a mirror above that. Charles doesn’t look at that in too much depth, but he catches glimpses of himself nonetheless, pale and hollow-eyed in the fluorescent overhead light. The wallpaper here is bland, white-on-white pattern, echoed in the semi-translucent white drapes hiding the windows, blocking out everything else.

He sits down on the end of the bed first, then finally lies down, since he suspects Erik will be a while. Though he tries to ignore it, he can still feel through the wall Erik scrubbing viciously at his own skin, as if he could wash away the self-loathing if he used the right loofah. Charles dozes, there, in the quiet, the white noise of the shower lulling him into a surreal sort of limbo. It’s not quite restful, but it’s better than thinking, and he’s very nearly asleep by the time Erik finally comes out.

“It’s all yours,” Erik says. His voice sounds raw -- he’s been crying, though Charles knows better than to comment on that right now.

“Okay,” Charles says softly, opening his eyes to see Erik there in a bathrobe, wrapped up tightly against the world. Best not to push him for now -- Erik will decide when he’s ready for company. “I’ll leave the door open. You can come sit with me if you like.”

He gets up from the bed, ignoring his own nudity just as Erik is right now, and pads into the bathroom to run a bath, sitting on the edge of the tub and watching it fill up. There are wet clothes puddled in the bottom of the shower, dark and sodden. He hears Erik in the other room, the creak of the mattress as his weight settles at the foot of the bed, and it takes a lot of willpower not to go to him and try to force togetherness on him before Erik wants it. When Charles finally slips into the hot water he sighs, letting it rise up to the base of his skull before taking a deep breath and ducking himself entirely under.

He soaks for a long time, wishing it could take away the past day -- Shaw, and Azazel, and knowing what has happened to Erik, and on top of all that, the way Creed’s eyes had just emptied, because Charles reacted without control or mercy. The way it felt in Charles’ head when Shaw died, a sucking black nothingness that had threatened to take him down with it.

He eventually gets out of the bath once his hair is clean and his fingers and toes are wrinkled topographies, taking the remaining towel and patting himself dry before wrapping it around his waist and going back out into the bedroom. Erik is now sat in the chair by the window, staring out through the drapes with the sort of blank expression that says he’s seeing none of it.

Charles crosses the room and stands beside him, wondering what to do for the best -- kiss Erik’s forehead, be an equal and gather his weight while Erik struggles to carry it himself? Or kneel, let Erik be in charge and give him back some measure of control, even if only over Charles?

In the end he does neither of these things. Instead he says, very gently, “We should try and get some sleep. I can help you, if you need it.”

Erik’s fingers shift against his shins, his knees drawn up and heels perched on the edge of his seat. He’s still looking out at the dark street, the tiny people moving in and out of the light from the streetlamps. “They’re still out there. Braden-Newell. And Emma. ...And Frank.”

“Azazel took Elias back to California,” Charles says, “so I imagine he’s been arrested by now. The other two … they’re too smart to still be in the city. They could be anywhere.”

He looks down at Erik and tries to think of something he can say, can do, to stop this self-destructive spiral, make Erik think of something other than what happened. It’s difficult, because there are so many things to say, and yet all of them tie back to Hellfire somehow, to the very thing he wants to avoid. Yet avoiding it would be … tacky at best, downright inexcusable at worst. A middle ground, then, maybe. “I was so scared for you today. I’m -- finding it hard to believe we’re both here, alive and not in the hospital or still with _them_.”

Erik finally looks at him, turning his face so that Charles can see him properly. It’s good -- he can read Erik’s expressions. He doesn’t have to look at just the bruise on Erik’s cheekbone, the bite marks on his neck. 

“I thought I’d be able to order Shaw down.”

Charles thinks about taking Erik’s hand, but … better to let him lead with any physical contact, given what happened to him today. “He’s a 5D,” Charles says, placing his own hand palm-up on the windowsill, a silent offer. “Things get tricky at the top end, sometimes. Especially when you’re afraid.”

After a long moment, longer than Charles had hoped, Erik’s hand comes to slip into his, fingers half-laced together. “How are you feeling?” Erik asks him soberly, and Charles gently squeezes back, not too tight.

“Tired,” he says, honestly. “And … sad, and … I can’t trust myself anymore. I killed someone today, and then … I felt Shaw die. I can’t get it out of my head.” Those eyes, and the way Creed had fallen to the floor, like someone -- like Charles -- had cut his strings. “Relieved that you’re … safe.” Not okay, though.

“It was Victor you killed, right? It’s no different than the man who tried to kill us before. You were defending yourself,” Erik says evenly, his fingers moving slowly on Charles’ palm now, tracing the lines of his hand.

If only that were true. “I was defending Frank.”

“You think he wouldn’t have killed you once he was done with Frank?”

“I could have incapacitated him, maybe,” Charles says, looking down towards his own bare feet on the carpet, though he knows it’s rubbish even as he says it, knows he had no way of knowing his power would even work at that moment in time, as unstable as it was. “I just … I know he was a bad man. I won’t mourn his death. But I still wish I hadn’t done it.” Rather, that someone else had, Charles thinks, hates himself for it but knows it’s the truth. It would have been easier to swallow if he could pretend not to be responsible at all, to have been an innocent bystander.

“I wish I had killed him, then. I wish I killed all of them, not just Azazel and Shaw.” There’s no vicious anger underlying Erik’s words, for once: just flat, simple honesty.

And Charles says, “I know,” letting his hip slip off the window frame so he can settle down to the carpet upright on his knees in front of Erik, wrap his hands around Erik’s ankles and give them a little tug. Erik unfolds enough to put his feet down on the carpet, and Charles moves in between his thighs to wraps his arms around Erik’s middle, Charles’ face pressed against Erik’s chest, drawing him into a hug from a position of submission, a position of strength. Erik’s hands slide into his hair, and after a moment, twist into the locks to hold on tight. The tension against his scalp feels good, and Charles stays there like that, letting Erik hold him close.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Erik says after a while, and Charles nods, slowly getting to his feet and offering his hands to Erik, drawing him up after.

He gets dressed in the pajamas provided by the hotel before getting into the bed, not wanting Erik to feel pressured by Charles’ being naked; Erik doesn’t even take off the bathrobe, just gets under the covers with the flannel still wrapped around him and hiding what Charles suspects must be Shaw’s bruises underneath. Then Erik reaches for Charles, pulling him closer across the mattress and settling his hand over Erik’s stomach, a single point of contact; Charles is grateful for that, for the feeling of Erik breathing in and out, belly rising and falling, as he lays there and finally slips into a fitful sleep.

*

_Erik_

The night draws out into a strange reverie, dream indistinguishable from reality. Even sleep is exhausting, as if every beat of Erik’s heart drains more energy from his mind and body until finally the blur of hours emerges into pale grey daybreak and Erik is still here, lying on this bed with Charles asleep beside him and the weight of history heavy on his chest.

His face throbs, bone-deep pain where Shaw hit him, echoed lower down at his ribs where the hospital examination said he’d cracked two. He can’t even feel the cut on his leg. They sutured it up -- eighteen stitches -- but it might as well have not happened at all. It’s not the first morning he’s woken like this, lying still while he catalogs the damage and decides if it’s surmountable. It always is. What other choices are there?

It feels like standing at a crossroads, the juxtaposition of two lives so orthogonal to one another -- Charles’ dark hair against pale skin, the warmth of his hand on Erik’s stomach and the low wash of his telepathy against Erik’s mind -- and the way Erik’s body feels, the way his soul feels, torn apart and scattered, Erik faced with the task of putting it back together again.

He can’t decide if he’s meant to choose a reality and set along down that path without looking back. If he has to choose, he doesn’t know which it will be. It’s not about what Erik wants, after all. So instead he seizes onto the metal pipes in the wall opposite and uses that as leverage to pull himself up to sitting, then swings his legs out of bed and gets up. 

Dressing back in the clothes he wore yesterday -- Charles must have sent them down to be laundered in the middle of the night while Erik slept, because Erik finds them stacked neat and dry in the bathroom -- feels like slicking oil over his skin, dirty and difficult to rinse off. It’s like stepping into the body of a very particular Erik, the Erik who woke up yesterday morning and put these clothes on out of the closet, not thinking about the implications of the intersecting Dominant and submissive styles, not planning on doing anything more important in them than taking a Thermodynamics exam and possibly having his photo snapped by the omnipresent media photographers. He can’t remember wearing these clothes before yesterday. Can’t remember where he bought them, or when. But he can remember taking them off, and how they looked on the safehouse floor.

Erik takes too long in the bathroom, parting his hair over and over again, the line sharp and severe where he combs his hair back and ignores the inherent accusation in his own reflection: _You let this happen. Stupid boy._

His power keeps reaching out, searching for Shaw’s metal. Old habits. It doesn’t find it, of course. He isn’t here, certainly not in this hotel. Not anywhere, any more. 

The thought of it is disorienting, like the planet’s magnetic field has flipped, like the Sun suddenly started orbiting the Earth. Shaw is gone, is nowhere, will never be here again.

Erik grabs his wallet and leaves the room, taking the stairs down to the ground floor to escape any photographers or reporters who might be waiting in the lobby at the elevators. There’s a café two blocks away where Erik orders a coffee and an almond croissant in his rudimentary, rusty Czech. Only when he starts eating, he realizes how long it’s been since he’s had a proper meal -- and he has to call the waiter back to order a proper breakfast: rye bread with honey and some thin slices of salami and cheese, yogurt, a thick link of sausage. More coffee. 

He can’t stop thinking about Shaw, about what would have happened if he hadn’t killed him. If he’d be waking up in another safehouse right now, hundreds of miles away, trapped in the amber of his old life. He takes another bite of his sausage, not caring that it’s pork, not caring about the woman at another table who thinks she’s being discreet as she snaps a photo of him on her phone and texts it to a friend, then goes online, searching the news for an explanation for his presence in this city, looking the way he does right now. 

Erik pays for his food and leaves shortly afterward. There’s a boutique a block away where he buys a fresh set of clothing for himself and one for Charles as well, going by measurements so he doesn’t have to try anything on. He doesn’t want to look at himself under the harsh lights of the dressing room in those tall mirrors that aim to give you multiple views of yourself, as if you want to see every inch, as if anyone does. 

Before he even pays he already starts to feel that tugging sensation beneath his breastbone, pulling him back to Charles, the sense of exposure that comes with being out on the street starting to be too much. His skin crawls in the sunlight, paranoid now of the eyes on it, wondering who they belong to, if they know him, if he’d be better off reaching for metal and gouging all of them out.

When he returns to the hotel room, Charles is sat at the table, a half-touched plate of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon in front of him; he’s tousled, still, dressed in the pajamas he got from the hotel, dark circles under his eyes. He looks up when Erik comes in and gives him a small smile, but stays where he is, one leg curled under him. “Hi,” he says. “Did you have a good walk?”

Erik nods, setting the bags of clothing down at the foot of the bed and then taking the second chair at the table, across from Charles. “I bought us some new clothes,” he says unnecessarily, because Charles must have read it from his mind already. “We should be careful when we leave. There are reporters downstairs.”

“All right,” Charles says, picking at his plate with the tines of his fork, still in his drooping right hand. “I can hide us, keep them from noticing. That should avoid the issue entirely.”

They sit in silence, then, Charles eating around the edges of his food and Erik pouring himself another cup of coffee from the kettle room service sent up, even though he’s had enough caffeine now to feel on-edge and anxious, his skin taut over his bones. It isn’t a bad silence. Erik’s grateful for it, that Charles will allow him to just be here, with him, not talking about what happened or arguing about it. Erik can very nearly think of nothing at all, slipping into a thin daze broken only by the sound of cutlery against china and the street noises from outside. 

More than anything, Erik wants to go to sleep and wake up to find it’s a year from now, all of this so far into the past that he can look at it as broad strokes and colors, not the gritty details he has to pick between right now, textured and rough. 

“If you like,” Charles says quietly, lifting his coffee cup and taking a sip, “I could soften it for you. Make it less immediate. I won’t erase it, but I could make it … less raw.”

Erik looks up and meets Charles’ gaze across the table, Charles’ eyes still on him as he lowers his cup back down again. It’s tempting. Erik still remembers how good it felt when Charles made him forget about his old life just for that one night, how weightless it was. But he’s survived this before, and it feels … important, somehow, that he do it again. He doesn’t want to think himself weaker now, at eighteen, than he was at any younger age. He wants to know he can come out of this again -- and again, and again, as many times as it takes until he’s shed the weakness in himself and there’s nothing left to hurt.

“No,” he says eventually. “I -- need it. There’s a reason it feels like this, so I should just …” He can’t finish the sentence and just waves his hand vaguely, sure that Charles gets the gist. “Thank you, though.”

He means that sincerely. He knows Charles hates this, and that Charles would do anything not to see Erik hurt. Well. Almost anything. Erik did once ask him to go much further than this, but Charles drew the line at wiping Erik’s memory entirely. If Charles is offering out telepathic favors, the least he could do, Erik thinks, is offer something that would actually make a difference.

Charles winces, looking down at his plate. “You know why I won’t do that,” he says, his grip tightening around his fork, white-knuckled. His face has gone a sickly sort of pale color. “I might as well kill you. It would have the same effect. You would be gone, and someone else would be here. And I love _you._ ”

“Maybe,” Erik says tonelessly, “you’d love that other Erik better.”

“I love you more than I could ever love anyone else,” Charles says, and finally pushes his breakfast away. “I won’t do it, Erik, so -- so please stop torturing yourself with the idea, okay? The important thing, the most important thing, is that we’re both alive and have all our limbs and organs and minds intact. That’s what I want to think about and be grateful for.” He reaches out across the table, offering Erik his hand; Erik hesitates for a long moment, debating chasing after that anger and resentment -- but the thought of working himself up right now is exhausting. And so he complies, settling his hand atop Charles’ and then looking away, down to his coffee cup until he can force himself to lift it up to his mouth and take another sip of the lukewarm brew.

Charles waits a moment, then squeezes Erik’s hand gently. “I’d better get dressed,” he says, and gets to his feet, his fingers slipping free. “Did you get me things I would like to wear, or things you would like me to wear? Because the two are rarely synonymous.” His mind lets out a little burst of warmth, stroking over Erik’s thoughts reassuringly.

“You’ll have to tell me,” Erik says, watching Charles open up one of the shopping bags and peruse its contents, staying sat where he is at the table, too tired to bother with getting up.

“I suppose as long as they cover all the parts that should be covered, I’ll survive.” Charles glances at Erik with a small smile, then picks up the bag and takes it with him into the bathroom to change.

It’s odd, since Erik has seen Charles naked more times than he can count; it’s not as if Charles needs to be modest, or hide anything. Unless he was injured somehow, while captive, and Erik didn’t notice last night while Charles was changing? It’s enough to make Erik push himself out of his chair and follow after, pausing outside the bathroom door to rap twice on the frame. “Are you all right in there?”

“Fine.”

Not wanting to push, Erik retreats back into the room proper, stripping off his own clothes and changing into the pale chinos and summerweight sweater he bought for himself. The unwashed fabric feels rough against his skin, but it’s a far sight better than before. He stuffs those old clothes into the bag, which he balls up and shoves behind one of the armchairs where he doesn’t have to look at it.

Charles comes out a couple of minutes later, dressed in his own new clothes; he _looks_ okay, and he comes over to sit on the end of the bed to pull his socks on, tugging them over his pale feet. “I imagine we need to find out what our schedule is from Moira,” he says, looking up at Erik. “Did they say anything to you on your way in or out?”

“No. Just that we can leave today, probably. I don’t even know if we’re flying or teleporting.” Hopefully the latter. “You should call her.”

“All right,” Charles says, and moves around to the head of the bed to pick up the room phone, dialling the number written on a piece of paper beside it. Moira must answer right away, because it’s only a moment before he says, “Hi, Moira. It’s Charles.”

Erik just stands there while Charles talks, not quite certain what to do with himself in such a small space, without any of the trappings of familiarity. So he just watches Charles, visible in profile, feeling strange and useless while Charles organizes their return home.

“That’s great. Thank you,” Charles finally says, and hangs up the phone, turning back to face Erik. “We’re being flown home this afternoon. A car will take us to the airport around two o’clock, but until then we should hang tight, in case Frank and Emma are out for blood.” Charles gives Erik an uneven smile, padding back over to him and standing close, though he doesn’t quite reach out, even though Erik’s sure he wants to. “I could call down and ask for some books, or we could watch some TV?”

“Can we just sit for a while?”

“Sure,” Charles says. “Whatever you like. Chairs or bed?”

It’s not much of a contest. “Bed,” Erik says, and he finally lifts his hand to press it against Charles’ hip, nudging him in that direction and following just after. He settles next to Charles, leaning against the pillows stacked by the headboard, and then reaches an arm around Charles’ shoulders to draw him close within Erik’s embrace. His body makes a warm pressure against Erik’s shoulder and side, smelling like unfamiliar hotel shampoo when Erik tilts his head to press his brow against Charles’ head and breathe in the scent of him, kissing his temple. Charles is pliant and settles easily, no hint of hesitation, even though he must know what happened yesterday. With Azazel.

Charles doesn’t say anything about that thought, but his mind curls around Erik’s, enclosing it in a projected feeling of safety and caring even as Charles’ hand reaches over to take hold of Erik’s, lacing their fingers together on Erik’s thigh.

“I love you,” he says quietly, emphatically. “That’s all that matters.”

Erik nods, and a moment later he warms up the metal of Charles’ wedding ring with his power, kissing him again just above the cheekbone. He hopes Charles knows how glad he is that Charles is here. Charles is the only person Erik wants to be around, his presence reassuring even in silence, Erik’s power tuned into the iron in Charles’ blood and the beating of his heart.

“Are you all right?” Erik asks eventually, rubbing his thumb against the skin between Charles’ thumb and forefinger. “I’m not the telepath. I don’t know what happened to you.”

Charles is quiet for a moment, letting out a long, slow breath, controlled and careful. “They didn’t hurt me, not really,” he says, even his words measured. “Frank came to the apartment, said he wanted to talk to me about you. When he got the chance, he stuck me with a needle full of something. I don’t know what. But I think … they didn’t even think I could be a threat, with the suppressor band on and the drugs in my system. They left me alone, for the most part.” He leans further into Erik’s side, turning his face into the crook of Erik’s neck. “I was just so scared for you. I’m okay, I’m not -- I feel like a fraud, talking about my experience like it was an ordeal. Don’t worry about me.”

Erik’s hand tightens around Charles’. “Don’t think like that,” he says. “You can’t view your own experiences in contrast to someone else’s. You still had to live through them. You don’t lose your right to be hurt by things just because you think someone else had it worse.” He doesn’t say out loud, because he doesn’t want to remind Charles, that Charles’ own history with violence will color and shade his ability to withstand this kind of torture. In many ways, where Erik has been able to recover from what happened to him as a child, Charles never has -- and it means nothing that some would say Erik had it worse. That doesn’t make any kind of difference at all. 

“I’m fine, really,” Charles says, bringing his other hand around to clasp around Erik’s, enclosing it entirely. “It was frightening, but no -- lasting damage done.”

“I’m sorry you had to witness all of that, all the same.” Erik can’t not-think about the dream he had before the trial, once, where it was him and Emma and Shaw at the beach, and Charles was there as well, as caught up in the web of Hellfire as all the rest of them. 

“And I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do more to help you,” Charles says, his thumb stroking the back of Erik’s hand. “I just wish I’d been smarter, not let myself get caught out like that. If I’d turned Frank away their plan wouldn’t have worked and they couldn’t have caught you up in it. You’ve always thought I’m too trusting, and you were right. I was stupid, and you got hurt because of it. I’m sorry.” He lifts his head to look at Erik directly, the set of his mouth firm. “I won’t let anything like that happen again. I know better now.”

“Listen to me, Charles,” Erik says. “It wasn’t your fault. If you trusted Frank too much by letting him in -- what does that say about me? I was his _friend._ ” Erik trusted Frank more than anyone. He slept with him. He told him about Charles. He brought him into the safehouse -- which turned out to be Frank’s own design as Caliban. “Shaw played a good game, and luckily for us Emma played it better. That’s all there is to say.”

Charles doesn’t look as though he agrees, but he doesn’t argue, just presses a kiss to Erik’s cheek, his mind a similar brush of love and sorrow, bittersweet. “We can go home and deal with everything after this,” he says. “Where we don’t have to perform for other people. It’ll be better like that. I don’t -- I don’t like that this has put us back in the media’s eye again.” He swallows, a brief flash of anxiety on his face before he hides it away, but Erik’s seen it, now, and he can feel it in Charles’ aura as well. His chest feels tight as he pushes a stray lock of dark hair away from Charles’ forehead, smoothing it against the streak of grey at his crown. 

“We can go on honeymoon,” Erik says eventually, leaving his hand there at Charles’ head, thumb grazing his skin. “Even to Thailand or the Philippines, like you suggested.”

But Charles sighs, giving Erik a sad smile. “I’d like that, but they’ll just follow us now. There’s nowhere on the planet we can go that they won’t track us down and take pictures.”

Charles is right, of course, even if Erik doesn’t want to admit it out loud. He tries very hard not to think about having to see the media again, after everything that’s happened. That Erik killed Shaw is surely already on the news. Everything else … everything else will be eventually. Someone will talk. The forensics team that cleaned up the apartment and found Azazel’s body and the dirty sheets. The doctor who did his exam. Erik’s run as far as he can, but the stain of Hellfire’s legacy still chased him down, even across five years.

“No one else exists,” Erik murmurs, and closes his eyes, and wonders if he’s trying to convince Charles -- or himself.

*

_Charles_

The flight home is long and arduous, more so for being trapped on a plane with a couple of hundred other people who have, by now, heard about the attacks and put the presence of the American FBI together with the news reports and come up with the right answer. While Charles and Erik are sat in first class, out of the way of the majority of passengers, he can still feel the curiosity and urge to gawk from the rest of the plane, hear the stewardesses gossiping whenever they think they’re far enough away. It’s oppressive, and Charles feels rather like a goldfish in a bowl, on display with nowhere to hide.

Erik is twisted away from Charles and the rest of the plane, his forehead tilted against the window like he’s looking out -- Charles knows better, knows Erik’s eyes are shut and he’s trying hard to pretend not to be seen, their only contact Erik’s hand stretched out across the armrest between their seats, clasped in Charles’.

“I could help you sleep, if you want,” Charles murmurs, glancing over at their attendant agents before deciding, fuck it, and letting go of Erik’s hand to push the armrest up and out of the way, then taking Erik’s hand again and tugging him back towards Charles. “I’ll wake you up when we’re landing.”

Erik turns his face to look at Charles properly, though he hesitates for a moment before he nods. “Can you make it dreamless?”

“Of course,” Charles says. He reaches up with one hand to stroke Erik’s hair back from his face, heart panging with love and regret, then reaches for the blindfold and earplugs the airline provides, offering them to Erik. “Do you want these? I got a neck pillow, too, from one of the stewardesses earlier.”

“None of that’s as good as telepathy,” Erik says, and he attempts a grin, though they both know it’s half-hearted. He settles back against his chair instead, keeping his hand in Charles’, though it’s clenched a little tighter now. “You should use them, if you need them.”

“Here,” Charles murmurs, then reaches across Erik to press the button to make his seat recline, the whole thing sliding downward to lean Erik back into the cushioning. Though Erik probably doesn’t need it, Charles can’t keep from reaching for an extra pillow and slipping it under Erik’s head, then draping a blanket over him, tucking it around his feet. He knows he’s being a mother hen, but he has to -- has to do _something_ to make sure Erik is okay, is cared for. “How’s that?” he asks, and reclines his own seat, turning onto his side beside Erik.

“Fine.” 

Erik’s eyes shut, though Charles can see his eyes still twitching behind closed lids, anxious. He’s trying not to think about Prague, but his mind keeps slipping back toward it like falling downhill, as if Shaw were the center of his gravity. Charles wipes that away like rain from a windshield, dismissing the memories for now and soothing Erik’s thoughts, drawing him down toward sleep. It’s a relief to see Erik’s expression ease, tension falling away from the corners of his mouth and the center of his brow, until he’s soft and floating in the darkness between dreams.

Charles sighs, and reaches up to touch Erik’s face for a moment with his free hand; Erik makes a snuffling noise and turns towards it, and Charles wishes -- he wishes it could always be like this, that Erik wouldn’t have to wake up to those memories again when they land. That Charles could truly take them away without destroying everything Erik is.

He can feel the stewardess getting ready to make her rounds again, and, unwilling to face her nosiness, Charles reaches for his own blanket and pillow and arranges himself beside Erik with eyes covered by the blindfold so he can pretend to be asleep, too -- though he knows already that he won’t sleep on this plane.

It’s a long time to lay there, wishing fruitlessly to turn back time and change things, make them have happened differently, not have happened at all. At some point Erik rolls over closer and ends up with his head on Charles’ shoulder, breathing against his throat. Charles doesn’t make him move, even when his arm goes to sleep.

The flight is over nine hours long, and Charles keeps Erik asleep and dreamless until the Captain announces they’re due to land in twenty minutes or so; only then does he let loose his grip on Erik’s conscious mind and give him a gentle mental prod, drawing him slowly back towards the surface.

“Time to wake up,” Charles says.

The messy blur of a sleepy mind, and then Erik’s blinking himself awake and pushing up off Charles’ shoulder, Charles aware of Erik’s power flitting out through the metal plane and grounding himself with it. Then Erik’s fingers tug at the seam of Charles’ blindfold and light floods Charles’ vision, along with Erik’s face tilted close to his. “Did you sleep?”

Charles tries a wry smile, but it doesn’t quite sit right. “I closed my eyes for nine hours or so. Close enough.”

“We’ll be home soon,” Erik says, still trying to be the one to take care of Charles instead of the other way around, pretending not to feel the dread that Charles watches well up dark and fast in Erik’s mind, memories rushing back in to fill the empty space sleep had left. It seems to help him, so Charles doesn’t try to tell him off.

“We should sit up and get ready to land,” he says, and when he does, glancing out of the window he can see New York already below them, waiting to take them in again.

Of course, they can’t just go back to ‘normality’. New York may be home, but it’s not -- Charles knows better than to expect everything will be the same as before. That it ever will be.

They’re bustled through the airport by their coterie of agents -- they don’t have bags, so no need to wait -- and almost pushed into the car waiting for them, two more escorting it from either side. Charles gathers that the agents are concerned that Emma and Frank might have something else organized to get back at them, even though there’s no way they could have got back to America so quickly with their teleporter dead and every law enforcement officer in Europe looking for them.

“There’s media gathered outside of your building,” one of the agents says once they’re on the road, his voice cool and professional, toneless against the background rumble of tires on the tarmac. “Up to you if you talk to them, but we’ll keep them back until you get inside.”

The thought is -- Charles wants to throw up, the idea of being confronted again the way he was when he was arrested an awful one. But it’s nothing to how Erik feels -- that sick lurch in Erik’s mind, the helpless sense of circling a drain, the way Erik remembers people looked at him before when they found out about Hellfire, like they were looking at his body and trying to imagine it having sex with Shaw, being raped. The media already knows Hellfire took them, and -- well, it wouldn’t have taken geniuses to guess what happened. Speculation has been all over the press since the news broke.

“It’ll be all right,” Charles says, looking at Erik across the back seat, though he’s far from certain of that himself. It just seems like the thing to say. “Once we’re inside we can stay there. I can get everything delivered. We never have to go outside again.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Charles,” Erik says, though his emotions don’t match the words. 

The car pulls up in the valet space in front of their building, and the FBI agent reaches for the door first, pushing it open and preceding them out into the crowd of reporters and bystanders, Erik following a moment’s hesitation behind. The air feels thick and claustrophobic, the sheer volume of people talking and shouting and cameras going off hitting Charles like a wave as he gets out of the car; he manages not to flinch because he’d braced for it, but he knows his shoulders are hunching forward, defensive, only keeps his head upright by sheer force of will. He can feel panic rising up inside of him at being confronted, at having all of these people staring and knowing what they think they know about him and surely ready to accuse him yet again --

“How did it feel to defeat Hellfire?” a reporter calls at them almost immediately, and it’s so not what Charles is expecting that he looks at the man before he’s even thought about whether he should, his attention caught despite knowing he shouldn’t respond.

“What?” he asks.

“You and Erik killed Azazel Rasputin, Victor Creed, and Sebastian Shaw,” the reporter repeats, moving closer. “And Elias Braden-Newell was arrested on your information. Hellfire may never recover from that.”

Next to Charles, Erik just keeps walking, ignoring that reporter and the others who keep calling out questions from further back in the crowd, the eyes of their cameras following him, then jerking back to look at Charles again.

Most probably he shouldn’t say anything, should press on as if he hadn’t stopped, but … Charles is clearly feeling reckless today, and so he says, with his heart in his mouth, “I’d like to clarify that everything Erik and I did was in self-defense. It wasn’t an attack on Hellfire, but a thankfully successful attempt to stay alive when being assaulted by violent criminals. We were very lucky to survive.”

“Tell us what happened, Charles,” the same reporter urges, bolstered by his success. “How did you have to defend yourselves? We’ve all seen Shaw’s death on video, but what about Creed and Rasputin? How did you escape the safehouse?”

It’s truly bizarre to be addressed like this, now, even if Charles knows the reason the press are being friendly is to get a story from him and not because they’ve changed their minds about him since the last time they mobbed him on a public street. And yet … there’s a part of him that wants, so badly, for it to mean he’s forgiven, that can’t quite let go of the opportunity to pretend things are still how they used to be. Charles is overly aware of Erik going into their building behind him, leaving Charles alone out here with only the FBI on his side, and he wonders if he should go in too, but … maybe he could clarify something else?

“I was drugged, suppressed and taken prisoner from our apartment while Erik was out, and then used as a hostage against Erik to make him free Sebastian Shaw,” Charles says, tentative at first, uncertain until he sees how enthused the reporters are, shoving at one another to try and get closer. “Everything he did on Riker’s Island was to keep Hellfire from harming me. Hellfire is not known for being kind to submissives, something Erik knows better than anyone. He would never have helped Shaw or the others escape prison otherwise.”

“How did you escape?” Another reporter asks, thrusting her microphone toward Charles. In their minds, he can tell they haven’t forgotten their last story about Erik and Charles, but there’s a new element of sympathy there now, too, a sort of willful agreement to ignore that for the time being in favor of acknowledging Charles’ perceived heroism.

Charles is hardly a hero, he thinks. If anyone should be getting recognition, it’s Erik. “Erik managed to disable our suppressors,” he says. “He was incredibly brave, given the nightmare situation we were in. Unfortunately … ” God, how to describe this, something so terribly painful? “ … unfortunately, Erik was forced to use lethal force against Mr Rasputin to defend himself, and Victor Creed alerted Shaw. Mr Shaw dragged Erik out of the house, and Creed -- ” God, just thinking about what he did makes Charles feel pale and nauseous, the way he had just … wiped Creed away. “Victor Creed attacked myself and Frank Holloway, and I -- I had to get to Erik. So I defended us. I was sorry to hear Mr Creed later died.” Charles swallows and looks down, trying to get the feeling back under control.

There’s a volley of questions following that, but the only one Charles hears is: “Frank Holloway? Isn’t he Hellfire? Why would Creed attack him?”

“You’ll have to ask him, if you can find him,” Charles says, not wanting to open _that_ can of worms, and to his surprise it actually gets him a laugh from some of the other reporters.

 _What are you doing?_ Charles catches Erik thinking from the lobby of the building, the edges of it colored with Erik’s anxiety, and Charles replies, _I started answering some questions to clarify some of their points and got involved in a conversation. I’ll come in soon, you can go upstairs._

_Are you sure?_

_It’s going okay,_ Charles says, a bit mystified himself; though he’s still a bit anxious about it all, waiting for the crowd to turn, he can’t quite bring himself to step away from it, either, when it’s going well for once. It might never happen again. _I just -- I want to make sure they know the real facts, that they don’t make things up._

“Do you have plans to go after Frost and Holloway next?” someone asks.

Well, it _was_ going okay. “What? No,” Charles says, shocked and rather appalled at the suggestion. Just the thought of it -- the prurience and sensationalism of it -- makes his stomach turn, and he can’t keep his reaction inside, continuing sharply, “Erik and I were kidnapped and tortured by the terrorist organization that mentally and physically abused him for twelve years of his childhood, and we barely escaped with our lives. We’re not _vigilantes_. How dare you imply this was some sort of action movie? We’re real people, and this really happened to us, _yesterday_. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Shock and surprise at that, no one expecting this sort of vehemence from Charles, who has been so media-shy since his arrest. He probably shouldn’t have done that, Charles thinks, his heart sinking, and now’s a good time to go, before he can make it any worse.

“Thank you, I’m going inside now,” he says, directed mostly at the first reporter, the politest one, before he turns and heads for the door, ignoring all their calls for him to come back until he can push through into the lobby and away from the crowd.

It’s quieter in here with the doors shut, and the FBI agent says, “I’ll go up and make sure nobody’s in your apartment before I go,” but Charles only has eyes for Erik, and he walks swiftly over to him, stepping immediately close and wrapping his arms around Erik, tucking his face against Erik’s shoulder for a long moment so he can breathe through the anxious certainty that he just fucked it up again.

“You did well,” Erik says, even though he has no way of having heard what Charles said -- he’s proud enough Charles said anything at all, his fingers stroking back through Charles’ hair again and again, steady and comforting even though Charles knows Erik still feels sick inside.

“Let’s go upstairs.” Charles can feel the photographers taking pictures through the glass doors even if he’s not looking, film crews with their cameras videoing them together.

“Okay,” Erik says, and as much as Charles doesn’t want to be watched he doesn’t pull his hand free from Erik’s in the few moments they have to wait for the elevator to arrive, stood side-by-side with fingers laced together until they can finally step out of sight.

Once they can’t be seen any more Charles leans back against the wall of the elevator and wipes his free hand over his face, gut clenching painfully. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“What happened?”

Charles was an idiot, of course. “I got mad and told one of the reporters off for being inappropriate.”

Erik looks at him, lifting a brow. “What did he say?” he asks, tilting his torso more toward Charles, his arms folding across his stomach.

Charles hits the button for their floor, swiping his keycard. “He asked whether we were going after Emma and Frank next. As if we’d gone in there on purpose!” Charles is angry all over again just thinking about it, his skin crawling. “It makes me feel sick that someone thought that was okay to ask me if we were going to kill them next, like we’re some kind of -- of _bounty hunters_.”

The elevator lurches upward, quickened a little by Erik’s power hurrying the cables along. “I’m sure they didn’t mean it like that.”

Maybe not, but that doesn’t make it okay. “Let’s just get inside the apartment and forget about all of them,” Charles says, and they ride the elevator the rest of the way in silence, the FBI agent standing there awkwardly, pretending not to have heard their conversation.

Once they get inside, the agent checks the apartment and confirms it’s empty before finally leaving them alone. It’s strange to be here again when so little time has passed but so much has happened. Charles notices with a strange detachment that nobody has tidied up the broken mug on the den rug where he caught it with his foot as he struggled against Frank’s grip, the drug taking hold in his system, too late to fight it. There’s a brown tea stain pooled under the shattered ceramic.

“I’ll clean that up,” Erik says, stepping past Charles into the kitchen to retrieve the sponge and bleach; Charles sits, because he’s not sure what else to do, and after a moment even though he knows he shouldn’t he reaches for the remote and turns on the television, then takes it to FOX News, because at least he knows whatever they say is going to be awful and he doesn’t have to wait in nervous anticipation of being kicked in the teeth.

“Continuing with our breaking news story, folks, Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier arrived home today after their ordeal at the hands of the notorious Hellfire Club terrorist group, who took them prisoner two days ago. We just heard from Mr Xavier, Brenda, speaking for the first time in public since his very contentious arrest now three months ago -- what do we know?”

“Well, Greg, as many of our viewers know this interview comes at the conclusion of a terrifying twenty-four-hour struggle between Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier following their abduction by Hellfire agents Frank Holloway, Elias Braden-Newell, and Victor Creed, during which Lehnsherr was forced to release core Hellfire terrorists Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost, and Azazel Rasputin from where they were being held at the mutant-only supermax prison facility on Riker’s Island. The ordeal concluded yesterday with the deaths of Creed, Rasputin, and Shaw at the hands of their captives.

“This follows shortly after the conclusion of the divisive court case against Charles Xavier, who pled guilty to criminal sexual activity in the third degree involving his foster child, now husband, the ex-Hellfire agent Erik Lehnsherr. This is the first time Mr Xavier has spoken to the media since his arrest some months ago, and here he’s requested the media show some circumspection regarding the trauma experienced by himself and Mr Lehnsherr over the past two days.

“While most reporters present were respectful given the circumstances, and received courteous answers for their troubles from Mr Xavier, one journalist felt it necessary to ask whether Mr Xavier and Mr Lehnsherr would be pursuing the remaining Hellfire members next, with a strong implication that Xavier and Lehnsherr had acted as vigilantes. Given the events of the past two days, it seems natural that people would be drawn into the drama of the case and see parallels between this and the many action films that grace our screens, often involving mutant powers -- but this was not a movie. Xavier and Lehnsherr are heroes, there’s no doubt that they’ve struck a blow against the world’s most deadly terrorist organization -- but these are two people who had a life-or-death situation and were lucky to get out alive.”

Back in the newsroom, the first reporter says, “I agree, Brenda, and it’s important to remember these aren’t trained soldiers, but a white-collar professional and a high school student who risked so much in pursuit of defending American freedom. This -- this is what mutant activists ought to be doing, standing up against mutant extremism instead of arguing for extra rights.”

“It’s horrifying to imagine what two less-powerful people could have suffered in the same circumstances,” Brenda says, nodding earnestly. “Xavier has long been known as an advocate for mutant integration, though he’s always been seen as a pacifist. Lehnsherr by contrast is a separatist, but both of them worked together to save themselves -- and us --from this greater threat.”

“That’s nice,” Erik says from behind him; Charles jerks, shocked out of his focus on the television, and when he looks, he finds Erik standing just over his shoulder, holding two steaming cups of tea. He passes one to Charles and lets his freed hand drop down to Charles’ shoulder, squeezing once. “They like you now. See?”

Charles rather suspects they like dead terrorists more than they like him, but still, it’s more sympathetic to his outburst than he had worried it would be. “Something like that,” he hedges, glancing back at the TV where they’re still analyzing some of his answers. “Journalists just like people answering questions. If I’d killed Jesus with a screwdriver while huffing glue they’d still be happy if I told them all about it.”

Erik laughs, and he’s as surprised by it as Charles is, the amusement bursting up like a bright cloud in his mind, so different from the heavy fog that’s hung over them both since everything ended. 

“Maybe,” he says, sipping at his tea. “You going to start watching FOX regularly now?”

“Only if you pass me the glue pot first,” Charles says, and gives Erik a tentative smile.

Still, it’s so different from what the media has been like lately -- from Charles’ recent experiences, if not some of his older ones when he was respectable and well-liked -- that it feels surreal, like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. He’s not sure how to feel about it all, because as soon as he decides on an emotion something else is bound to happen that will invalidate that entirely, another pebble in the pond as soon as the ripples have died.

Erik comes around to sit next to Charles on the sofa, reaching to clap Charles twice on the thigh and then let his hand just rest there, warm and reassuring. "I told you," he says, "people will find some other way of occupying their time. For the next several weeks we can probably expect them to do that by hypothesizing about how we escaped Hellfire."

Charles tips his head over to rest it on Erik’s shoulder, his teacup warming his hands where they’re resting on his knees, and after a moment he switches off the television, letting the image zap out to black. “I’m just glad we’re both home and alive and with all our body parts,” he says, closing his eyes so he can concentrate on the sound of Erik’s breathing, his presence, whole if not unscarred. “The rest is just a bonus.”

They’re only home for about two hours before Raven arrives, having pushed her way through the crowds of newscasters still outside hoping for a glimpse of Charles and Erik; her irritation and worry is like a beacon from the moment she comes into Charles’ immediate range, and he can’t help but feel apprehensive about seeing her, even if he knows she’s freaking out about their ordeal, not thinking about her issues with Charles at all. The last few times they’ve spoken have been distinctly awful, her mind rebelling against her affection for him and her words staccato, more forced than friendly. There’s no chance to decide if he wants to see her, of course -- the concierge knows her well enough that he just lets her up immediately once she’s in the building, and then she’s in the elevator, no turning her away without doing so directly.

“Raven’s here,” Charles says to Erik, his heart juddering in his chest.

Erik's eyes blink open, and his hand where it rests on Charles' stomach curls into a half-fist. They've been lying here like this, in bed, for at least half an hour, Charles keeping Erik's thoughts dim and bland through telepathic intervention as Erik skirts the edges of a doze and Charles drifts, thinking of nothing very much at all by deliberate design. 

"I can send her away," Erik offers, not moving from where he lies; woken up like this, torn out from under Charles' light influence, his mind immediately turns back to Shaw -- to everything that happened -- as if to keep himself from letting it go. Like ruminating on a bad dream.

Charles doesn’t move either, even though the elevator has reached their floor now, Raven stepping out onto the landing. It’s only five steps from there to their front door. “Probably not a good idea. She’s worried enough as it is.” He sighs, wishing they could go back to that quiet place again -- it feels like they both need it, but his relationship with Raven has been so rocky lately. He might as well capitalize on Hellfire’s awfulness and get one good thing out of it. “I’ll go. You can stay here and sleep, you don’t have to talk to her.”

It's surprising when Erik nods and murmurs, "All right," though perhaps it shouldn't be. After everything, Charles shouldn’t expect Erik to just turn back to old habits, pulling his Dominance over himself like a cloak and forgetting what happened. It’s just … unsettling, in that all this seems too much like before, when Erik was a child and still scared and shy, exhausted by Raven and Gabrielle and anyone else not-Charles. 

A foot away, Erik’s eyes slip shut again, and Charles leans forward to press a kiss to his cheek before getting out of bed and tugging on his robe. He hears Raven knocking on the door downstairs, getting frustrated at not being answered; so as he goes downstairs he says, _I’m coming, just a minute._

 _Okay,_ Raven thinks back impatiently, and stops knocking, though when Charles finally reaches the front door and pulls it open she’s shifting from foot to foot, full of anxious energy, and as soon as she sees him she says out loud, “Fuck, Charles -- ” and flings her arms around his shoulders, dragging him into a tight embrace.

Charles hesitates for a moment, but then when she’s still there, still hugging him, he wraps his arms around her middle and bows his head down onto her shoulder, breathing in the smell of her clothes and her shampoo, familiar yet strange now after so long at odds. Somehow he manages not to choke up, but he feels like it, his lungs hitching in his chest at being so enthusiastically taken in, even if he knows it’s more to do with the circumstances than it is him.

“I was so worried -- I mean, shit, nobody even knew anything had happened to you until after everything was on the news with Erik, and then when Moira checked and you weren’t _here_ she called _me_ and -- shit, Charles, I thought you might be dead,” Raven says without letting go, her arms just a little too tight for comfort. “Don’t _do_ that to me. I know things haven’t been great lately between us but I don’t want you to actually _die_.”

“Well that’s reassuring.” He means it to sound like he’s teasing, but it comes out rather too sincere.

Raven leans back, then, to look at him, her hands still on his shoulders but her eyes examining Charles’ face, reading it all from him -- he can hear her registering the tiredness, the worry, the stress of it all, and then when she looks down and sees his collar there’s a moment where that all pauses.

“Let’s go sit down in the other room,” Charles says, and tugs Raven inside enough that he can close the front door at last and shut the world out.

She follows him into the den with her mind a whirl of questions, suppositions, opinions forming then dashing to pieces as she counters them; Raven is both fascinated and repelled by the leather around Charles’ throat, the very symbol of his commitment to Erik and what she sees as Erik throwing himself on a grenade to save Charles from himself. “He must have worked hard to keep the press from finding out he’d bought that,” is what she finally says, once she’s discarded all the less diplomatic options.

Charles just shrugs, trying not to become defensive. “I don’t know; I didn’t ask. I suppose he must have done.”

Raven takes a seat on the sofa, gesturing for Charles to do the same in the casual old way she always used to before their rift. “Charles … let’s not talk about that. Tell me what happened, is Erik okay? I saw the news, he looked as if he’d been hurt.”

“He was,” Charles says, with a clench of his gut, a sick feeling like everything inside him is revolting against the mere memory of it. “Shaw … he wanted to punish Erik for daring to get stronger. And he didn’t really care what he did to me. He hit Erik when he tried to protect me from Shaw, and when Erik fell his hand went onto some broken glass and he cut himself quite badly. Plus … ”

He swallows at the thought of saying it aloud, bile in the back of his throat, but better for Charles to tell her as bloodlessly as possible rather than have her find out any other way, or God forbid ask Erik about it. “Erik was … forced, while we were being held captive.”

Raven’s eyes are doing something strange, like she wants to glare and try to keep from crying at the same time.

“I’m fine,” Charles says, looking away. “They drugged me to get me there, but other than that they didn’t hurt me. Not in any way that matters.”

"Is everything all right here, Charles?" Erik says from the doorway.

They both look sharply around -- Charles hadn't even heard him coming. Erik has one hand grasped on the frame, hair combed back, looking every bit as put together as if he'd just come from one of his Columbia classes, rather than having been curled up listlessly on their bed just a moment prior. The bruise on his cheek is the only thing that suggests he wasn't. 

“We’re fine.” Charles gives Erik a weak smile, sapped by the knowledge of what they’ve been talking about. “Raven just wanted to check in on us and see how we’re really doing. Why don’t you come and sit? I can make us all some tea.”

Erik comes to take Charles' usual armchair, settling his feet solidly on the floor, occupying the space, casual and Dominant. It's an act, put on for Raven's benefit, but he wears it so well Charles wonders if Raven can even tell. "Coffee for me, Charles," he says. 

“And me,” Raven says. Somewhere in the library, the grandfather clock ticks over to the hour, chiming out and echoing into the gallery.

“All right.” Charles gets to his feet and goes into the kitchen to make it, pulling down mugs; he can hear the two of them talking quietly in the den, but not clearly enough to make it out without telepathy. Erik feels apprehensive and on-edge, certain Raven is staring at his face, at the bruise, thinking about what happened, and Charles speeds up his usual process, bringing the mugs back out into the den with the tea bag still in his drink steeping, rather than waiting for it to infuse.

“Here we go,” he says, putting them down on the table.

Erik reaches for his almost immediately, drinking to keep from having to say anything else too immediately. Raven is slower, taking hers while watching the both of them.

“No matter what the two of you say, you’re not all right,” she says finally, without sipping her coffee. “You don’t have to pretend with me, you know. I’m still not happy about all this,” she waves a hand between them where Charles has taken a seat back on the sofa, “but this is a separate thing. It doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

How to even explain what happened to her? Charles can’t think of a way that wouldn’t either hurt him and Erik by having to recount it again, after doing so three times for Moira and her colleagues already, or be so cold and sanitized that it’s almost a lie. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” he says. “We’ve already had to talk about it for hours to the authorities. Suffice it to say that it was a terrifying, awful experience. Of course we’re not all right.”

"We're managing it as well as can be expected," Erik says cleanly. He looks over to Raven, holding her gaze with his mug of coffee settled on his knee between cupped hands, utterly expressionless. "But we appreciate you coming by."

Charles winces a little, because he knows Erik means well but it sounds like a dismissal; he can see it when Raven prickles then forces the reaction back down, covering her mouth with her hand to try and conceal it.

“There’s nothing to be done about it now but try to put it behind us,” Charles says, putting his untouched tea back down on the coffee table. “They haven’t caught Frank and Emma, and the others are all … there won’t be a trial this time. At least there’s that, I’m tired of flying to the Netherlands and back for court.”

Raven sighs. “Can I get you some groceries at least? If you give me a list I can bring it so you don’t have to brave the American public.”

Erik nods, a moment belatedly. "I can email one to you by tomorrow morning. Assuming Charles isn't too picky about what I cook."

“Am I ever?” Charles smiles. “That would be lovely, Raven, thank you.”

She looks troubled, her hands moving down to flex over her knees. “I don’t want to leave you,” she admits, mouth tight. “I feel like there should be something more I should do, to make this right. I hate being helpless like this.”

 _You and me both,_ Charles thinks to himself, but doesn’t say. “I understand,” he says, and reaches out tentatively to put his hand on her shoulder. “I love you, too. But there really isn’t anything that will make this better except time.”

From his armchair, Charles senses Erik internally rolling his eyes -- Erik's never been much for platitudes -- but at least he doesn't say anything about it in front of Raven.

“I’ll go, then.” Raven gets up at last, smoothing out the wrinkles her hands have left in her trousers -- Charles’ hand slips from her shoulder, unattended, but at the last moment Raven moves to take hold of it and gives it a squeeze. “I’m glad you’re all right. Both of you.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Charles says, glancing at Erik, and sees Raven to the front door. She leaves quietly compared to how she arrived, but there’s still a warmth there that hasn’t been in her for a while, a quick hug that makes something in Charles hope that one day she might forgive him.

When he comes back, Erik has gotten up to start putting away the still-full mugs of coffee and tea, the cushion of his chair still indented from where he'd been sitting and the clatter of ceramic from the kitchen; Charles follows, going to stand beside the table and watching as Erik pours them out.

“I’m glad you came down to see her,” he says to Erik’s back. “Raven loves you very much.”

"I was surprised she came," Erik says, settling the mugs into the dishwasher and pushing the machine door shut. "Though maybe I shouldn't have been. You're her brother."

He turns around to face Charles properly, leaning back with his hands grasping the edge of the countertop, still wearing that same casual outward Dominance he put on for Raven's benefit. To anyone else it might look real, but Charles would know Erik too well for that even if he couldn’t feel his mind.

He doesn’t move forward, doesn’t want to make Erik feel crowded or threatened. “You don’t have to pretend for me. Just be how you really are, when we’re alone. You’ve certainly seen me at my lowest.”

Erik's lips twitch slightly at that, like grudging recognition, but he says, "What else would you have me do? I can't marinate in self-pity forever. Shaw's dead. I got what I wanted. Isn't it time to move on?"

“You can’t force it,” Charles says. “You can’t just make yourself better by wishing it so. We can talk about it, and work on it -- I still have my psychology training and experience, if not my practice. Only if you want to, I won’t push, but things won’t just resolve themselves all at once. I think you know that, too.”

It’s so hard not to reach out to Erik, not to go to him and embrace him -- but right now Erik is feeling vulnerable and hyperaware, twitchy, and so Charles waits despite the way it tears at him, to see if Erik will come to him. And patience pays off -- that, or Charles knows Erik well enough to have predicted it, but after a taut moment Erik pushes off the counter and comes to slide a hand around to the back of Charles' neck and pull himself down to press a kiss to Charles' brow, holding there a beat longer than necessary before he says, breath brushing Charles' hair, "You're a good therapist, Charles, but what I need from you right now is for you just to be my husband. That's all."

Charles closes his eyes, his hands slipping loosely around Erik’s waist to keep him close. “I don’t see that the two are mutually exclusive. Your husband is a therapist. One of the perks of marrying me is free treatment; I was charging the government two hundred dollars an hour.”

Erik laughs a little at that and says, "If that's how much I was making you, I'm disappointed you didn't buy me several hundred more of the video games I wanted," and leans back enough that Charles can look at him properly, his beloved face pale and tired, but still the same, gingery stubble coming in on his cheeks and his eyes so familiar. Charles leans up and kisses him gently on the mouth, chaste but firm, and wonders how -- despite everything that’s happened because of it -- he would ever have got by without Erik.

He doesn’t move his hands -- still wants Erik to be able to get free if he wishes -- and Erik kisses him back anyway, cupping Charles' face between his palms with his fingers pressing in against Charles' nape. He feels Erik's affection swelling up against the web of his mind, restrained, and Charles lets himself yield, soften, parting his lips to deepen the kiss. He feels warm, his body tingling with Erik’s touch and the reassurance of Erik’s responding to him, not turning away or flinching the way Charles had been afraid he might.

He leans into Erik’s body as Erik smooths his hands down toward Charles' back, over his shoulder blades. Heat pulses off his body against Charles' chest and Erik’s teeth catch his lower lip, Erik shuddering against him as a surge of strange energy passes through his mind, echoing into Charles’ -- but instead of pushing forward, reaching for the hem of Charles’ shirt, Erik draws back, breaking the kiss.

“Thank you, Charles,” he murmurs, and Charles says, “For what?”

“For everything. For being who you are. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like if I’d never met you.”

Charles smiles at the echo of his own thought, and it’s impossible to know if Erik caught it from him or if they’re just in tune at last, two instruments singing the same note. “Come on,” he says, and tugs at Erik’s waist to draw him in the direction of the stairs. He’ll let Erik decide when they push further -- given what he’s been through the past few days, anything more intimate will need to be his decision if he’s to feel he has the choice. “Let’s go back to sleep.”

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings this chapter for violence and the aftermath of physical and sexual violence, plus discussion of the same.


	54. Fifty-four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's always hard to know what to say on a final chapter of something you've worked on for this long, and perhaps particularly for this fic which grew so far beyond any of our expectations in terms of wordcount and time involved - we assured each other last July that we would be finished in mid-Autumn. Then by Christmas. Then by the time Tah went to Japan in May. So for this to be the last chapter at last feels like a trick somehow - it can't really be done and complete and all published!
> 
> We have to say an immense thank you to everyone who's stuck with us reading the fic for the past 14 months, and especially those who have commented every week and let us know what you thought and your theories and responses, because they absolutely made our days and made it possible for us to keep wrestling this unwieldy beast. I just hope you enjoy the way we've finished it, and that you've had half as much fun reading it as we have writing it. Thank you!

_Charles_

It’s still not … comfortable, to be outside and among other people, but it’s a little better to know they hate him less now, even if it’s not for the reasons Charles would have preferred. He doesn’t spend much time out of the apartment if he can help it over the next few days, other than when he’s made to go and see some people to provide his statement -- again -- or has to visit the psychologist. He’d thought perhaps Erik would give that a break for a while, but apparently not.

When he can, though, he prefers to hole up in the den or in the library, watching TV or reading, respectively, and sometimes Erik joins him, sometimes he doesn’t. They’re together a lot of the time, while they hide out from the press and the public, but it isn’t until a week has passed that Erik finally really talks about that awful day.

They’re lying in bed on a weeknight, the room silent except the sound of their breaths and the tick of the clock on the wall, most of their belongings already packed away in boxes ready for the move to Boston. Erik’s hand rests on Charles’ chest, light and still, brow tilted against his shoulder -- it would be easy to think he was asleep, if Charles didn’t know better.

“Did you ever look at my memories of what happened?” Erik asks sometime around midnight, his words not unexpected now -- Charles has felt him chewing them over the past half hour in his mind.

“No,” Charles says quietly, and lifts his own hand to rest it over Erik’s, a steady weight over his heart. “I didn’t want to find out anything you didn’t want me to know.” It wouldn’t have been fair -- and besides, it wasn’t an entirely selfless decision. Charles didn’t want to see, or at least not so soon after having to hear.

Erik’s fingers twitch slightly beneath Charles’. “Maybe you should. It wasn’t -- I don’t blame myself for it, but you might … feel differently, if you knew everything.”

Breathe in. Out. Above them the ceiling seems far distant, shadowed and strange. “I sincerely doubt that,” Charles says, turning his head towards Erik so his lips brush Erik’s hair. It’s no stretch to imagine what Erik means -- after all, Erik became well-practiced as a child in placating his rapists to make it easier on himself, and if he had done anything differently in Prague then he would most likely have been killed. No doubt Erik fell back on old habits, and, as a result, old fears. 

Charles projects a feeling of reassurance, of persistence, and continues, “Nothing that happened there was voluntary. You have nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing that happened will change the way I feel about you.”

There’s a long pause before Charles feels the sense of Erik’s acquiescence drift from his mind. 

“It was worth it,” Erik says, “to see them all dead.”

It’s hard to know what to say to that. Charles still has nightmares about killing Creed, about Shaw’s messy demise, every night; if he doesn’t wake Erik he’s woken himself an hour later by Erik’s own dreams, dark and terrifying, figures forcing him to the bed, destroying him. But worse are the dreams where the Hellfire Club didn’t die, where this is all a fantasy and Charles is still trapped there in that Prague apartment listening to them make Erik scream, or waiting for his own nocturnal visit.

Charles squeezes Erik’s hand once more. “It’s normal to feel that way about people who hurt you so badly. It’s a relief to know they can never do it again. People will try to tell you it’s wrong to think that, but they’ll invariably be people who’ve led charmed lives. Still. I would rather you hadn’t gone through all that. I can live with it for myself, but I’d always promised they would never have you again, and I utterly failed at that.”

“It wasn’t your fault, either.” Erik lifts his head, a silhouette against the streetlit window. Charles can feel his eyes on him. “Shaw orchestrated the whole thing, with Braden-Newell, and they had all of Hellfire’s resources behind them. There was nothing you could have done. Even if they hadn’t managed to trick me into trusting Frank, hadn’t kidnapped you to make me comply, they would have gotten me there one way or another. What matters is that we escaped.”

It’s a fair point, even if Charles’ heart can’t quite accept it as the truth.

“I’ll forgive myself, then,” Charles says quietly, “if you’ll forgive yourself. Deal?”

“Deal,” Erik says, settling down again with his head on Charles’ chest and his hand gripping Charles’ shirt, fingers tangled up with the fabric.

Charles wraps his arm around Erik’s shoulders, keeping him close. “Good. Now go to sleep, we have a long day of doing almost nothing to look forward to.”

*

_Erik_

As it turns out, Charles does own a brownstone in Beacon Hill, but the commute from Boston to Harvard is untenable at that distance so they rent a home on Mt Vernon St instead, a four-bedroom Victorian that belongs to a professor emeritus who is spending his golden years with his new wife in Barcelona and had no moral qualms about leasing the house to Erik and Charles. Erik likes Porter Square just fine, and likes Davis Square even better, further into Somerville where the flood of students has slowed to a mild tide rather than a veritable tsunami: the little old-fashioned bowling alley and theaters with actual marquees, hidden speakeasy bars you can only get to if you already know where they are. 

Leasing means their names stay off property records, but even so, the first thing Charles does when they move into their new home is put up a set of drapes. Erik refuses to let him draw them constantly, preferring to sit in his armchair in the pool of sunlight cast in through an open window, although he knows sooner or later they might have to, depending on whether the reporters track them down before moving on to fresher blood. 

Opening Days at Harvard is one of the more exhilarating experiences Erik has had. Being a part of that ocean of other students, not new and exotic the way he was his first year at Trinity but just another freshman; a plastic bag full of brochures and information leaflets dangling from one hand, sitting through seminars and lectures meant to smooth the transition from high school to college; grabbing lunch with other students who don’t seem to actually care who he is or what he did before he showed up here. He can read the telltale signs of money in some of them, stitched into a lapel or the antique oilskin cover of a notebook or their handmade leather satchels, but there are plenty of people who seem perfectly normal, too -- that surprises him, and he immediately feels guilty for being surprised. Everyone at Trinity fought to have their name chosen for an Ivy or Stanford, bitterly disappointed to ‘settle’ for Duke or Wellesley, shocked to finally find a door their privilege wouldn’t open. But of course there’s a rest of the world, everyone Erik didn’t grow up with, people who got here on merit not money.

The best part is when Erik meets people who don’t know him. People who are genuinely surprised by the ring on his finger and the cuff on his wrist, who startle when they ask his DS score and he answers them, people who ended up at this school because they worked damn hard to get in, and working damn hard meant they never had time to follow the rumors in the papers or on the internet, people who even now are much more interested in whether or not they’ll survive Math 55 than whether or not Erik’s a terrorist.

Erik appreciates it. He does; but he can’t shut off the part of him, either, that remembers how easy it felt with Frank. How natural their camaraderie. How stupid he’d have to be, to let someone get that close to him again.

“Look, I’m not saying Professor Markon is a psychopath, I’m just saying he’s possibly a robot with neither empathy or humanity,” Brian says, grabbing another cracker from the cheese tray atop the coffee table in Erik and Charles’ new house in Cambridge. He makes a sandwich with his brie and a second cracker. “There’s really no way to be sure, but his opening speech and the evil shape of his eyebrows have made me suspicious.”

“I don’t know,” Ellie says from her spot on the floor between him and Erik. “He got a red chili pepper on RMP, so as far as I’m concerned, he can do whatever he wants.”

The first week of classes is nearly over, and with it orientation; after this, it will just be the regular semester -- no excuses for falling behind, no more parties every night. Not that Erik can really be bothered to spend his nights partying when he has Charles to go home to. And, thank god for Charles, because Charles’ willingness to assemble cheese and charcuterie plates for study group is part of what keeps Erik’s new friends -- acquaintances, really -- coming over to his place instead of eating bag popcorn and Doritos at a dorm in Ivy Yard.

“You don’t care that he might require you to sacrifice a virgin to pass his class?”

“You’d better find someone to fuck you just in case then,” Ellie says, and Brian chokes indignantly on his cheese as Erik laughs and Priyanka, almost certainly a real virgin herself but who has an obvious crush on Brian, turns a delicate shade of red.

There’s a footstep at the doorway behind Erik, and he turns to see Charles standing there, a bottle of wine in one hand and four glasses carefully pinched between his fingers in the other; he smiles, a little awkwardly, before coming in to place them down on the table between the four of them. “A cheeseboard is a mockery without wine,” he says, turning the label so Erik can take a look at it, though in matters of wine he knows Charles is far his superior in knowledge.

“Really?” Ellie says, looking hopeful and elated in equal parts, turning a smile up at Charles. “Thanks! We won’t tell, we swear.”

Erik doesn’t have to be a telepath to predict how Charles might react to that, being treated like he’s Erik’s parent still, to dole out permissions and rewards, so he reaches a hand up to snag Charles’ sleeve and tugs him down by the wrist, saying, “Come, sit with us. You can tell us all the real secrets of surviving Harvard and getting into a good finals club. Starting with the best wine and cheese pairings.” He gives Charles a small smile, and though he can see Charles is reluctant -- can feel Charles’ discomfort, tangible between them -- Charles sits obediently down, settling into an easy kneeling posture beside Erik.

“I don’t know that it’ll still be relevant,” he says, reaching out to pluck a grape from the board. “Besides, my family was old money. Sad to say it does make a difference in getting the invites.”

Erik waves a hand, dismissive, and uses his power to apply the corkscrew to the wine bottle. “I’m sure our good looks will more than make up for that,” he says, and mirrors the crooked grin Priyanka gives him across their circle.

“Mmm, less than you’d think,” Charles says. “Let that breathe for a moment. It’s more to do with who you know and how you present yourself. Making friends with current members is usually the most reliable method.”

“Are they really that important?” Ellie asks, her tone still more respectful than anything else. “I mean, after Harvard, who’s going to ask if you were a member of a club?”

“That depends on whether you want the opportunity to benefit from the rather incestuous nature of the clubs and use other members to help you get ahead.” Charles shrugs. “It’s more relevant to those going into the professions, or politics.”

None of those present, including Erik to large degree, have really decided what they want to do after these next four years, and Erik can practically see the point going over their heads, dismissed out of hand. Priyanka assembles a new sandwich of cracker-and-brie and passes it across the circle to Charles, who takes it with a quiet thank you, then reaches for the cranberry jelly.

“The most important thing is not to waste your time here,” Charles says, once he’s settled back down into his kneeling pose. “You can’t come back and get a better degree once you’ve graduated, so focus on your studies and do well now rather than being disappointed later. It’d be a shame to have paid for an Ivy League education and come out with a result you know you could have bettered.”

 _Lemonade_ , Erik thinks for Charles to hear; it’s the code word they came up with, one meant to remind Charles to code-shift -- that he isn’t supposed to be Erik’s father, or anyone’s father, not anymore and certainly not in public. Erik won’t pretend he thinks it’s that easy, though; Charles has tried to be just that, and only that, for so long in front of other people, trying to hide the truth, that it’s almost impossible to switch back; even when acting like this, now, can only serve to make things worse.

 _That wasn’t parenting, that was just solid advice,_ Charles says, the mental feel of him rather ruffled, but he subsides anyway, cupping his hand beneath his cracker and taking a bite so he doesn’t need to say anything else.

“I still think we’ll find out later that we have to make blood sacrifices to Professor Markon in order to pass his class,” Brian says, pouring himself a glass of wine with a generous hand. “Whoever brings in the most impressive kill gets a gold star and to be his next victim.”

Ellie laughs, and Erik grins as well, taking advantage of the momentary distraction to reach back and slip his hand up Charles’ spine, fingertips grazing the nape of his neck and the back of his leather collar. He ignores, as always, the sick lurch in the pit of his stomach when he touches the thing, focusing instead on the prickle of the tiny hairs against his fingertips and Charles’ warm skin, because he knows Charles likes it, that it makes him feel safe and happy, and Erik … Erik likes that. Next to him, Charles relaxes just a little, leaning against Erik’s shoulder.

Erik likes joking about Markon as much as anyone, but he can’t muster any honest trepidation, not really, not after having known Eli Braden-Newell at least. Probably he should be more wary. After all, college is college, and it won’t be as easy to float through his classes here as it was at Trinity, especially since he already finished most of his underclassman requirements at Columbia. 

“We should get to studying,” Priyanka says finally, pulling her textbook from her bag and setting it in her lap. “Else we’re not much of a study group. Is everyone still happy to work on the first syllabus assignment?”

“I’ll let you get on with it.” Charles shifts to get up and Erik lets his hand drop away from Charles’ neck, back to the cool hardwood floor.

“It was nice to meet you,” Ellie says, still polite, and Brian and Priyanka wave, reminded of their manners as Charles vanishes back into the other room; Erik can hear the single, excited yelp of the new puppy as Charles returns to pay it attention, collar jangling, the inaudible murmur of Charles’ voice saying something in response. 

The next two hours are mostly taken up with actual work, until the sun starts to set and Erik finds a way to subtly remind them he has to cook dinner before it gets too late and sees them all off at the door, watching them hook legs over their bikes and cycle off down the narrow road. Charles comes to stand behind him, his hand curving around Erik’s elbow and his chin against Erik’s upper arm. “Maybe I shouldn’t sit with your group when they’re over,” he says, his body warm and solid. “Anything I say is going to seem fatherly just because of my age. I’m already so far beyond this point in my own life. I have a different perspective on it all.”

“Exiling you would be worse,” Erik says, turning finally to move back inside, tugging the door shut behind him with his power. The setting sunlight casts reddish patterns on the floor through the long windows next to the door, glinting gold in the grey streak in Charles’ hair. “I don’t want people inventing the worst because they never spend enough time talking to you to learn anything about you.”

Worst would be if his friends start to see Charles as the requisite grown-up, the chaperone, the narc waiting to tell them off if they skip class or smoke a joint.

Charles sighs, and looks back down the hall towards the kitchen door and the baby gate blocking a furiously tail-wagging Toby in. The border collie puppy barks at them, high and excited. “I’ll try to be less old,” he says, and gives Erik a wry smile.

“Well, how about we take Toby out for a walk?” Erik gestures at the leash hanging by the door, his power tugging at the metal clasp to lift it up in the air suggestively. 

It might be too much to hope, getting Charles outside the house; Charles has been more tolerant of that lately than before, most so when it’s late, in residential areas, when Erik’s with him to field inappropriate comments from the peanut gallery. Today, however, he pauses, then shakes his head, stepping away down the hall, further into the house.

“You take him, I’ll order us some Thai for delivery,” he says, with an apologetic brush of his mind.

Erik catches him by the arm before he can move out of reach, drawing close again, this time cupping a hand behind Charles’ head and kissing him briefly on the mouth, then once more on the cheek. “Please,” he says, when he’s opened his eyes again, Charles’ so close and blue. “We won’t stay out long. Just around the block. I’ll even run into Anna’s and get us some burritos.” A breath, then, more soberly, “You have to go back out into the world. You have to see that people have forgotten it.”

“I haven’t.” But Charles isn’t saying no again, the hesitation clear on his face, and finally he relents, letting out a slow breath and glancing at the door. “All right. Let me go get my shoes.”

Toby looks just as excited as Erik feels, bouncing off the tile kitchen floor as Erik approaches with the nylon leash and clips it to the D-ring on his collar. Toby rushes toward the door as soon as Erik takes down the baby gate, eager enough he tugs at the leash and pulls his collar taut against his own neck. Erik lets him out onto the sidewalk and lingers there waiting for Charles to come down and for Toby to do his business, a few plastic bags stuffed into the pocket of his jeans.

Charles takes his time -- Erik feels him dithering upstairs, taking far longer than he ought to to fetch his shoes -- but eventually he comes down, and after another brief moment where Erik thinks he might change his mind Charles steps out of the front door, shutting it behind himself.

“Lock it?” he asks, and smiles when Erik uses his powers to tug the lock into place with a clunk of metal. “Okay. Let’s go for a walk then.”

It’s cool in the evening, even for late summer, and Erik starts to wish he’d brought a jacket as they wander slowly down the street in the opposite direction of Porter Square. They’ll have to cut through near the T stop eventually for Erik to pick up dinner, but it’s clearly better to give Charles a chance to adjust to being out at all, where there are neighbors walking down the sidewalks and cars occasionally driving past, cyclists with their trousers legs cinched tight around their ankles, normal people doing normal things and assuming they’re normal, too.

“What do you think of Cambridge so far?” Erik asks as they reach the first corner, waiting at the crosswalk for a car to pull past.

Charles is tense at his side where he has his arm looped through Erik’s, though he’s schooled his expression to something calm and neutral, hiding his anxiety from anyone who doesn’t know him as well as Erik does. “I don’t know, it’s nice,” Charles says, looking around them, then down at Toby, who is still pulling on the lead. “We should train him not to do that. He’s going to strangle himself.”

Erik makes a soft noise of acquiescence and nods. “Probably. Come on, Toby -- by me,” he says, and his power pulls lightly at Toby’s collar, restraining him closer by Erik’s side. 

The sun’s almost entirely set by now, just a glimmer over the roofs of the houses, the streetlights turning on one by one. Erik slips his arm out of Charles’ to take his hand instead, lacing their fingers together and rubbing his thumb against the back of Charles’ hand, pleased just to have the warmth of Charles’ palm against his, simple things like this that were so impossible before seeming immeasurably valuable even months after everything came out. Charles loosens eventually, less tightly wound, and his air of constant vigilance softens, too, disarmed by the total lack of armed mobs chasing after them.

“I know I’m still difficult,” Charles says after a while, squeezing Erik’s hand. “Thank you for putting up with me. I don’t deserve you.”

Erik glances sidelong at him, Charles’ hair whispering across his brow in the light wind, and feels a pang of something -- affection, love, or maybe just a horrible nostalgia for the way things used to be, should be again -- enough to make him lean over and press his nose into Charles’ temple, breathing in the scent of him and the quiet telepathic pulse of his presence in Erik’s mind. 

“I’m happier with you,” Erik says. “Even when things are bad, I’m happier with you.”

“I’m happier with you, too,” Charles says, coming to a halt before they can trip; he lifts their joined hands to his mouth, kisses the back of Erik’s hand. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Erik tilts up the corner of his mouth, turning more properly toward Charles with his heart beating strangely fast in his chest, feeling rather like he’d imagine he might if he’d ever had opportunity to go on a first date, dizzy and giddy with the prospect of kissing someone, the first feeling that everything might turn out fine. 

“Go on as you had done, probably,” he says, watching Charles’ eyes. “Not saddle yourself with a thirteen-year-old hellbent on getting himself thrown back into prison. Marry Gabrielle or Rémy or Steve. Have a few kids, grow old, retire somewhere tropical.”

“Perhaps.” Charles shrugs, but Erik feels him smiling against his skin. “Steve would make a wonderful husband. Perhaps I should call him and ask for a do-over.”

Erik pulls at the ring of Charles’ collar with his power, mostly teasing but a little bit not, too, his grin sharp and sudden as he moves his hand aside to expose Charles’ mouth, allowing him to kiss him on it, out there where anyone could see. Charles kisses him back for a few seconds, sweet press of lips before he pulls back, glancing around as if to check if they’re being watched; he’s still holding Erik’s hand but it’s tight in a different way now, clenching around it white-knuckled. 

“We should get dinner,” Charles says, his breath shaking.

“All right.” It’s enough, Erik thinks, to have done it at all -- so he concedes, though he stays close to Charles even when they walk through the busier Porter Square, leaving him out at a bench on the sidewalk while he drops by Anna’s Taqueria to pick up a brown bag of food for them each, rejoining to walk the last block back to their house, now dark and empty-looking with the sun fully set and none of the lights on.

He opens the door with his power, letting Charles in first to carry the bags to the kitchen while Erik kneels there in the foyer, undoing the leash from Toby’s collar and scratching him behind the ears. Toby’s entire body moves as he wags his tail and licks at Erik’s hand before finally padding off toward his water bowl, exhausted.

Charles gets out the plates, setting them down on the counter and turning towards the cupboard where they keep the glasses. When Erik puts his hands on his hips from behind, though, Charles makes a soft sound and leans back against him, head falling forward to bare the back of his neck. His hands come up to cover Erik’s, cupping them against his body.

“Thank you,” Erik says against Charles’ skin when he tips his head to kiss Charles’ nape, the cotton collar of Charles’ shirt brushing the underside of Erik’s chin.

“It was just a walk.”

“Still.” When he draws away from Charles to go unpack the burritos onto their plates, it’s reluctant, a part of his flesh still wanting that contact, wanting it in a deep way that’s a little surprising after so long, like an ache in his chest.

They eat dinner together just as they usually would, nothing different about it at all -- Charles doesn’t do or say anything about it, but Erik can still feel that kernel of desire inside himself the whole time, watching Charles drink, the muscles of his throat working as he swallows, or the sheen of grease on his lips making them look even redder against his pale skin. Charles does glance at him, once or twice, in a way that’s knowing, anticipatory -- but he says nothing, and if anything that only makes the feeling stronger, for going unacknowledged.

“Come here,” Erik says when at last dinner is eaten and all the dirty dishes are put away in the dishwasher, Erik himself standing near the doorway into the hall with his hand held out for Charles to take; he sees Charles’ shiver before he obeys, the lazy blink of his eyes as the order processes through him and Charles pads over to place his hand in Erik’s, closing the baby gate behind them to keep Toby in the kitchen.

Erik lifts his hand to brush the back of his thumb against Charles’ cheek, watching Charles’ lashes flutter slightly. When Erik steps back, toward the den with the unopened boxes still precariously stacked here and there, a few half-emptied with torn tape ragged against the cardboard, Charles follows as if on a lead of his own -- close, closer, until Erik’s hand slips round his waist again, kisses him.

Charles leans into him immediately, keenly, his lips parting and his hands moving to Erik’s chest, running down from his pectorals to his belly in a caress; his breath is hot against Erik’s mouth. There’s a sense of him holding back, though, of restraint, that Erik feels emanating from his mind and in the slight tremble of his body, tense against his own. It’s been a long time -- since before Prague, and Charles hasn’t pushed, hasn’t asked for anything except permission to touch himself, and that he usually does on his own. If there were a seed of guilt in Erik’s core for not being able to give Charles what he needs, this isn’t borne of that -- at least, it doesn’t feel like it is when Erik’s teeth catch Charles’ lip, when he pushes up the band of Charles’ collar to leave a mark hidden beneath it.

“Ah!” Charles’ chest hitches, and he tips back against one of the piles of boxes, his head falling back as well, further, making more room for Erik to bite him. “Please, that feels good -- ” His hands touch Erik’s sides, tugging at Erik’s hips to pull him closer. The top box falls to the floor, the lid coming loose and papers sliding out across the hardwood. “Damn.”

“Ignore it,” Erik murmurs against Charles’ skin; he’s starting to get hard, thanks to Charles’ hands so close to his cock, thinking about Charles wanting him. Erik wants this, too. He wants it more than he wants to wrap himself up again in gauze to hide from having to think about everything that happened in Prague (everything, not just Shaw’s death). He wants them again, unfettered by anything.

“All right.” Charles ducks his head to catch Erik’s mouth again, his tongue stroking against Erik’s, and he adjusts his stance, standing with his feet further apart so he can pull Erik between his spread thighs, his ass perched on the edge of what is now the top box. Charles is hard, too, the thick ridge of his cock pressing through the fabric of his jeans against Erik’s hip. _I think there are cushions in one of these boxes …_

 _Where?_ Erik asks, though he doesn’t care enough to draw away from Charles to start looking -- his hands busy with Charles’ shirt instead, undoing the buttons and pushing the fabric off his shoulders to bare skin.

 _The one that has_ cushions _written on it,_ Charles says, with an air of amusement, though it’s a breathless sort of feeling, compounded by the tight grip of his hands on Erik’s waistband, carefully still. He’s still holding back, letting Erik set the pace, and Erik tells him: “I’m not breakable, you know.”

“I know,” Charles says, his thumb flirting with the hem of Erik’s t-shirt. He smiles at Erik, the curve of it rueful at the corners. “I just don’t want to push further than you want to go. I want you too badly.”

It doesn’t require much thought: Erik’s made the decision somehow without thinking about it. “I want to go all the way. I’m tired of waiting.” He grasps Charles’ wrists to push his hands beneath Erik’s shirt, upward, the fabric catching on Charles’ arms and pulling up with them. It gets him an immediate response; Charles’ breath hitches and his pupils dilate, fingers pressing against Erik’s bare skin.

“Well, if you’re sure,” Charles says, sliding them upwards, over Erik’s nipples, and rubbing his palms over them, warm friction making them harden into tight nubs. He pauses there, glancing up at Erik through his lashes, half genuine, half teasing. Erik laughs, leaning in to nip at Charles’ lip with sharp teeth and a sharper grin.

“I’ve missed you,” he confesses when Charles has got his shirt off over his head, the fabric dropped to the floor somewhere behind them, atop the spilled papers. It comes out a little more breathless than he’d like, but since it’s Charles Erik can’t be bothered with embarrassment -- if Charles knows just how much Erik wants him, and he does, well …. “This.”

Demonstrative, he presses his palm between them, against the warm bulge of Charles’ cock through his trousers; Charles hums, rocking forward against Erik’s hand. 

“I won’t say it’s been enjoyable, but I really am fine with waiting for you,” Charles says, though his hands move down Erik’s back, touching the bared skin slowly, exploring all over again. “I miss sex, but I want you to feel comfortable and safe more than I want to get off.”

Erik gives him a smile that doesn’t entirely manage to be anything other than bitter, even as his heart warms, grateful that Charles … is who he is. Once upon a time Erik would never have thought anyone would care about what he wanted, or how he felt, more than they cared about using his body to get off, but when Charles says it Erik actually _believes_ it.

“I know,” he says. “But I want to do it. The longer I wait the worse it will be.”

“Now there’s a compliment,” Charles says lightly, still smiling, but his gaze is soft. “I’m not so old I’ll forget how to do it if you leave it too long, you know.”

“No, for me. I’ll overthink it. I don’t want to overthink it.”

“I know, darling,” Charles says, and his hands drift down to slide into the back pockets of Erik’s jeans, cupping his ass. “All right, then. If I recall correctly, you were about to strip me naked while I tried to remember where to find some soft furnishings for the floor?”

The tension that had been gripping Erik’s chest relaxes somewhat and he says, “Get to it, then,” rubbing his hand against Charles’ shaft as his power undoes Charles’ fly, tugging the fabric aside so he can wrap his fingers around it properly through Charles’ boxers. Charles moans and presses his face into the curve of Erik’s neck to kiss him there, his fingertips digging into Erik’s buttocks. The sound shivers down Erik’s spine, hot and arousing -- he tips his head back to let Charles mouth at his jugular, his own cock feeling hot in his jeans as he rubs his thumb against the glans of Charles’, wetness seeping through the cotton against his hand.

 _Cushions are in the corner by the bookcase with the other homewares,_ Charles says; his mouth moves up to take hold of Erik’s earlobe, and his hips rock forward and back against Erik’s hand. “Mmm … ”

“Come on, then,” Erik murmurs, and he lets go of Charles’ cock only to grasp his hips instead, pulling him off the box -- off-balance, Charles stumbles against Erik’s chest, his weight pressing up against Erik’s body, his cock against Erik’s thigh and his hands on Erik’s ass, heavy, warm. Erik makes a soft, tight noise and kisses him rough on the mouth even as he steps back, bringing Charles along with him as they pick their way across the room to the bookcase.

“What do you want?” Charles asks, skirting around another pile, and only lets go when they reach the back corner, turning towards the boxes to inspect the labels. He crouches rather gingerly to look at the lower ones, then glances up at Erik, his hand coming to rest high-up on the back of Erik’s thigh. “I’m easy.”

He looks good like that, down there on his knees, mouth flushed and eyes bright. Erik curls his fingers in Charles’ hair to keep him there. 

“First I want you to suck me off. After that, I want you to fuck me.” 

Charles’ eyes widen, and he lets out a shaky breath, tugging a little against Erik’s hand. “Are you sure? It might be easier on you to top, ease into it again.”

Charles might be right, of course, but Erik grimaces and tightens his grip, using it to pull Charles forward to press his cheek against Erik’s erection through his jeans. “No,” he says finally, firmly. “I don’t want _him_ to have been the last person inside me. I want that to be you.”

A pause, but then Charles says, “All right,” and rubs his cheek against Erik there, his faint evening stubble making a rasping noise against the denim, the pressure of it delicious. His mouth is so close, then even closer when Charles turns his face entirely to bury his nose against Erik’s crotch, inhaling. Erik can feel his lips moving against him when Charles says, “You should take off your pants.”

Erik lifts a brow and pulls at his hair, but only a bit. “I think you can do that for me, don’t you?” he says softly, and wishes he had a leash on hand he could clip onto Charles’ collar, something to wrap tight around his palm to set Charles’ rhythm and keep him on his cock, but this will have to do for now.

“We could go upstairs instead and find it?” Charles’ hands move to Erik’s fly, though, his head pulling back to make room so he can flick open Erik’s button, then drag down the zipper, the release of pressure over Erik’s cock no true relief.

“I think I don’t want you off your knees until I’ve come,” Erik says, his free hand reaching down to catch Charles’ chin, thumb pressing against his lower lip, watching the flesh blanch -- and the blood rush in to darken it again as soon as he lets go.

Charles shivers, his arousal tangible throughout the room, and leans forward to mouth at Erik through the thin fabric of his briefs.

His lips are gentle, but the feeling of it is intense after so long without. His breath dampens the cotton, making it cling to the shape of Erik’s cock, and Erik’s quads tense up almost immediately, a quiver starting low in his stomach. “Good,” Erik murmurs, stroking his hand back through Charles’ hair now, restraining himself from rocking his hips forward against Charles’ mouth. “You want to make me happy, don’t you?”

It helps, a little, saying things like this, tiny reminders for them both of who’s the Dom, who’s in control, even if everything else is relatively vanilla.

“Yes.” Charles looks up at Erik, still moving his lips against the thick swelling of Erik’s cock, and nuzzles against him before licking a stripe up the cotton and leaving a dark wet mark on it. Erik’s breath feels thick in his throat.

He hooks a thumb under his own elastic waistband and tugs the briefs down to release his cock, letting Charles take over to pull the fabric the rest of the way off his hips so he can step out of it and kick it aside.

“May I get the cushions out?” Charles asks, not quite leaning forward enough to take Erik into his mouth. His knees shift against the hardwood floor; it must be a bit uncomfortable, and so Erik nods, watching as Charles sets aside the boxes on top to reach one on the bottom of a pile. The cushions from the old den are in there, and Charles pulls them out, then sets one on the floor under his knees before leaning in to wrap his lips around the head of Erik’s cock, his hand coming up belatedly to wrap around the base of his shaft as Charles begins to suck.

After so long, it’s nearly too much; Erik shudders before he can help himself, grip tightening abruptly in Charles’ hair. Of course, even after two years Erik still hasn’t gotten used to the idea that there can even exist pleasure like this in the world, that there are ways in which Charles can touch and kiss him that can blot out thought entirely. His cock feels swollen and hot, tension knotting up between his legs as Charles moves his head along the shaft, guided in part by Erik’s hand at his crown.

Charles’ tongue presses against the underside, keeping everything tight and slick, and he takes Erik in deeper, then -- fuck, he starts to hum, his mouth and throat vibrating around Erik’s cock and reverberating through his groin, his stomach --

Erik isn’t going to last long, but that was never much in question. He groans softly and pushes Charles’ head a little further down on his cock, testing out the limits: how deep he can go before Charles starts to gag, how well Charles is able to breathe with his mouth full. Charles, of course, takes it all in stride, even when his eyes start to water, cheeks flushing pink with effort, and when Erik comes down his throat it’s with a pleasure that’s almost blinding, flaring through him in a burst of white light.

The sucking pressure around his cock softens, but doesn’t withdraw, gentling Erik through it, and it’s only when Erik starts to feel a bit sensitive that Charles finally sits back, his lips pink and swollen, wet with saliva. “How do you feel?” he asks, his hands stroking Erik’s thighs.

Erik exhales roughly, even his grin feeling a bit giddy and exhausted; he strokes through Charles’ hair again, hand slipping forward to brush his thumb over Charles’ cheek. “Good,” he says. “Good.”

Charles is still hard: his cock is pressing up against the placket of his trousers, swollen and untouched. Erik hooks a finger through Charles’ collar and tugs him up to his feet, Charles rising with the cue.

“Go get us something we can use as lube,” he instructs, after he’s kissed Charles’ messy lips, tasted himself there.

“Yes, Erik.” Charles smiles, and kisses Erik briefly again before padding away, disappearing into the hall. Erik feels him going upstairs -- he frowns, because the kitchen would have been quicker -- and sets to arranging the scattered cushions into a more helpful pile. There’s enough of them to fill the narrow space between the boxes until it’s like something from a sultan’s palace, soft and jewel-colored, tasseled corners draping over the velvets and silks of the old guest room pillows.

Charles returns and comes right back to Erik’s side, standing at the edge of the pillow sea. “Here,” he says, offering Erik the bottle of slick from their bedroom. Erik takes it and pushes at Charles’ hip with his free hand, nudging him back toward the cushions.

“Take your clothes off and sit down,” he tells him, the order too light to put Charles into subspace -- right now, Erik wants him present, just … just in case -- but still strong enough for Charles to feel, even with his telepathy, shivering down his spine.

“Yes Erik,” Charles murmurs, and drags his shirt off over his head, then reaches for his waistband to flick open the button, dragging the zipper down carefully before pushing the pants down and kicking them aside. This done he lowers himself to kneel on the pillows, leaning back against a pile of boxes with his hands loose and open on his thighs. Erik follows after a moment, after he’s convinced his limbs to work again -- strange, how it feels like seeing Charles nude for the first time, even though he seems him every night when they get undressed and ready for bed. It’s not like this. Hasn’t been in too long.

“Touch yourself,” Erik tells him, popping the cap off the lube and squeezing a small, clear dollop onto his fingertips.

Charles’ eyelids lower, his breath shaking out of him, and reaches for his cock where it’s standing thick and hard between his thighs, taking hold of himself and starting to stroke.

His hand moves slowly, teasing himself as he pulls his foreskin back and then rolls it back over the swollen head like some kind of peepshow; a flash of pink before it’s hidden again, there and gone, and Charles’ cheeks and chest flushed nearly the same color, his arousal like a sunburn on his pale skin. It’s beautiful, and intensely arousing -- if Erik could be physically turned on again so quickly, he would be. As it is, he can just watch Charles, feel the heat smoldering in his own chest as he reaches back behind himself to start working himself open, already imagining it being Charles’ cock instead. And he thinks about that -- keeps his eyes fixed there, on Charles’ hand and Charles’ cock, instead of letting himself imagine anything, or anyone, else. It’s easier when Erik can see him -- reach with his free hand and touch him, lube dropped aside on the cushions, pulling Charles closer to tilt their brows together.

Charles sighs, bringing his other hand up to tangle in Erik’s hair, still sweat-damp from his own orgasm. “How do you want to do this?” he asks, voice quiet -- it’s pitched submissively enough not to put Erik’s back up, enough for him not to feel that he’s being babied. “You on top would give you the most control.”

Erik takes in a small, sharp breath. “I don’t need to be coddled,” he says, glancing down briefly, at the cinnamon freckles on Charles’ cheeks, the reddish bud of his lips. “No restrictions.”

“You’re my Dom. You get to have things the way you want them,” Charles says, “and it’s my pleasure to oblige.” He spreads his thighs a little wider, putting himself and his erection on display. “So -- husband -- how would you like for me to fuck you?”

Erik can’t help the little smile that tugs at his lips, and he lets his hand skate down Charles’ bare chest, toward his softer stomach as he uses a third finger on himself. He doesn’t touch Charles’ cock -- he wants to, but he wants to watch Charles touch himself even more. “I’ll be on my back,” he says. It’s the way Azazel fucked him, but if Erik is doing this … if he’s really doing this, then he isn’t equivocating. 

He pulls his fingers out of his hole and shifts past Charles, settling down on the cushions just-so, reaching now to knock Charles’ hand away from his cock and pull him down after. Charles comes easily, moving to lie half on top of Erik, his leg slung over Erik’s and most of his weight resting on one elbow. He kisses Erik carefully at first, then with more passion when Erik presses his thigh up against Charles’ hard cock. His teeth scrape against Erik’s lip. Erik keeps his eyes open; he wants to keep looking, doesn’t want to lose his grasp on here, now, this. Charles’ bare chest is hot against his skin, mouth soft from already being so well-kissed. 

“Use this,” Erik says, passing Charles the lube and then reaching with that hand around Charles’ shoulders, keeping him close.

“Thanks,” Charles says, though it’s clearly awkward for him to stay this near and use both hands. He manages to squeeze some lube onto his fingers, though, and then reaches down between them to stroke himself, with a wet sound of skin-on-lubed-skin. After a moment Charles’ hand comes back up, and he moves between Erik’s thighs, settling there and stroking his clean palm down Erik’s side. His eyes meet Erik’s, and he pauses there for a moment to say, “I love you.”

“I love you,” Erik echoes back, and he shifts beneath Charles’ weight, sliding his legs back enough that it arches his spine, easier this way, one knee hitching over Charles’ waist. Erik leans up to kiss him again, fingers slipping beneath his leather collar to press against slickened skin, Charles’ hair brushing the backs of his knuckles. “Do it.”

“That’s not very romantic,” Charles says, the corners of his mouth curling further; his mind is a warm cloud of reassurance, calming and tantalizingly patient. His hand moves from Erik’s hip, caressing the line of his thigh and sliding underneath, fingertips grazing the sensitive skin on the inside. “I’m not at my best when I’m in a rush.”

Erik lifts an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t say anything about disobedience. It feels better to let Charles touch him, a fresh quiver starting up in his stomach. He leans back down against the cushions, looking up at Charles, watching Charles’ gaze shift down from Erik’s face toward his body. He bends down and kisses Erik’s cheek, overtly avoiding his mouth, then the hinge of his jaw, then the side of his neck, just below; it feels good, and Erik closes his eyes even as Charles’ fingers keep stroking his inner thigh.

Charles’ mouth pulls back with a wet sound, moving over to the other side of Erik’s throat, kissing him there over his pulse as his hips lower to rub his erection along the crease of Erik’s groin, sliding easily with the lube he slicked over it. Erik’s lips part and he grasps both hands at Charles’ shoulders, fingertips digging into his flesh, strangely shaken inside. But he doesn’t see anyone else, doesn’t feel anyone else: it’s just Charles, him and Charles. 

“I want you,” Erik murmurs, thighs clenching on either side of Charles’ hips.

“You can have me.” The hand on his leg moves further down, until Charles’ fingers rub over Erik’s perineum and down around his hole, a smooth, continuous circuit, up and down and around and up again, touching him where he’s most private but not slipping in. “I’m yours. Your sub.”

“Mmm.” Erik grinds up against Charles, even though he’s still soft, chasing closeness. Charles’ cock is a heavy, hot thing against his stomach. “Bossy sub.”

Charles laughs even as he moans, a strange, mixed-up sound, his fingers curling against Erik’s skin. “You like it,” he says, kissing the corner of Erik’s mouth. Erik doesn’t realize Charles has let go of Erik’s thigh until there’s suddenly a blunt touch at his hole, rubbing over it, back and forth -- the head of Charles’ cock, not pressing in but stroking at his entrance instead, teasing both of them. Erik’s half-tempted to push himself down on it under his own force, to bring Charles inside him. 

“I like most things you do,” Erik confesses, and finally does press down just a little, enough to feel himself start to spread against Charles’ cockhead, teasing Charles right back.

“Oh, fuck ...” Charles’ patience must finally give out, because he pushes forward, the pressure building until suddenly Erik’s hole stretches and lets him in, Charles’ thick erection sliding into Erik and filling him up, spreading him open around it. 

Erik gasps, his hips reflexively tilting upward to meet Charles, grasp tightening on his shoulders. His mind, at least for now, stays where it is: Erik opening his eyes to look at Charles’ face again, so close to his. They can never be closer than this, Charles inside Erik’s body, Charles inside Erik’s mind. They’re intertwined on some fundamental level, in a way they can’t cut out of themselves. Erik wouldn’t want to.

“God,” Charles says, pushing in deeper; his arms hook under Erik’s knees, pressing them back, and he’s flushed all over now, looking down between them at where his cock disappears inside Erik, nearly as red as Azazel. “You’re all right?”

“Fine,” Erik says, but his voice is raw-sounding to his own ears. His thighs tremble in Charles’ grip, too tense to store up the energy, anxiety seizing at the pit of his stomach and refusing to let go. But it’s temporary -- it always is, Erik knows that, reminds himself of that. A physiological response that isn’t reality. Still, Charles reaches for him, his left hand outstretched until Erik clasps it in his own and Charles squeezes it tightly, holding on.

“You’re safe,” he says, lifting their joined grips to kiss the back of Erik’s hand again. His hips fidget against Erik’s ass, but he doesn’t move, even though he must be desperate to thrust. “You’re my Dom. You’re in control.”

Erik nods roughly and the hand that isn’t caught up in Charles’ slips down to his waist, holding on. Charles, in his mind, is warm and familiar and wants him. 

“Go on,” Erik tells him at last. 

Charles kisses Erik’s hand again, soft, before finally his hips pull back and he slides perhaps an inch out of Erik before pushing back in, rocking against him, in and out. It’s slow and inexorable, like rolling on the ocean, the motion steady and Charles’ eyes bright as stars. Erik’s body adjusts, it always does, and he lifts his head to press their lips together again; Charles’ breath is hot against his mouth, his tongue wet, and Erik makes a strange, tight noise even as he finally moves beneath Charles to roll his hips up toward his, finding his rhythm and matching it.

They move together as one, their mingled thoughts keeping them in sync. Impossible not to feel Charles’ pleasure, the tightness of Erik around his cock, the pulsing hot need in him. Erik’s body is still sensitive, not truly pleasured by it but his mind enjoying Charles’ abandon, the way Charles wants more and more and more, his hips speeding up gradually as his orgasm builds inside him.

“Love you,” Charles breathes, moving deeply inside Erik. Erik clenches himself hard around him and bites at his lower lip, hard enough to watch it flush when he withdraws. 

“I want you to come for me,” Erik tells him, dizzy with the echoes of Charles’ pleasure; he tightens his thigh around Charles’ hips, pulling him in further, harder. Charles is gripping Erik’s hand hard enough to cut off circulation, short nails digging into his skin. “Tell me you will --”

Charles moans, thrusting forward, and says, “Yes,” his voice breaking; “Yes, I -- fuck -- ” His hips stutter, and Charles grunts, his eyelids flickering as he comes inside Erik’s ass, cock throbbing and his weight pitching forward onto Erik. The edges of his orgasm spill over into Erik’s mind and Erik gasps out loud, his body tensing up around Charles, free hand leaping up to take tight grip of Charles’ hair as Charles comes.

“Aaaah.” Charles breathes out, his head falling forward to rest his brow against Erik’s chest, little aftershocks through him and into Erik. “Ohh. Okay?”

“Mmhmm.” Erik strokes his fingers down past the nape of Charles’ neck, over the ridge of his leather collar. His legs still shake, mostly from tension, the anxiety not quite drained from his body even if he just proved to himself nothing bad would happen, that he and Charles could be together and have it be normal, good and right. 

“We’re going to have to wash these cushions,” he murmurs after a while, once Charles’ breathing has slowed.

Charles huffs, turning his face to lay his cheek on Erik’s chest instead, above his heart. His eyes are closed, his mouth smiling. “I don’t think I can move, let alone do housework.”

“That good, hmm?”

“I feel like my brain just spurted out of my cock.”

Erik laughs, wrapping both arms properly around Charles’ body, fingers slipping a little on Charles’ slick skin. He shifts his hips beneath Charles’ weight, twisting a little so Charles’ softening cock will slide out of his ass, making it more comfortable to lower one of his legs to hook it around Charles’ thigh. He feels happier than he has in a long time, warm and enclosed in Charles’ embrace, the soft pulse of Charles’ heartbeat against his stomach.

“Thank you,” Charles murmurs after a while, his hand resting on Erik’s side, stroking idly.

Erik opens his eyes -- they’d fallen shut at some point, fatigue slowly creeping in to fill the void left by Erik’s retreating nerves. “For what?”

Charles’ fingers keep moving, soporific in their regularity. “Still wanting me enough to want this, even after everything that happened.” 

Erik finds himself smiling, just a little, and he hopes Charles feels the warm rush of affection in his chest through his telepathy. It feels like they’ve been through so much together. They _have_ been through so much, and it’s all been leading up to this: the two of them, forever, loving each other no matter what happens. 

“I’ll always love you,” he says after a moment, squeezing Charles in his arms. “Nothing will ever change that.”

Charles presses a kiss to Erik’s chest, a _bouche de coeur_. “I’m glad,” he says, and they lie there together for a long while until they finally, reluctantly, have to get up for Erik to make dinner.

*

The grad student Erik works with at MIT CSAIL Robotics Laboratory is never in his office; he’s effectively signed it over to Erik for him to use to work on projects for his internship here. Erik had planned on doing the structural, mechanical stuff, using his power to help build the actual robots, but they have robots to do that now, and once the PI realized Erik was a half-decent coder he got co-opted to work on programming instead. Debugging at first, but now Sven the grad student has Erik writing his own code as well. The whole project is based on trying to develop an introspective robot, an AI that can actually learn from its internal environment as much as the external.

It means Erik can bring Charles along on nights when he’s planning on working late, holed up in this tiny corner of the Stata Center checking, compiling, debugging, rewriting code until past midnight. He could do it from home, but the CSAIL wifi is faster than the shitty Comcast they have at the house. And he wants Charles around not just for company, but because they’ve figured out that if Charles stays plugged into Erik’s mind, even inactively, Erik can borrow part of his mental processing power to make his work go by that much more quickly and easily. It’s still Erik doing the thinking, just … faster. 

Tonight, he has Charles installed in the puffy armchair over by the window, tapping away at something on his own laptop. Erik saves his revised code as a new document and uploads it to the CSAIL server, on a subdirectory that belongs just to Sven and this one project, full of code .txt files and hyperlinks to useful websites and github repositories. He attaches the new file, hits ‘upload,’ and waits about half a second for the directory page to refresh. But when it does, there’s not just his own new file at the top of the directory -- there’s another, an HTML file named “1-HELLOERIK.html.”

Erik glances at Charles over the edge of his monitor, but Charles is completely absorbed in whatever he’s doing. Erik spares the time to check CSAIL’s firewall is still up and running before he clicks to open the new page. It reads, simply:

> i’m out in the hall

There’s a knock almost immediately after Erik reads it, and he barely has time to turn around before the door opens.

“I got bored waiting after all,” swineherd says, then his eyes flick past Erik and he says, “Shit. Psychic hubby is here too.”

Charles looks startled, his hands frozen over his keyboard; Erik’s half out of his chair already, so he bothers to stand the rest of the way up, damning himself silently for not thinking to bring a gun. He might not need one, with his power, but with people in swineherd’s line of work it never hurts to have a piece to wave around if necessary. Swineherd’s alone, though, and it’s that fact more than anything else that makes Erik lift a hand to gesture between him and Charles.

“Neil, Charles. Charles, Neil. What are you doing here?”

Swineherd pauses, his hands flexing where they’re tucked into the pockets of his jacket. He takes a steady breath and says, “Did Frank give you my name? I know I’ve never told it to you.”

“Yes, but I knew it before that,” Erik says, having no reason to spare Frank’s reputation any longer. “You’re not as good as you think you are. Now answer my question.”

“He has a message from Emma,” Charles says before swineherd can say anything, his voice utterly calm despite the unease Erik feels from him, swirling between their minds. Erik doesn’t turn to look -- doesn’t want to turn his back on swineherd. Charles continues, “She paid him very well to be her messenger. He thought it was beneath him.”

Swineherd makes a displeased sound in his throat, with an expression like he’s bitten into a rotten apple. “I fucking hate telepaths.”

Charles huffs. “This telepath isn’t that fond of you, either.”

But Erik refuses to be distracted. He shuts off his computer monitor with a quick burst of static electricity, not looking away from swineherd as he says, “Tell her I’m not interested in whatever it is. She owes me, not the other way around.”

Swineherd fixes Erik with a sardonic look. “Look, Lehnsherr,” he says, “I’m not here to play Cyrano to your Roxane. I’m just a guy who’s been very well compensated to hand-deliver a message to you.” He shrugs. “I respect you, I really do. But you’re not exactly my highest-paying customer, know what I’m saying? I don’t dance for those as don’t pay the piper.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake, Erik thinks, enough with the posturing. He waves a dismissive hand, conscious of the unblinded window and people who may be looking in -- never mind that they’re on the third floor. In this fluorescent light, everything is visible.

“So, give over the message. Let’s hear it.”

Swineherd pulls his hand out of his pocket -- there’s a phone in his fist, and he holds it out to Erik on a flat palm like a waiter with a tray. “Here.”

Behind Erik, the chair squeaks as Charles gets to his feet, and he comes forward to take the phone before Erik can, looking down at it with an expression of distrust. “We should get rid of this,” he says, looking at Erik. “There’s nothing to be gained from letting Emma back into your life. Our lives. She has nothing to offer that’s worth the cost.”

Charles is probably right, Erik thinks. Besides, what happened the last time someone passed him a burner like this makes him less than keen on repeating the past. He takes the phone from Charles all the same, flipping open the cover to tab through the messages -- empty -- and then over to the contact list. There’s only one person listed.

“Can’t imagine what else Frank has to say for himself,” Erik tells swineherd, looking back up. “Surely he isn’t this suicidal.”

Swineherd shrugs. “Not my business. They paid upfront, so I don’t care. Throw him off the Prudential Center if you want.”

“Erik, no,” Charles says, stepping so he’s between Erik and swineherd, not seeming to notice or care that he’s got his back to the guy. “It’s not worth it.”

Erik meets his gaze and says, pointedly, “You undervalue revenge.”

On that note, he hits ‘dial,’ lifting the phone up to his ear and stepping away from swineherd and Charles both, back toward the window. It takes two rings for Frank to pick up.

“Hi,” he says, his voice as clear and crisp as if he were standing right next to Erik. He sounds as Texan as ever: he wasn’t faking that much, at least. “I wasn’t sure you’d call.” 

“I’m tracing this call,” Erik says by way of response, even though he’s not at all certain his power can even do that -- he’s traced the signal to the right cell tower on his side of things, but that’s where things get fuzzier. “I’d make it quick if I were you.”

A sigh, then a sound of a door closing. “Come on, Erik. You and I both know you’re not going to turn me in -- if anything you want to kill me yourself, and you’re not going to suddenly up and leave the country unannounced. The feds would be on you like flies on shit. If you’re going to tell me to fuck off, just do it and let me get back to sleep.”

 _Find out where he is from swineherd’s mind,_ Erik orders Charles silently, even as out loud he says, “I’m not going to do that. Not yet, at least.” He leans back against the window, hips hitched up onto the sill. “Tell me what it is you wanted to say.”

“Look,” Frank says. “I can tell you I’m sorry until I’m blue in the face and you’re still not going to care, because that’s what you’re like, Erik, you’re black and white and that’s that. I am sorry, I truly am. You’re my best friend. I wish things hadn’t ended up the way they did, but it was the only way out for me and for Emma, and for you. Shaw would never have just let you go.”

 _Neil doesn’t know,_ Charles says in Erik’s mind. _He suspects they’re moving around too much to be tracked reliably._

Erik nods, for Charles’ benefit -- and to cover up the way his throat feels tighter all of the sudden, swollen and raw. He doesn’t want to hear Frank talk about being his best friend. He doesn’t want to have to think about how things were, or what they were supposed to have been, ever again.

“I appreciate that you gave me the chance to kill him. That’s it. And it certainly doesn’t make up for anything else.”

“Mmm. I know. Probably nothing ever will, with you, but I figured I’d see if offering you some resources might inch us a little closer.” A pause, while Frank clears his throat. “I know a lot of useful people, a lot of them nothing to do with Hellfire. If you’d like me to put you in touch with some of them, they could be useful for your future.”

Erik meets Charles’ gaze, certain he’s listening in, and lifts a brow. “My future?”

“Don’t play. We both know you’re going into politics one way or another. These are the kinds of people who can help with that.”

Erik won’t be contacting anyone Frank hooks him up with any time soon, but he nods all the same. “Send the information to my mixminion account. Anything else?”

“Emma says hi.”

Erik snorts; he can’t help it, not really. It’s just, he _knows_ Emma, and he knows her version of ‘hi’ is probably something along the lines of, _Make sure Lehnsherr isn’t getting himself into trouble on his own._ He can’t really trust her either -- she’s Hellfire, or was -- but unlike Frank, while she might have let everyone else get on with it, she never personally raped Erik. It’s … maybe … a forgivable offense.

Except:

“It won’t make a difference to you now, so tell me the truth. You sent the pictures to the media, didn’t you? Of me and Charles. You got them from my phone.”

There’s a long pause. “Yeah, that was me -- I was under orders from Braden-Newell at the time, and I’m sorry for that, too, if it helps.”

It doesn’t.

Erik makes a face, one swineherd sees as well but that’s meant for only Charles, and turns his back to the pair of them, facing the window and looking out over the roofs of the city. “This information of yours,” he says at last, because there isn’t anything else to say, not anymore. “You didn’t do all this out of the goodness of your hearts. What’s the catch?”

“Oh, you know.” a rustle; probably a shrug. “Emma likes to have friends to work with. She sees this as a chance for a new beginning, one more on her terms. She’s very fond of you, Erik, she’d like to see you do well.”

Of course. Erik should have known this was all a political play on Emma’s part, for influence and prestige. But more than that, it means she actually thinks he has a shot at being successful if he tries, either under his own steam or with her help. An interesting tidbit of information; Erik files it away for later.

Erik can’t say that, though; those words, like anything else complimentary, die in his mouth. “Swineherd has my mixminion email. You’ll have to ask him for it.”

“Dude, you gave it to me when we were working on the mutant underground stuff. It’s no problem, I can send you the stuff without Neil’s needing to be any more involved.”

Erik’s blunt nails pick at the paint peeling off the windowsill. “Fine. That’s all, then.”

A snort. “Am I dismissed, sir?”

A tiny part of Erik wants to smile, wants to make some crack back at Frank like it’s still the good old days, but he just doesn’t have it in him to nourish that part of himself and help it grow.

“Yes.” 

He hangs up before he can be tempted to say anything more, tossing the phone back across the room to swineherd; he doesn’t use magnetism to make sure swineherd catches it so Neil is left stumbling briefly, trying to grab it before it hits the floor. 

“This is yours, you know,” swineherd says, waving the phone at Erik. “I’m not coming to fucking Boston once a week to keep bringing you new ones.”

“We won’t need them,” Charles says firmly, his mouth pursed and unhappy. “Thank you for coming, but if Emma asks you to get in touch again, tell her no.”

Swineherd raises an eyebrow. “I’m not your manservant, your Lordship.”

Erik steals the phone back from swineherd with his power and tosses it into the wastebasket in the same gesture; swineherd gets the message, shrugging nonchalantly.

“Up to you, then. Now, I’m going back to the _real_ city. Enjoy your backwater.” He turns to leave, his palm-tablet already in his hand; Erik locks the door behind him when it closes and immediately turns toward Charles, who looks very unhappy with him.

“Emma wants me in politics,” he says. “This should be unsurprising.”

“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” Charles says, his arms folding across his chest. “You shouldn’t let them draw you back in. Emma always has a motive, you know that better than anyone.”

“I do,” Erik says, although he thinks he also knows better than anyone what that motive is likely to be -- and Frank’s right about that much. With Shaw and the others taken care of, what Emma needs more than anything right now is to rebuild her influence and control. If she wants to use Erik to do that, well, at least this time he’s forewarned. 

He moves close to Charles, until he can reach out and grasp his upper arm, squeezing once. “Forget about her. She isn’t a part of our lives anymore, and neither is Frank.”

Charles shakes his head. “We both know that you’re going to read his email, and look into what he sends you, even if it’s just to find out if any of them are Hellfire. He’s hooked you.”

Erik’s lips curve upward crookedly -- he can’t help it. Charles knows him too well, and Frank clearly knows him just as thoroughly. 

“You got me,” he says, shrugging and holding one arm out as if in surrender. “Of course I’m going to look. I didn’t stop caring about all of this just because of what happened. And if nothing else, Frank and Emma have certainly proven they aren’t working for Hellfire anymore, so there isn’t that to worry about.”

“Frank and Emma _are_ Hellfire now, literally,” Charles says. “They are literally the inheritors of the entire organization, or what’s left of it. There’s plenty to worry about.”

He turns away to pace back over to his chair, gathering his things with jerky, staccato motions of his hands. “Let’s go home. I don’t feel like sitting here any longer tonight.”

A moment’s hesitation, then Erik nods, reaching for his satchel. He retrieves the phone from the wastebasket, too, if only because it would be worse to leave it here for curious grad students to find and start tinkering with -- particularly in this department. He reaches for Charles’ arm once they’re out in the hall, placing his hand just above his elbow, a gesture not overtly romantic but still wanting that contact.

He doesn’t really want to get into this with Charles, but all the same as they get into the elevator and the doors slide shut behind them he says, “I’m not against Hellfire’s existence. Not in the way it would exist under Emma’s control, at least. Shaw was the poison at the root of Hellfire’s evil, and he’s gone now.”

“The Hellfire name stands for terrible things,” Charles says, but it’s not an angry response; it’s just a statement, factual and measured. “It will never not mean those things, no matter what Emma does with it. She would be far better to discard it and start anew than resurrect an evil organization.”

Erik agrees, of course, on that point -- but he doubts very much Emma plans to use the Hellfire branding in whatever it is she does in the weeks and years to come. She might not be able to sever the ties between her own name and that of Hellfire’s, but no doubt she’ll find a patsy or two to play figurehead while she controls everything from the shadows. Emma’s never been one for the limelight. So all he can do is shrug, leaning back against the wall of the elevator as they descend past the second floor, the first, all the way to ground.

“You should wipe the sim card on that phone,” Charles says, stepping out into the foyer when the doors open and glancing back at Erik. “That way they can’t track you carrying it around.”

A touch of his ability does the trick, but even once the job is done Erik can’t quite bring himself to pull his power away from the phone entirely; after a moment he slips his hand into his pocket to curl his fingers around the plastic, holding on like he thinks Charles might reach in and try and steal it away from him. 

“If Frank wants me, he won’t need the sim card to find me,” Erik says. “His mutation, remember? He can track mutants. Besides, everyone knows where I go to school.”

“I’m not so worried about Frank as I am about anyone else they’re working with,” Charles says as they fall into step, heading towards the exit. “Frank cares about you, I could tell that from what he said and did, even if I couldn’t read his mind. I really think he regrets what he’s done to hurt you; though it’s no excuse, he’s not like Shaw and the other officers.”

Erik makes a sharp, derisive sound, pushing open the door and holding it for Charles to pass through, out onto the sidewalk that heads down Vassar toward the T station. “He should have thought about that before he let Shaw threaten him into raping a nine-year-old. What can I say, I’m unsympathetic.”

Charles’ mouth twists. “Loathe as I am to defend him in any way, most people when faced with a scenario where they can either be forced to hurt someone else and save themselves, or be hurt or killed themselves, will hurt the other person and blame the situation for it, absolving themselves of guilt. Frank would be justified in saying he was coerced, if sat in a court of law. He might not even be prosecuted. You might … I’m not suggesting you should, but perhaps in time you’ll understand that better and might consider forgiving him for Shaw’s sins.”

“And what do you think Shaw would have done to Azazel if Azazel had been like -- you know what, no, I don’t feel like teaching Erik a lesson today, do it yourself? Not everyone deserves forgiveness.”

Erik’s fairly certain Charles can take that same logic and apply it to everyone in the entire Hellfire Club. As far as he’s concerned, people are responsible for their own choices; they don’t get off because someone else started the domino chain. Erik doesn’t even have to wonder what he’d do in Frank’s position, because he already knows, and it doesn’t involve fucking a child.

“You’ve told me yourself Azazel refused at first then changed his own mind,” Charles says, his voice still firm. “I don’t get to tell you how to feel or what to think, Erik, nobody does. But I suppose I have more sympathy for Frank than for the others. Maybe I’m foolish, he’s clearly a good actor, but it’s just what I think.”

Erik hums out something noncommittal and reaches for Charles’ hand properly, lacing their fingers together and side-stepping a cyclist who’s pulled up onto the sidewalk to padlock her bike at the rack near the entrance to the T station, the two of them crossing the street to the stairs down to the outbound platform. “If he wants to make it up to me, his info needs to be damn good,” Erik says at last.

“Mmm,” Charles says, more an avoidance of an answer than an answer; clearly he’s gone as far as he cares to with this discussion, now that it’s swung back around to Frank giving Erik black market information.

If they’re recognized on the T, at least no one takes out their phones to start snapping pictures this time. Erik can sit quietly next to Charles on the hard plastic seats, Charles’ thigh a warm line pressed up against Erik’s own, Charles’ hands pale against his dark trousers where they’re clasped together in his lap -- they don’t quite dare hold hands here, where they’d be so easily cornered. At home, Charles goes straight up to bed, leaving Erik to take Toby out to do his business under the pool of light cast by the streetlamp on their corner, hands stuffed into his pockets against the cold. 

Waiting, with Toby sniffing around at the grass near Erik’s ankles, he pulls out the phone Frank gave him and opens it up, going back to the contacts list. He clicks Frank’s number and pulls up the option to delete -- but his thumb hovers there, not quite able to bring himself to press down, to wipe this option out of existence completely. He doesn’t forgive Frank, not in the way Charles might want him to, but he … 

Erik snaps the phone shut and tugs at Toby’s leash. “Let’s go inside,” he says, the dog snapping to attention to trot alongside him back to the house.

It’s an hour after Charles has fallen asleep, his features soft and slack in the dim light, body curled up facing Erik, that Erik finally gives up chasing dreams. He reaches for his laptop on the nightstand, leaning back against the headboard as he pulls the computer into his lap and boots it up, screen glowing bluish in the dark.

Frank’s email is waiting in his mixminion account when he gets there. His heart racing, Erik clicks to open the file with all its secrets and promises, simply hoping he isn’t about to make another terrible mistake.

*

**Ten years later**

_Charles_

These sorts of functions are always a mixture of good and bad; Charles can’t really say he’s grown to enjoy them, but he is good at them, and that’s a satisfaction in and of itself, the knowledge that he’s helping Erik. His husband is across the room talking to the Democratic candidate whose party this is and no doubt trying to drum up campaign support for their latest mutant healthcare initiative; Senator Bulmer looks interested on the outside where it’s politically correct to care about mutant issues, but on the inside he’s rather taken aback at the vehemence of Erik’s argument -- which he had hoped to nod politely to and dismiss, rather than committing to -- and so Charles thinks, _You’re getting there, keep pushing,_ at Erik, taking a sip of his own wine. Erik doesn’t look away from Bulmer, can’t take the risk, but Charles feels the pulse of acknowledgment back as Erik goes on to elaborate a point, never one to let up easily even in the best of times.

Charles smiles just a little and turns his gaze to the rest of the room, sizing it up. The hotel ballroom is done up in high style, crisp tablecloths and huge swags on the walls in the traditional red white and blue, posters of the Senator’s face hanging above them as if anyone could forget whose fundraiser they’re at. The guests are the usual suspects, politicians and the local rich, out to take a photograph with a potential president to go on the lid of their grand piano if he wins. Some of them Charles might even call friends.

 _Dinner will be served soon, shall I find another dining partner?_ Charles asks.

 _I’ll be finished here in the next few minutes,_ Erik sends back without breaking dialogue.

 _All right,_ Charles replies, amused -- he knows well enough someone else will grab Erik on his way to Charles, then quite probably two or three more people as well -- and finally drops his little notice-me-not field so he can take another glass of wine from a passing waiter, looking around for someone to talk to.

It’s not that he’s shy about being seen in public any more -- or not really, most of the time. But occasionally it’s good to remind himself that if he chooses he can be entirely imperceptible and free of all of society’s expectations, as well as able to enjoy a drink in peace.

He sees Madelyne Pryor over by the bar talking to her own campaign manager, and Charles starts in her direction -- she and Erik are still good friends, and she’s an entertaining woman in her own right -- when he’s stopped by someone stepping into his path.

“Dr Xavier,” Congressman Strativarikos says with lips pulled slightly too far back from his teeth, the glossy white of them disturbing against the pink of his exposed gums. “How good to see you here.”

Charles’ gut clenches, but he keeps a civil expression, nodding politely. “Congressman. Always a pleasure.” Insofar as Strativarikos is one of Erik’s most vehement opponents on the political scene.

Strativarikos takes a sip of his champagne, his dark eyes bright beneath bushy brows as he nods toward Erik. “He never lets up, does he? Like a dog with a bone.”

He’s thinking some rather unpleasant thoughts about Erik, and Charles makes himself not react despite the man knowing full well Charles must be overhearing. He just shrugs, making his mouth curve upward. “Erik is a man of great determination. He’s had to be, to get to where he is today. It’s a trait that’s served him and mutantkind very well.”

“We all know who he serves,” Strativarikos says snidely, and he hardly has to say _terrorists_ for the implication to be quite clear. “Sooner or later he’ll find himself arrested as an accessory, and then you’ll be in quite a pickle, won’t you?”

Charles raises an eyebrow. “Not particularly, Congressman. Fortunately, unlike many mutants, my husband and I can afford good lawyers to combat prejudice. If you’ll excuse me.”

He steps to the side to go around, entirely done with the conversation -- surely they’ve said enough -- but before Charles can go three steps Strativarikos says, rather loudly, “I would have thought you’d have moved on from him by now. Found someone more to your taste. A younger model, perhaps.”

Charles stops. That lurch in his stomach is back, but this time he feels like he’s been drenched in ice water, his skin prickling between shock and anger.

“Just because you don’t agree with Erik’s politics does not give you a license to make nasty remarks to his husband,” Charles says, lifting his chin and turning back to face Strativarikos, his lips pressed tightly together. “Would you care to retract that comment?”

But Strativarikos just shrugs, looking far too pleased with himself, lips curled into a thin smile. “You must really love him. He doesn’t even need you to buy his alcohol for him anymore.”

Other people murmur around them, the Congressman’s voice quite loud enough to be overheard, and Charles says, as coldly and as firmly as he can, “You don’t want to get into this sort of exchange with a telepath. I know things about you that you would hate for anyone else to hear; perhaps you shouldn’t push your luck.”

Strativarikos holds his hands up, as if in surrender, and says, “I only meant it as a compliment. My my, no need to be so sensitive,” and he retreats, passing his empty glass off to a nearby waiter and letting his aides fall into quick step behind him, scurrying along in his wake.

Madelyne is at Charles’ side a moment later, her hand coming to rest on his elbow. “Are you okay?” she asks, looking after Strativarikos with a fierce frown on her pretty face. “I hate that man with a passion. He’s probably the biggest dickhead on the Hill.”

“I’m fine,” Charles says, and he manages a smile for her, patting her hand. “Erik showed him up on NBC News last week, so I expect that’s what this was really about.”

Madelyne rolls her eyes. “Doms,” she says, and it’s long-suffering enough that Charles can’t help but laugh, even if it is a little cracked from the effort of keeping up his untroubled mask.

“I see Charles is monopolizing the best company,” Erik’s voice says from just past Charles’ shoulder. He slides an arm around Charles’ waist as he steps up alongside him, wearing a perfect grin for Madelyne even as he silently thinks toward Charles, _Everything all right?_

“Well, you did abandon me to the wolves,” Charles says. _Strativarikos was just being his usual charming self. I’m all right._

Erik lifts a brow at Madelyne, his hand squeezing Charles’ hip once, reassuring. “Tell me you aren’t bothering him, Madelyne,” he says, teasing enough that Charles would say it was flirtatious if he didn’t know Erik; the older he’s gotten, and the more secure in his high Dominance, the more almost anything he says can come across like that with Erik none the wiser.

“I’m still considering stealing him from you,” Madelyne says, playing along with a mischievous grin. “He can be my armpiece to the Correspondents' Dinner. I’d look great with a distinguished gentleman like Charles as my date.”

Erik gives them both a look of mock offense. “You’ve been plotting this since we were fourteen. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that desktop folder you filled with all Charles’ facebook photos.”

“I appreciate the compliment,” Charles says, and leans over to kiss Madelyne’s cheek fondly. “However I still prefer not to put myself in the middle of a horde of journalists. It makes for an unpleasant evening dodging awkward questions about Erik.”

Even now, ten years later, Charles has yet to truly get away from the spectre of their pasts; it’s better, much better than it was. But he suspects it will never really fade. Erik’s own reputation serves to shelter him from it a little; as legitimate as Erik’s current occupation might be, the source of half his funding is something of an open secret. 

“We should find seats for dinner before all the best ones are taken,” Erik says, turning more toward Charles now. “I hope you don’t mind me taking him, Madelyne.”

“Always,” she says, but she’s smiling. “Go on, I’ll talk to you later.”

Charles tucks his hand between himself and Erik to hook his finger through Erik’s belt loop, and together they start towards the dining room, the crowd starting to make murmurings in that direction.

“Let’s not sit near Strativarikos,” Charles says mildly, though his shoulders want to pull inwards a little at the thought. “I’d like to enjoy my supper.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked whether I might be looking to trade you in for a younger model. Said I must really love you to have kept you this long.”

Erik grimaces, lips and mind both twisting in disgust. “Well, he’s right about the latter part. Ignore him, Charles, his mouth is bigger than his brain.”

He pulls out a seat for Charles, waiting as Charles sits himself down and pulls the napkin into his lap before taking his own chair next to him. His presence, as always, is calming. Erik exudes Dominance like a cloud, magnetic to others and reassuring to Charles’ hindbrain. A server brings him a new glass and takes away the old one.

“Never mind,” Charles says finally, and smiles at Erik, reaching out to clasp his hand and give it one quick squeeze. “What did Senator Bulmer have to say for himself?” And with that their conversation moves on to Erik’s discussion with the candidate, Erik gesturing animatedly as he gets increasingly passionate about the work Bulmer is doing in green energy. Charles nods along, making mental notes as he goes -- things to pick up with the foundation, ideas that perhaps Hank could make contributions to -- and before he knows it dinner has been and gone, dessert has been cleared away, and there’s an aide standing by their shoulders, corset-clad and respectful as she says, “Mr Lehnsherr, sir, it’s time for your speech, if you wouldn’t mind following me?”

“Duty calls,” Erik murmurs to Charles, and he dips his head to press a brief kiss to Charles’ temple before setting his napkin aside and rising out of his seat to follow the woman toward the dais. Charles tracks him easily over the heads of everyone else, tall and elegant in his tailored suit, unmistakable and identifiable even so many years after the trial that made him famous.

Seeing him up there on that podium -- standing beside some of the most influential people in the country, giving a speech and being listened to by almost two hundred people, many of whom paid for tonight’s dinner simply to hear Erik speak -- Charles feels very proud, his heart swelling in his chest as he thinks of just how far Erik has come, from being scared to speak his mind to this, being renowned for his activism and campaigning, prominent for entirely different reasons than he had ever dreamed possible. Erik looks so sharp, and every word is crisp and perfect, adding to everything that’s come before. He’s -- Charles has loved Erik for a very long time, but it’s at times like these that he feels the most wonder at how everything has worked out.

When Erik finally finishes, and the crowd applauds -- long and loud, echoing in the high ceilings of the ballroom -- Charles is quieter than many of the people in the audience, but then none of them can project directly to Erik’s mind just how proud he really is. Erik catches his eye across the room and smiles, and although he belongs to the crowd for the rest of the evening, when they climb into their car that night and Charles buckles himself into the floorseat, Erik belongs to Charles alone.

“That was a wonderful speech,” Charles says, leaning his head automatically against Erik’s knee as the driver kicks the engine into life, the floor of the car rumbling beneath him. “I’m sure the Senator will call you back for some more of his fundraisers, he’d be a fool not to.”

“We’ll see,” Erik says, but Charles c an tell he feels optimistic about it as well, his hand coming to toy with the fringe of Charles’ hair where it brushes the nape of his neck, long fingers cool against Charles’ skin. “It’s good that Raven’s coming this weekend -- once the primaries start I doubt I’ll find myself with much free time left.”

Charles closes his eyes. “Mmm. It’ll be good to see her and the kids. Just make sure to put any important documents away from sticky fingers.” 

Erik makes an amused noise, and his fingertips slip below the collar of Charles’ shirt. In his head he’s already planning out his meetings for tomorrow with members of the Senate Committee for Education; Charles makes some silent suggestions, tweaking Erik’s arguments and offering his own insights, and like that they go home to the house in Chevy Chase, for Erik to stand behind him while Charles makes the tea, Erik’s fingers loosening the laces of Charles’ corseted waistcoat as they look out the kitchen window at the lights of DC.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover art for "All the Rest is Rust and Stardust"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2954972) by [avictoriangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avictoriangirl/pseuds/avictoriangirl)
  * [Hi, I'm the witness. Ask me anything!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4177749) by [daymarket](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daymarket/pseuds/daymarket)




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